And we all laughed about how ridiculous it was to suggest that Southern Californians have any, like, magical superstitions associated with Santa Ana* winds. I was born and raised here and everyone just thinks they’re weird hot winds. I said, “Yeah, the thing that happens because of the Santa Ana winds is wildfires. I hope she likes wildfires.”

The Evacuation

A couple hours later, just after dinner, I went upstairs to check on the sick-in-bed husband and spotted fast-moving flames on the San Gabriel Mountains out our bedroom window. About a half an hour after that, he and I and twelve kids were piling into four cars with overnight bags and a few irreplaceable possessions, fleeing the approaching flames as flashing fire trucks raced past us towards them.

Gus had come to me from our home chapel with our first class relics of Saint Junipero Serra and Saint María de las Maravillas and our borrowed Saint Gerard. I asked him, “Hmm, should we leave them here to look after the house while we’re gone?” Gus replied, “Mom. You said to get the irreplaceable things.” I agreed.

The kids grabbed a few old photos, things that belonged to their late father, and their school backpacks. We had time to pack medications and laptops and important paperwork, but that was it. I stood in the dining room and looked at all the beautiful engraved silver serving pieces and antique cut glass I inherited from my grandmothers and thanked God in that moment for the gift of detachment. Those things fill me with memories of loved ones every time I use them, but in that moment they would have been an encumbrance, and I knew I would be okay if we lost them. 

We ran out without doing the dinner dishes.

If you want the long version, God bless ya, keep on reading, it’s all there. Writers gonna write, ya know?

But the short version is that our historic 1920 Altadena home has survived with minimal damage to the exterior, an unburned but very sooty, smoky interior (wait until you get to the Instant Pot part), and significant damage to the property and outbuildings. Our home is accessible as of yesterday, but still uninhabitable and will be without water, power, and gas for weeks. Our neighborhood and town are destroyed, and many families in our Catholic community have lost everything.

In our small school (seven miles away and not in the path of the fire), with just three hundred students in grades 1-12, seven families have lost their homes and all their possessions and about that same number were displaced by the fires and are still unable to live in their homes.  

Among those families are the Halpins, who stood in the ashes of their house and sang the Regina Caeli. My friends Sarah and Fatima, both widowed mothers of four children. Another friend, a single mother of six, lost the home they were renting and all their possessions. The Bulgarini family lost their home and access to their restaurant, a true jewel of a place, and the family’s only source of income. One of the homes on our block belonged to another family at the school. Nothing remains of it but a few flower pots and the burned out shell of their Dodge Charger. We have friends who lost their home in the Eaton Fire, after losing everything in a house fire two years ago. Read more about the families here.

There were so many offers of help, but in many cases it was overwhelming to the families who most needed assistance, and often came too soon to be useful. Some families still don’t have long-term temporary housing, and so weren’t able to take donations when they were available.

Beauty from Ashes (Isaiah 61:3)

My friend and Fiat Conference co-founder Micaela, along with the CAY and Fiat teams wanted to come up with a way to help our community with prayer, direct financial assistance, and connect affected families with families who want to help. Beauty from Ashes: a Los Angeles Wildfire Relief Effort by Catholic All Year is our four pronged response.

1. PRAY: We are grateful to be teaming with Annie at PrayMoreNovenas and Kristin at Novena Cards in a beautiful novena, to be prayed from January 24 to February 2, the feast of Candlemas, for those affected by this crisis. We are asking for the intercession of Our Lady of Champion and Saint Florian. It begins NOW! Sign up to get daily email reminders here. Learn more about Our Lady of Champion here, an American apparition of Mary in Champion, WI in 1859, whose intercession saved her shrine and the people in it from the most devastating wildfire in American history: The Great Peshtigo Fire.
2. DONATE: Get to know some of the Catholic families affected by the fire here, and consider making a donation to help them rebuild their lives.
3. CONNECT: Do you have housing, transportation, a job opportunity, or special products or skills you can offer to affected families? Could your school, parish, or business adopt a family to help with their needs? Fill out this form and our team will work to connect offers of help with families who need them.
4. SHOP: C’mon. You know you want to. Our Catholic All Year family of artists, including Tricia (Providential Co.) and Jamie (Marigold Catholic Goods), have teamed up on a darling array of apparel and home goods. 100% of the profits will be donated to affected families. See the whole collection here, featuring Our Lady of Champion, Saint Florian, and the California poppy, symbol of hope and resilience!

