A Catalog of Liturgical Reading

I have an annoying tendency to notice that it's a saint or liturgical feast day several days after the actual day has passed (or at least after 10pm on the actual day, while I'm scrolling through my google reader, realizing that everyone else and their brother managed not only to remember the feast day, but celebrate it with great fanfare). Our family doesn't really "do up" feast days like some Catholic families do, but we do like to read about what's going on in the Church and learn more about our faith.

This last summer, while perusing my friend's Mother of Divine Grace syllabi (Hi Katie!), I stumbled upon the liturgical reading booklists in the back. Have you seen those? They are awesome.  Probably worth the price of the syllabus, even if you don't plan on using anything else in it.

Gratuitous shot of Tulip, because doesn't the sun look lovely on her hair? And I love that smudge of dirt on her bum.

Anyway, I loved how those booklists looked: simple, clean, and organized by the calendar (so you can always tell if an important day is coming up, and if you have suitable reading material to go with it). I thought of how handy it would be to have such a list compiled of what I already have on my bookshelf.

And so I made one.

I gathered up all my liturgical and saint books and catalogued them. It was sort of a giant undertaking, but I was so happy with the results, it was worth it!

Here it is: My Catholic Saint & Liturgical Year Booklist

Now, this list may not be especially helpful to you because you don't likely have the same books on your bookshelf. But you can certainly nab my list and tweak it with your own titles, if you wish.

All the books in black are books that we own. The books in red are those that we either would like to (eventually) purchase or (more likely) request from the library. (Or request our library to purchase. Do you do that? Send purchase requests to your library? I do it all the time, and they've purchased every single thing I've requested. Not all library systems are so free with their patron requests, but it's worth a shot, if you haven't already tried!)

Based on this list, it looks like we have a ton of titles, but we really don't. I've found that a few really good anthologies are really the best books, anyway. Our favorites are Ethel Pochocki's Once Upon a Time Saints, More Once Upon a Time Saints, Around the Year Once Upon a Time Saints, and Amy Welborn's Loyola Kids Book of Saints. If you have those, you have enough to read all year long. Then you can fill in with good picture books here and there, as your budget (or your library's budget) allows.

And another thing- we don't observe every day on the list every year! Yowza- that would be overkill, I think (besides, though I probably look pretty organized on paper, I'm not really that organized in real life- I'd never remember to get to them all). I keep this list in page protectors at the back of my teaching binder. Every week or two, I flip to the list and see what's coming up. Because the list is based on what we already own, it doesn't take a lot of prep to get ready. Once in a while, I add a craft or activity to the day's festivities, but not usually. Most often, all we do is read about the saint of the day (usually while eating chocolate, because chocolate is the Primary Food of Heaven, and all the saints are in Heaven. It works. Trust me. It's in that catechism somewhere, I'm sure of it.), and that seems like enough.

Anyway, I thought I'd share, in case it's helpful to anyone. Happy reading and feasting!

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