Religious socks, and other Easter joys...

Happy Friday everyone, and isn't our Easter season just so lovely? 😊 My spirits have been so much higher since Holy Week, and it's such a good feeling. I've been keeping up with my Liturgy of the Hours and other devotional reading (so ironic that that has mostly been AFTER Lent, but that tells me that my Lent was sowing a lot of important seeds!) and I have lots more to write on that next week. It's not perfect, I of course forget occasionally, but overall my consistency has been motivating me to keep going, and I'm feeling a new curiosity and fervor for my faith that I haven't experienced in a while, certainly in the past year. 

And somehow, Facebook sponsored ads knows this ;-) as an ad for these socks showed up in my feed a few weeks ago:

Photo from sockreligious.com

St. Catherine of Siena socks. I mean, did you ever?! I resisted for a few go rounds, but eventually Facebook won this battle, and I clicked on the link to further admire the socks over at their home of Sock Religious. I nearly ordered them right then and there, and then stumbled upon the All Saints Sock Club whereupon you get a little discount for signing up to receive socks featuring a new saint each month. This was too adorable to resist, I absolutely LOVE monthly subscriptions like this, especially when the monthly design is a surprise, so I signed up without hesitation. My socks shipped the next day, and look who I got!

St. Teresa of Avila, and I LOVE HER SO MUCH. I adore these socks, as soon as they're out of the wash, I'm wearing them again. They just make me happy to look at them, and they fit nice and snug to the leg (no slipping down, which I hate!) while still being incredibly comfy. I cannot wait to receive my next pair!

This company is so amazing, following my order, I got a personal thank you email from the owner. And after I ordered some more socks, this time for my mom for Mother's Day based on their suggestions (Mother Teresa of Calcutta, the Visitation and Our Lady of Guadalupe, so sweet, right?! I ended up ordering Mother Teresa and a pair of rosary socks for her) I received another thoughtful thank you note, and the socks shipped within hours! Truly, I am so delighted with Sock Religious.

These definitely make cute gifts for upcoming celebrations (Mother's Day, Confirmation and First Communion, they do have kids' sizes!). If you do decide to get some socks, you can head over now via this link. This is an affiliate referral link, so I do earn a discount back from our friends at Sock Religious if you shop from that landing page. :)

Just a little fun tidbit I wanted to share with you that I discovered this Easter. It's the little things that are really making me smile these days, and we all need as many smiles as we can get right now! What is making you smile this 3rd Week of Easter? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

A beautiful Holy Week, and some unexpected developments in my prayer routine...

Hello all, and HAPPY EASTER! I hope that you had a spectacular Holy Week and Easter Sunday, and that Easter blessings continue to shower your way. For my part, I doubly enjoyed it this year, after missing the liturgies so much last year. I didn't make it to the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Holy Thursday, but I made it to both the Good Friday liturgy, and the Easter vigil. It was *so lovely*, and I felt so blessed and grateful to, (a) be there with my kids, and (b) be a part of something so much larger than myself that is so magnificently rich and beautiful. It really struck me anew this year at the Easter Vigil how much I have to be grateful for, and how much I value my faith. 

And I decided to do something new this year. Instead of giving up/resolving to do something for all of Lent, I decided to try and pray both Morning and Evening Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours for the entirety of Holy Week. I mentioned an idea to my sister and a few mutual good friends that we could perhaps pray them together when we could via video chat. We began on the vigil of Palm Sunday, and though here and there 1-2 of us couldn't make some of the sessions, we were able to pray the Hours together a lot during Holy Week, and on the times we couldn't be together, we prayed them individually. It was so uplifting and cheering, and I looked forward each day to seeing the faces of those who could make it, along with any children who came along for the ride. :)

This all worked out so much better than I ever could have expected. I was so inspired by our commitment to this that 6 days into the Easter octave, I'm still praying the Hours. Mostly by myself because evenings were tough for everyone this week, but I've been praying Morning Prayer with my sister pretty much every morning (we're in the same time zone, definitely makes that easier!), and it has given a lift to my days that I haven't felt since the pandemic started. I've also found myself seeking out books about praying the Hours, and commentaries/reflections on the psalms in the Psalter, because my curiosity has been so whetted. I treated myself to this as an Easter gift, and am LOVING IT:

This is all quite unexpected. Although I've long had a love for the Liturgy of the Hours, I've never found a routine for praying them with regularity and consistency. I've picked up the St. Joseph guide each year and prayed here and there when the mood struck, but it sadly hasn't been a daily thing for me. Now I find myself craving more and more information about this form of prayer, and adding in additional Hours when I can (Daytime and Night Prayer). It's so delightful that I'm just going with it, hoping that this means it will really stick this time. I even have the Supplement to the Proper of Saints on it's way, as well as a special supplement for Dominican saints! 🙌

So my Holy Week and first week of Easter have been even more special than usual. I'll likely continue to blog about the Liturgy of the Hours and how that is going, and generally about spiritual topics this Easter season. I'm still planning out what I'd like to focus on here at the blog for Easter season and summer Ordinary Time. Thoughts on what you'd like to see? How was your Easter?! I'd love to hear from you in the comments!