Have you signed up for the Novena? Yes? Okay, then, back to the story.

We grabbed some stuff and evacuated.

In San Diego

Fortunately, we had a place to go. My parents live a couple hours south in San Diego, and when we showed up at 10 pm, they had beds and air mattresses ready for ten of us. (Jack and Bobby decided to stay up at their apartment near USC, an area of LA not threatened by the fires.)

We spent Wednesday feeling like we were existing in two timelines at once. We were in sunny San Diego, sitting by the pool in my parents’ yard. We were also getting a near constant stream of texts from friends who had evacuated and friends still in LA, full of information and rumors about whose homes had burned, and texts from far-flung friends and loved ones asking how we and our home were doing. We could tell them that we were together and in good spirits, but we had no way of knowing whether our home was burning.

The thing is, California has always had wildfires. Other places have blizzards and thunderstorms and hurricanes and tornadoes. We have earthquakes and wildfires. The former really isn’t worth worrying about. Everyone in LA the day after an earthquake: “Hey, did you guys feel that earthquake?” The big urban ones seem to happen about every hundred years, and the last one was 1994, so . . . <shrug>. 

Wildfires happen often. They come with signs and warnings so it’s easier to worry about them, but also we’re pretty used to it. There’s a fire season. We get “fire weather” alerts on our phones. Each year, we’ll usually know a family who has had to evacuate. During the Thomas Fire, which burned 1067 structures in 2017, we took in a group of displaced TAC students. Our family was under an evacuation warning once before, in the 2020 Bobcat fire which burned 87 homes. But we didn’t have to leave. The firefighters got it under control.

So that’s what we expect. And that’s what was so different about the Palisades and Eaton Fires: Giant. Out of control. Blazing through neighborhoods. Over 17,000 structures lost. That’s not how this is supposed to go.

Finally, at 11:15 am, the producer of my TV show (and other, more important things as well) who is also a friend and neighbor, braved the winds and embers to send us a quick proof of life video, showing that the house had survived the night. But clearly the fire had raged right up to the brick wall in front of our property and it wasn’t out yet.

We went to In-N-Out for lunch . . .

and met three UCSD students who had just found out that their homes and church had burned down, all just blocks from our home. 

An hour after the first, we received a second video. Another friend/neighbor jumped the wall and recorded a speed tour of the exterior of the house and the property. It was WILD.**

Good news: The house and garage were still standing and appeared to have sustained exterior damage to the walls and windows of the south side only. Bad news: The house behind the neighbor to the south of us was still entirely engulfed in flames. Bad news: Our backyard fence and outbuildings had burned. Bad news: Of the twelve houses on our block, only three were still standing. Bad news: There was no running water, the hoses were dry, and there were no firefighters fighting fires on our block. 

When Jack (22) and Bobby (19) saw the video, they dodged the evacuation barricades to get back to the house to cut branches that were near the house. Friends joined them to spend the afternoon dumping buckets of water from our pool on the burning house adjacent to ours. They stood in the ashes of one of the burned homes behind us, and watched the house across the street from it ignite. A fire truck was there and the firemen watched it too. But there was no water, and they got back in their truck and drove away.

Getting Back Home

On Thursday morning, Gus (17) and the husband headed back up to LA. Gus was scheduled to head out of town. They stopped at the house to survey the damage. The fire next door was out except for a little “eternal flame” at the gas valve. The husband shut the gas valve off there and at other houses on our block. Our cats and all the chickens were doing well. Gus fed and watered them. The plan was for me to get them once we had stable housing.

(Our Guardian Angel Prayer Cling is here.)

I was still with the rest of the kids in San Diego, and we realized that this was not going to be resolved quickly. I was contacted by our insurance adjuster. I told him we didn’t want to stay in San Diego, separated. The husband needed to work. The older kids’ school was set to open again on Monday. He asked me how many hotel rooms we’d want. And, I was like, oooh, THAT is not going to be great for us. Fortunately, I had found the last family-sized Airbnb on the 210 freeway corridor, and they were able to approve that for us for a month, it will likely be more. The remaining eight kids and I headed back up to LA on Friday.

Our first stop was going to be the house, but by Friday the National Guard had arrived in Altadena. To keep looters (and home-owners) at bay, they were stationed at every single intersection, complete with weapons and tactical vehicles. The first couple days after the fire started, the main roads were all blocked, but it was possible to get in by back ways. That was no longer possible. We gave up and went to get settled at the Airbnb.

