Liturgical Lifestyle | Remembering Our Dead

November is the month of the dead.

It's Hallowtide, the beginning of the month we give over to deceased souls, and while October is breathless and busy, November brings a dead-stop, like the drop of a curtain.  After today, All Souls' Day, comes a time of rest and recovery, for sitting in your bones and not doing, before the preparation and expectation of Advent.

I love November, I really do.  All of autumn is like one big, cozy bedtime, and I think that's why I love it.  It's the cosmic equivalent of getting into your jammies and slippers and sipping a mug of herbal tea in front of the fire before climbing under the quilt and turning in for the night.

Let me broken-record (verb) about how the seasons of the Church correspond with the seasons of the western hemisphere (where she was born).  How it's organic and natural and second-nature.  And if we feel a sense of something not-quite-finished, especially when we think of those gone before us, it is because we're not.  Finished, I mean.  Death isn't the end.  We know that as Christians.  But if anything of reality can be gathered from the natural world, it's that this November stillness is only temporary.  There will be work and new life and redemption to come.

So we pray for the dead.  Because, before the Incarnation, we could only hold our breath and hope, rightfully, that Someone would have mercy and not end us at what appeared to be our natural end.  And now our hope is given hands.  With the dying God, we can work because He is pleased to see us do for one another.  So we pray for the people who have died in good faith, and ask that for them the way is made smooth and brief.  Which it then is, because our Father is one who delights in giving gifts.

Please don't forget them.  Don't think it's "the end," even a happy ending.  Because before the fairy tale's happy end, the peasant girl doesn't go in rags to her wedding feast with the king.  She must be prepared.  We will go on knees in the graveyard and paint our faces like death's heads to jar ourselves to remember.

Please remember my loved ones, and yours.  And remember me when I go, too.  We're all the walking dead, which is a good thing.  You have to put the peasant girl to rest in order that the queen might live.

Here is my Hallowtide summary from a few years ago.

Here is St. Gertrude's Prayer.  When prayed it releases a thousand souls from Purgatory into Eternal Glory.

Liturgical Lifestyle // April

So April was a bit of a dud for liturgical living.  {Illness} and self-inflicted stress distracted me from what really matters.

It's also hard to incorporate the liturgical calendar in tangible ways when your heathen four-year-old knows no god but destruction.  I shouldn't joke.  His Mass behavior has been improving, sure and steady, he says his blessing before meals (most of the time), and he knows Jesus and Mary.  That's good enough for me.

Anyway, there was Easter:

And the Easter season continues with Eastertide and Divine Mercy Sunday, the latter of which we failed to observe outside of the ordinary Mass attendance.

 

I'm not sure what direction {the shoppe} is going in right now; it takes a whole rigamarole to upload a new item to Etsy, and so I've tried listing a handful of things on @thefineprintshoppe Instagram account, which you can find the link to in my regular @GreenInkling Instagram profile.  I don't know if such a thing will take, but it would be a heck of a lot easier for me and cut out the middle man to boot.  Well, I mean, except for Paypal, but that's what I have setup for Etsy anyway.

Between stressing brainstorming about that and corralling my Wild Thing and wearing my Papoose in the great, mosquito-ladden Florida outdoors, there was very little that happened in the spirit of the liturgical Easter season.

But when you can't live large, start small.  And when you can't even do it small, try again next month.  Ya'll probably know my favorite liturgical resources by now.  Just in case you don't, let's recap:

{Catholic All Year}  //  All the amazing liturgical celebrations brought to life by a supermom who will make you feel welcome.  I envy anyone who lives in southern California and can attend Kendra's parties. 

{Carrots for Michealmas}  //  Haley and Daniel are converts with a passion for medievalism that led them to the Church.  As some of you may know, I have an MA in Arthurian Literature, so I'm all about that mythical, magical, almost-Pagan approach to Catholicism.  Haley and Daniel's imaginative and literary leanings mesh well with that. 

{Catholic Icing}  //  Free stuff?  I like free stuff!  Good resources and ideas for celebrating liturgically with children. 

{CatholicCulture.org}  //  I used this one A LOT.  On my old computer, I had the internet home page set to the liturgical living landing page, so that every day when I opened up my computer or launched the internet, the liturgical feast and/or season would be right there.  A bit last minute, but they do have monthly and seasonal overviews for those who like to be a little more on top of things.

Is it weird how entertained I am that everything on that list begins with a C (and three things with a C-c-catholic)?

How was your April?  Did you manage any minor feasts or little liturgical celebrations?  What are you favorite resources for Catholic living?