Advent hymns can provide a countervailing inner melody, giving voice to the season’s hope and longing.
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Category: Devotions and Sacramentals
Blessings Animals — and Burying Them, Too?
Will there ever be a Christian form of burial for our beloved animals?
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My Two Offices
I still struggle to identify which aspects of this worship schedule is most ascetical for me: the way it pulls me from my real office or the way my sinfulness is exposed as the Office prays me.
Read moreWreath of Christ
The small circlet of beads, worn on the wrist or carried in a pocket, becomes a memento of the sacred mysteries of life which he or she has considered in a personal and prayerful way.
Read morePilgrimage Liturgies and Popular Piety
Pilgrimage is a vital expression of popular piety. The premier French institute of higher study of liturgy just held a conference exploring this phenomenon of pilgrimage – as experience, as theology, as liturgy. Here is a report of what they discussed.
Read moreLiturgy Lines: “Liturgy – Praying Together”
Like love and marriage in the old musical, you can’t have one without the other.
Read moreLiturgy Lines: “The Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy Draws to a Close”
What might parishes do around this time to mark the end of the Year of Jubilee?
Read moreHoly Doors of Mercy, II
I wondered what experiences others were having with the opened Holy Doors.
Read moreHoly Doors of Mercy
I wonder what experiences people are having with the opened Holy Doors during this extraordinary Jubilee Year? The website of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops describes these doors as “one of the central components of the Jubilee of Mercy.”
Read moreViewpoint: The Holy Year, Part One: The Spiritual Works of Mercy
I propose that every Catholic set some time aside and draw up a list of commitments to be carried out during the Holy Year based of the spiritual and corporal works of mercy.
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