Early Saturday morning, the husband and I went back to Altadena. We tried to find an opening to drive in, tried to talk our way in at a dozen check points, tried to find a place we could sneak past on foot and walk the mile and a half, planning to hike the animals out in packs, but nothing doin’. Every single intersection was manned. It was really something. I am genuinely grateful that they were keeping looters out (and not sure how we’ll defend the house now that they’re gone), but wow, there were so many people who couldn’t get to their pets and medicine and who didn’t even know whether their home made it.

Then I called an old homeschool group friend, whose husband is employed in a city job. I woke her up at 8am on a Saturday, and she said give me five minutes, I’ll get in touch with him and call you back.

He’d been working twenty-four-hours-on-eight-hours-off for three days, but she got ahold of him and said he’d be in touch within an hour or two. The husband and I ran a couple errands and then he called and we met up. Our friend only had one seat in his city van, and there was some concern that they’d be checking IDs, but I went with him and we were waved right through. It was surreal driving up our long street, past all the businesses we have used for a decade. It really looks more like a bombing zone. Some places are fine, some are just GONE. Since the fire department ran out of water and left, there really aren’t any partially consumed buildings. They’re either pretty much intact, or a heap of smoldering rubble.

We had to be quick, because there were lots of other official vehicles around, and I didn’t want to make trouble. But we were able to put the hens four-each into lidded plastic storage tubs and the cats into their carriers. I grabbed the animal food and feeders and put the lid on the dirty Instant Pot still partially full of rice and picked that up, because it was right there, and a few toys and shoes from the yard, but that was it. 

Then we came back to the rental, and got the animals settled. Our backyard at this place is about the size of the chicken coop at home, so the chickens have the run of it. We arranged stuff in the closets and kitchen. The husband opened the Instant Pot to clean it, and a little puff of smoke came wafting out. It hadn’t seemed all that smoky in the house, compared to outside, but, turns out, it was pretty smoky in the house. 

Then we went to our first charity distribution place. That was hectic but really amazing. We got toiletries, snacks, books and a few toys, and some clothes. May God bless the people who rallied so quickly to provide basic necessities to reeling families. We still needed socks and underwear and school uniforms and alarm clocks and a bunch of random stuff I hadn’t even thought of yet, but we were really grateful to be doing it all together, and in a wonderful supportive community.

I know this has not been the experience of all affected families, but I really can say that my kids have seemed entirely unfazed throughout. Maybe they’ve just become accustomed to a certain level of upheaval? I have to say, I was not expecting to add “wildfire refugee” to the squares I’ve already got on my internet sympathy bingo card, but there you have it. God’s will, not mine. I’d like to think that the resilience that they learned from Jim, and the eternal outlook of our Catholic faith, has allowed them to find joy in choosing what possessions to take from the house, in an unexpected visit to Nana and Grandad’s house, in picking rooms in the rental house, in finding something cute in the enormous piles of donated clothing at the Santa Anita race track. We got this.

One tries one’s best not to be attached to things. But I do have a great appreciation for our 1920 built home, and for its beauty and functionality, its lovingly hand-painted home chapel, and that, ten years after we moved in and started fixing it up, it still doesn’t have door knobs on all the doors. It’s a work in progress. I am so so grateful that we will have it to go back to. When everyone I run into tells me how happy they are for me and my first reaction is, ummm . . . are you?, it is a good reminder of what we still have, although life otherwise feels rather upside down.

Praise God, our interactions with our insurance company have, so far, been positive. They were willing to be flexible on housing and approve an option that would save them money and be better for us. As soon as the checkpoints began allowing owners with ID to enter, we met with our insurance adjuster at the house. He came with a team of six, including an industrial hygienist who was taking air samples from all the rooms and the HVAC system, a guy who evaluated what it would take to clean the house and its sooty window sills and smoke-infused clothing and furniture, and multiple VERY disgusting refrigerators which were chock-full of food and hadn’t had power for weeks. For the exterior of the house, two adjusters went around with a contractor and us to determine what the burned up outbuildings and property had been, and what it would cost to replace or rebuild them.

Our tennis court has hosted years of Fiat Conferences and high school dances and senior dinners and scooter races and games of H-O-R-S-E and funeral and wedding receptions. It angered a subsection of internet commenters when the fire video of our property went viral (“Oh no, not the tennis court!”). But, hey, you can’t please everyone. It has, unfortunately, suffered quite a bit of damage to the surface and the retaining wall alongside it at the property line.

