Saturday, December 28, 2024 //
Happy Saturday, friend! We are so excited to share with you what's coming up this week as we all prepare our hearts by praying with readings for Sunday, the day of rest with our Lord.
Live Liturgically // This Week’s Feast Days
Saturday, December 28 (today!) // Feast of the Holy Innocents, martyrs
Sunday, December 29 // Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
Monday, December 30 // Sixth Day within the Octave of the Nativity of the Lord
Tuesday, December 31 // Seventh Day within the Octave of the Nativity of the Lord
Wednesday, January 1, 2025 // SOLEMNITY OF MARY, THE HOLY MOTHER OF GOD and Octave of the Nativity of the Lord (Holy Day of Obligation!)
Thursday, January 2 // Memorial of Saints Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzen, Bishops and Doctors of the Church
Friday, January 3 // Optional Memorial of the Most Holy Name of Jesus
Letter from the Editor //
Dear Sister,
The Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—which falls on this Sunday—is an invitation for us to join them in their home. We will pray at Mass, “Blessed are they who dwell in your house, O Lord” (Psalm 84:5a). In their home we can learn how to live as children of God, as Saint John tells us we are in the Second Reading—how to “love one another just as he commanded us” so that we will “be like him” and “see him as he is” (1 John 3:2, 23). We can invite them into our own homes to transform our families to imitate them.
The First Reading tells us about the fulfillment of the Lord’s promise to Hannah, a woman who longed for a child (see 1 Samuel 1:20). She saw that her son, Samuel, was a gift from God and in gratitude she offered her child back to Him. She shows us that all who are given to our care through biological or spiritual motherhood first of all belong to God. We see this same realization in the Gospel account of Mary and Joseph losing the child Jesus on their way home from Jerusalem. There is that moment of offering, when Mary realizes that her Son was only given to her to do His Father’s work, to be in His house (see Luke 2:49). All of our children are meant to dwell in the home of the Lord forever. Let us look to the Holy Family and their hidden years in Nazareth as a guide to how to prepare ourselves for Heaven.
I am praying for you this week, dear sister.
In Christ’s Love,
Susanna
Read the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph (Year C option below):
First Reading // 1 Samuel 1:20-22, 24-28
Responsorial Psalm // Psalm 84:2-3, 5-6, 9-10
Second Reading // 1 John 3:1-2, 21-24
Gospel // Luke 2:41-52
Prayer Practice // Entrust your family to the Holy Family at Mass tomorrow. Share your heart with Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
Susanna Spencer holds a master's in Theology from the Franciscan University of Steubenville and is the Devotions Editor for Blessed is She. She is a freelance writer and editor and a teacher-in-training living with her philosopher husband and four kids in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She loves reading theology, attending beautiful liturgies, cooking delicious food, and casually following baseball. She is the author of all of the Blessed is She Gospel Meditation Studies. She was narrator for Found: Advent With the Good Shepherd and Rescued: Lent With the Lamb of God and a contributing author and editor for our children’s devotional prayer book, Rise Up. She is the Theological Editor of the Blessed Conversations Studies. Find out more about her here.
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