The Latin Tridentine Mass, now back in the local parish, thanks to Pope Benedict XVI, brings to life the importance of the Feastdays of the Saints. Mancipia Press offers a beautiful calendar each year with current feastdays and all the traditional saints and the newly canonized on their appropriate feast days. Each has deep spiritual meaning in the Catholic Liturgical Year.

The new secularized liturgy with its “Ordinary Days” lacks continuity with the cycle that keeps Our Lord's life alive in our daily life. It cannot compare with the richness of the ancient Liturgical Year, celebrated each day in the Mass of the Tridentine Rite. For instance, instead of Ordinary Time, we number the Sundays of Pentecost. Awaiting the next season, Advent, also keeps us daily aware of the passing events that lead up to Christmas.

Every day at meals in the monastery refectories, the Roman Martyrology is read, giving a vibrant reminder of those beautiful examples of men and women who have joined the Communion of Saints. Their presence in our memory as we go through the year, commemorating their feasts, has a wonderful effect on our spirituality and increase the daily graces needed to be in the world, but not of the world, encouraging us by their example.

But most important is the commemoration of Marian feasts throughout the year. The Queen of Saints and Mother of God, Mary is the influence that brings us together as members of the Mystical Body of Christ, a united family in the Catholic Church. The Liturgical Year gives a pulse to the devotional life of a true Catholic, linking daily actions with the eternal.