The insurance policy we have is split into multiple sections, each with its own coverage and payout limits. For better and worse, the damage to the property was concentrated on the section with the least coverage: exterior structures. The little pool house structures (“cabanas”) burned, as did the wooden fence around the whole property, the pool pump and irrigation equipment, the wooden deck and stairs to the tennis court, the tennis court wall and surface, and all of that counts as exterior structures. So we have significantly less coverage than the amount that the adjuster would have approved for the damage. And that’s a bummer. But we do have some coverage and we’ll be able to make repairs slow-and-steady, as we always have.

The damage to the house and to our possessions and the cleaning required to make the home habitable again should be covered in full.

Amid the visits to donation centers for wardrobe and home and hygiene items, phone calls to friends and the insurance company, and trying to get kids to and from school and sporting events as if life wasn’t one big question mark, we started taking stock of the devastation around us. Our neighborhood is rubble, as far behind us as we can see. Eighty percent of our town has been destroyed. The post office, the grocery store, our two favorite pizza places, our favorite coffee shop, the brunch place, the hardware store, the office of the hundred-year-old company that had installed our (now burned up) fence two years ago, are ALL gone. It was a quirky, historic town with unique homes and unique charm. It’s a town that embraced its identity as “Unincorporated LA County.” Mom and pop stores, vintage cars, crowing roosters, and guys on horseback were part of our every day.

It’s hard to imagine what it will be like when we can go back. Will anyone else be there? Will they rebuild? Will a developer come in and build a bunch of cookie cutter Santa Clarita tract homes? Will the local businesses survive?

But then I remember about waiting to worry, and TODAY, we are okay. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Thank you for your prayers!

AMDG,

Kendra

*Note for Catholic nerds like me who wonder why Saint Anne is getting dragged into this wind situation: The name Santa Ana winds comes from the canyon, river, and town of Santa Ana in Orange County. All are so named because the Portolá expedition entered the river valley on Saint Anne’s feast day in 1769. Newspaper references to the name Santa Ana winds appear as far back as the 1870s and 1880s.

** The video has about 3 million views on social media and thousands of comments. Those went, in chronological order:

1. Oh no, Kendra, we are praying for you!
2. That statue of Mary saved your house!
3. That’s what you get for living in a blue state.
4. That’s what you get for having a tennis court.
5. Gaza stuff.

Intermittently, people opined that if they were us, they’d have had a pool fire pump. 

Here is our pool fire pump. It lived in the cabana. The cabana burned up.

The post We Survived The California Wildfires appeared first on Catholic All Year.

Dear Family and Friends,

Season’s greetings, and—yes, you’re not wrong—things are looking a bit different this Christmas! For those of you who have yet to hear the good news, we are now Tierney + Norton around here. Kendra and John Norton were married this summer and are counting their blessings (and their kids). They were introduced by mutual friends at a Halloween party in 2023, started dating in February 2024, got engaged in April, and the wedding was in July (in a heat wave). Kendra baked the cake. John brought the swamp coolers. We are so grateful for God’s goodness in bringing our families together.

John’s four kids were already friendly with the older Tierney kids, as they all attended St. Monica Academy. Fun fact: In 2015, a few months after making the transition from homeschooler to “real-school” eighth-grader, Jack came home with a black eye. Kendra was able to extract from him that the shiner was the result of a projectile carrot at lunchtime but he was unwilling to turn stool pigeon on the carrot flinger. UNTIL NOW. Shortly before the wedding, the culprit was revealed to have been his now-stepsister Maeve. No one can remember why she threw it, but we all agree he very likely deserved it.

Jack (22) and Bobby (19) have been roommates at USC for a couple years, and will keep it up though Jack is, as of December, a graduate with a degree in Aerospace Engineering. He plans to accept a full-time offer from Fenix Space and get to work shooting stuff into space. His newest obsession is Brazilian no gi jiu jitsu, or, as the rest of us call it: cuddle fighting. Bobby is working on game design and animation at the USC film school and reading obscure Tolkien and listening to obscure vinyl in his spare time. He went on a two-week pilgrimage to Poland over the summer and sent his mom one text: a photo of the lamb butter mold used by Pope JPII’s family when he was a child. So, he knows his audience.

Betty (20), Anita (15), and Mom embarked on a ten-day “hen do” and pilgrimage to England the week before the wedding, like ya do. The visits to Catholic holy sites happened to coincide with Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour stop at Wembley, so that was number two of an eventual four Eras concerts for Betty (also Los Angeles, Indianapolis, and Toronto). She will continue her nursing studies at St. Xavier University while living with Jim’s parents in Chicago. She helps them around the house, they keep her on schedule, and Gramma is teaching her how to cook. Anita wowed as the lead in the school musical, South Pacific, and is playing volleyball and basketball. A sophomore this year, she’s searching for a university with a world domination major.

Gus (17) is a senior at St. Monica Academy. He bought a fixer-upper Mustang convertible last summer and has been working on getting it running ever since, both with the help of Grandad. He was in the chorus in South Pacific, Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet, plays volleyball and basketball and won the school-wide Poetry Out Loud competition. He was accepted to Benedictine College in Atchison, KS where Maeve (21) and Livia (20) are studying graphic design and nursing, respectively. Maeve spends her free time answering customer service emails for Catholic All Year. Gus is waiting to hear back from Embry‑Riddle Aeronautical University, and plans to follow in Grandad’s footsteps and become an airline pilot.

George (7) has taken over for Frankie (13) as the unofficial mascot of Boy Scout Troop 140, and Frankie is aiming for Patrol Leader. Frankie talked John into going along on the campouts, just like he used to do back when Jack and Liam (24) were scouts.

When not sidelined with a fractured wrist, Frankie was on the flag football and basketball teams and just might break the all-time St. Monica record for red slips. He is directing a series of action shorts in which George stars as the nefarious Gerb Granson, sweet potato and clownfish thief.

Lulu (11) spent two years running forced-labor lemonade stands and confiscating birthday money from her siblings to put into a backyard hot tub fund. When she announced to Grandad that she had saved up $283, he told her he was pretty sure that’s exactly what hot tubs cost and brought one home. She lets us use it.

Midge (9) is head girl of our homeschool again and working hard to keep fellow students George and Barbara (5) in line. She has found a penpal in her eldest stepsister Mairead (26)—rhymes with parade—who lives in Nashville and is a professional baker. Midge’s favorite homeschool event of the year was the St. Nicholas Advent Market, where she sold out of her selection of liturgical-themed crafts. Barbara’s appendectomy was the year’s (second) biggest surprise so far, and now, just like her Madeline doll, “on her stomach is a scar”. While hospitalized, she drew a picture of a unicorn on one side of a paper and of “the inside of the unicorn” on the other side, prompting her to announce that she had “a GREAT idea for when I’m a grownup.” New life plan: start a museum of the insides of animals.

John and Kendra did a twenty-one mile walk to the Shrine of Our Lady of Champion in WI to celebrate their engagement, and spent their honeymoon in Santa Barbara. We got thirteen of the fourteen kids on a Disneyland trip, and seven of them on an RV trip to the Grand Canyon, then picked up two more plus grandparents at a campsite for Thanksgiving weekend. For those of you keeping track of our annual Thanksgiving murder mysteries, this year Nana did it. We’re looking forward to our biggest ever family Christmas dinner! Keep us in your prayers; you’ll be in ours.

May your Christmas be joyful and your 2025 be filled with wonder.

With love, from the Tierneys & Nortons

The post Merry Christmas from the Tierneys & Nortons appeared first on Catholic All Year.

Here’s the text of the talk!

Okay, Fiat 2024, you guys. Thank you so much for being here for the conference today. It’s been my great pleasure to host this event at my home for the last ten years. (This is the ninth one, but we had to skip one year. I can’t remember why . . . ) I love the talks. I love the sacraments. I love the artisan fair. I love the food. I love that it makes internet friends into IRL friends. I really love that it gives me a deadline for getting home improvement projects finished and a reason to get the house and yard and various random outbuildings cleaned up.

My kids will tell you how much I love this. Are any of my kids around? Let’s ask them. Did I prep you for this question? What’s my favorite week of the year? That’s right: dumpster week. All last week there was a giant red 40-yard dumpster in our driveway. Like, the big construction one. It’s crazy how things accumulate, right? Especially in trying times. When you’re in survival mode, cleaning out the garage is probably not going to happen.

But this year, my life, while not . . . uncomplicated, is feeling stable for the first time in a long time. So we got the BIG dumpster. And John and I et al. filled that baby up together.

 I’ll bet you guys want to talk about that. And we will, we will, but in the context of some bigger concepts too. 

I know some of you have been following our family saga for over . . . twelve years now. And praying for us for a lot of that time. So, I think you’ve earned the right to feel a little nosy. I’ll allow it.

So, yes, I am married. To John Norton. Tomorrow will be three months that we’ve been married and eight months that we’ve been together. We’re going to talk about that today. About how it happened at all. I had a running joke with my friends over the past few years about how I was “unmarriageable.” But, as it turns out, all things are possible with God. Shocking, right? I’m going to talk about how I determined that I still had a vocation to marriage, or, rather, that I had ANOTHER vocation to marriage, and how I used prayer and the sacraments, a radical trust in divine providence, and a not-all-that-well-known devotion called holy enslavement to discern that marriage to John was God’s will for us and our children. That’s right, holy enslavement. You’re intrigued. And troubled. I know. Stay with me.

But FIRST, for those of you who might be new around here, we’ll start with a little recap of how we got here, and we’ll do a quick review of my talks here the two previous years, because this has turned into a trilogy of sorts.

The hinge, as it were, of all of this is that in the summer of 2022, at the age of 46, I became a widow and the single mother of ten children. 

But let’s start a bit further back. I met my late husband Jim at an informational meeting for young adult volunteers for my high school youth group. I was 23. He was 26. We got married a little less than a year after meeting, and when we went out to dinner for our first anniversary, we brought a baby with us. In February of 2007, six and a half years after we were married, Jim was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma. I found out I was expecting baby number four two days later. Jim had medications and surgeries and radiation treatments. Baby Gus was born in November. The three of us visited the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in France that spring. After his course of treatments and our pilgrimage, Jim spent ten years in remission. We had five more children in those ten years. We were happy. Jim had a job he cared about. I homeschooled and started Catholic All Year. We bought our fixer-upper dream house and settled into life in a community we loved.

In 2018, during a routine follow up scan, it was discovered that Jim’s cancer was back, or—more likely—had never really been gone. 

He started a new treatment plan. The melanoma tumors spread to his lungs and, eventually, his brain. Our youngest daughter, Barbara, was born in 2019. When she was two months old, Jim started having occasional grand mal seizures. Over the next two and a half years, Jim continued to be—as he always had been—a conscientious professional, a dedicated father, a devoted husband, a good friend, and a man of great personal faith.

He died at our home on July 9, 2022 at the age of 49, surrounded by family and friends, having received last rites and viaticum. It was the kind of “happy death” that Catholics pray to Saint Joseph that they might get to have.

My children and I had the consolation of strong support from our family and our community, material stability, and—most importantly—each other.  

But I had to admit that my life was all of a sudden decidedly NOT what I would have wished it was; it wasn’t what I imagined it would be. My husband was a good man. Our marriage felt easy, despite the challenges we faced. And then it was gone. We thought we would grow old together, but instead I was a single mother. Losing a husband is more than losing a person. It’s also losing an imagined future, and having to face decisions and hardships and circumstances that my marriage would have shielded me from.

I was a person trying to figure out a new and different life. A life that did not look the way I expected it would. But, I knew that it WAS still an authentically Catholic life. It WAS still my faith that was the animating principle of my existence. I knew, I know, that while few people will have gone through exactly the same hardships I’ve faced, we ALL suffer, we all face times of crisis. And that means we all face that decision point: will this crisis bring me closer to God, or will it make me turn away from him? As I began to reflect on it, as I began to talk with friends who had also experienced hardship and sorrow, three aspects of that process kept coming to mind, of living through different stages of crisis, and learning to cope with ever changing realities.

I talked about two of those in my Fiat talk in 2022, in my “VSW” or “Very Sad Widow” talk. That talk was about what had helped me cope as I lived for sixteen years with the challenges and uncertainties of Jim’s illness. How I was inspired, 1. To wait to worry, to recognize that even though I had this thing looming over me, on THAT PARTICULAR DAY, I was okay, we were okay, and, 2. To rely on intercessory prayer in a deep way, especially when it was hard to pray for myself, to allow me to keep from falling into despair. Those two strategies worked very well for me as I navigated the world as a person facing potential tragedy. It was really important for me NOT to live life trying to anticipate all the bad things that might happen. After all, we aren’t given the graces to bear challenges we haven’t been given.

The third coping strategy is a deep reliance on prayer and the sacraments, which I spoke about in my talk last year, but I’d like to add a related topic this year. This year, I’d like to add the concept of radical acceptance of God’s will in one’s life. 

As hard as it was at first to hear and recognize, losing my husband was God’s will for me. Throughout Jim’s illness, when people would ask how they could pray for me, I would ask them to pray that I would have “radical acceptance of God’s will for my life.” It was my prayer for sixteen years. Of course, the quiet part of that was that I hoped that the will of God that I would be radically accepting was aligned with what *I* wanted. Now, I do believe those prayers were effective. I believe that praying that way helped keep my heart open in a way that it might not have been otherwise. But even all those prayers didn’t stop me from rebelling if someone would attempt to comfort me by saying that Jim’s death was God’s will.

In fact, here’s an example of the perils of Catholic influencing by living people like myself: I did a series of videos for Ascension Presents about a year after Jim died, and in one of them I talk about just this concept. I say that there is death in the world and suffering, but that all that is just a side effect of the fall, that God hadn’t wanted us to suffer, that wasn’t the original plan. That God doesn’t WILL our suffering, but that he allows it, because of free will and whatnot. And all of that is somewhat true, and it was comforting to me at that time. So if you’re in the trenches, feel free to blame Adam and Eve if you want, but eventually, I came to see it differently.

For Christmas last year our fabulous emcee and my Fiat partner in crime and best friend Micaela gave me a tiny book with an intriguing title. It’s called Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence: The Secret of Peace and Happiness. You guys, reading this book made me SO MAD. It did not, upon my first reading, seem like it could possibly live up to the claims of its name. Certainly not the subtitle anyway. The first time through, it did not make me feel peace and happiness. It mostly made me feel triggered.

The authors are a sixteenth-century priest and a seventeenth-century saint and they make a compelling case based on Scripture that everything that happens in our lives, good or bad, is specifically willed by God for our own good, and will sanctify us if we will let it. In the case of the bad, we are to see every circumstance—from inclement weather to illness to persecution to crimes committed against us—as exactly what God wishes us to be experiencing in that moment. He does not will the sins committed by us or by others, but He does will the consequences of those actions in our lives in order that we would benefit from them in eternity.

It was, as Christians before me have grumbled, a “hard saying.”

But then I started thinking. My track coach at USC, did he will my suffering? He absolutely did will it. It wasn’t some accidental byproduct. He willed my suffering and he orchestrated it, and it was specifically to get the best I was capable of out of me.

I came to see the idea that my suffering could be the active will of God as . . . certainly possible, and not unreasonable, and fitting to the perfections of God, and supported by Scripture. That vision of God that I thought I had wanted, of him holding me in his arms and weeping with me, because isn’t life so unfair, and darn that free will that caused the fall and introduced death and disease and decay into the world, and here was God just as powerless as I to stop it. That was what I thought I wanted, but with time, I came to see that it didn’t fit at all with what I actually believe about God.

I believe in a God of miracles. I believe in a God who intervenes in big human events and little private moments. I believe in a God who is all-powerful. I believe in a God who loves like a father and disciplines like a father. Am I to see myself as above Saint Paul who suffered imprisonments, and beatings, and MULTIPLE SHIPWRECKS? Am I above Jesus, who tells Peter to put away his sword and not try to prevent the suffering that is to come?

That was just the philosophical piece, though. Even if I could resign myself to this new way of seeing, how could it be anything other than a hopeless drudgery in practice?

But, as I began to try to experience the circumstances of not just the loss of my husband, but all the little events of my day as willed by God and for my own good, I was shocked at how . . . liberating it was. All of a sudden, everything felt different: the carefully sorted craft supplies that my four-year-old inexplicably decided to dump into one giant pile, the night on which three different children barfed all over three different rooms, a person who had misled and mistreated me, grief and loss, last minute changes to my careful plans—I could experience it all not as chaos and failure, but as what God wanted for me in that moment. 

I think it might be the secret of peace and happiness, after all.

We have to remember that there must be a caveat attached to every prayer, spoken or unspoken, and that is, “Lord, if it is your will . . . dot dot dot.” Any time we ask God for something that we think we want we must remember that we only want it if God wants it. We must remember that God is not bound by our prayers. The goal of prayer isn’t to change God, the goal of prayer is to change US.  

And for me, it really did. The challenges I faced as a widow and a single mother were the most difficult of my life. I really had NOWHERE to turn but to God. I threw myself into prayer. I had always meant to say a daily rosary. I had always recommended it. But it was widowhood and heartbreak that made me actually commit myself to it. I became a daily Mass-goer again, after years of that not being possible. I started making daily visits to the Blessed Sacrament, not to sit in quiet peaceful reflection, no. To tell God: I don’t like this. Fix it.

Don’t worry, you guys. The “meet cute” is coming. The romance is on its way. But first we’re going to talk about the final piece of the spiritual outlook that I believe prepared me to be open to God’s will and able to do my best to discern it when it came. Aaannnnndddd . . . you guys know I like the weird Catholic stuff, right? Well, get ready to get a little bit uncomfortable, because now we’re going to talk about holy enslavement.

The roots of this devotion in me were planted a long time ago, at the very beginning of our liturgical living in the home journey, and, in fact, THROUGH our family’s favorite liturgical living in the home tradition. And I’ll bet you guys wouldn’t be able to guess what it is. Of all the crazy practices we do throughout the year, including the devil piñata we hit with swords last weekend for Michaelmas, and eating spaghetti with our hands on the feast of Saint Joseph, and making boeuf gras sundaes out of all the treats in the house for Fat Tuesday . . . my kids will pretty consistently tell you that their favorite tradition of the year is the novena we do over the nine days before Christmas.

It uses prayers and call and response from the liturgy of the hours, plus readings from the Old and New Testament that trace salvation history and are fulfilled in one another. Except, it seemed, for the readings of December 19th. 

Imagine, if you will, couches and various overflow seating filled with Tierney youngsters and invited friends and neighborhood guests and for MANY years, on that date, someone would be tasked with reading the following, from the book of Deuteronomy:

When you release a male from your service, as a free person, you shall not send him away empty-handed, but shall weigh him down with gifts from your flock and threshing floor and wine press; as the Lord, your God, has blessed you, so you shall give to him. For remember that you too were slaves in the land of Egypt, and the Lord, your God, redeemed you. That is why I am giving you this command today. But if he says to you, “I do not wish to leave you,” because he loves you and your household, since he is well off with you, you shall take an awl and put it through his ear into the door, and he shall be your slave forever. Your female slave, also, you shall treat in the same way. 

Merry Christmas! Am I right? The kids would be like, “Mommy? What’s an awl?”

The novena was originally compiled by an Italian priest in 1721, but I found it around 2008 on a website that was sharing the content of a 1982 book that was in turn quoting from a 1955 book. Somewhere in that game of telephone one of the readings was misnumbered. As I was editing the Catholic All Year Prayer Companion and noting how well all the daily readings went together, all except THAT ONE, it occurred to me that, hey there might be a mistake, and I discovered that, while Deuteronomy 15:13-20 made everyone uncomfortable, Deuteronomy 18:15-22 contains the Old Testament quote that is referenced in the New Testament reading for the day, so I went ahead and switched to that.

But, obviously, that other reading stayed with me . . . and all of us, forever, I assume. Later, I came across the concept of voluntary slavery—or holy enslavement—again, in the writings of Saint Louis de Montfort. It wasn’t until I was living as a widow and a single mother that the devotion really made sense to me. 

The slavery to which the Old Testament reading is referring is, obviously, different from the race-based chattel slavery of the Americas with which we are all unfortunately familiar. In other versions, it’s translated as “bondsman,” which is probably more accurate. It’s my understanding that these slaves in the ancient world would be sold to someone for a period of time, sold either by themselves or their families or as spoils of war. They would then regain their freedom at the end of the appointed time.

What would have induced a person who had earned her freedom to choose to get an awl through the ear and stay enslaved? It could only be that she had become part of the household, or even part of the family. That she was cared for and treated with respect, and that she trusted the judgment and leadership of her owner. That she would rather live under the authority, but also the protection, of a master. Thousands of years later, amidst the political and religious upheaval of seventeenth-century France, Saint Louis de Montfort asked his followers to acknowledge that they were slaves of the love of Jesus Christ through Mary, and even suggested that they wear small chains as an external sign of this condition. Of course, all those conditions of a perfect enslavement would be fulfilled by Our Lord and his mother, Mary.

As I mentioned earlier, as a widow, I was in an enviable position in many ways. I had the consolation of the happy death of my husband, I had the support of my community and extended family, I had financial security, I had (have) wonderful children with whom to weather the storm, but I also had SO MUCH responsibility. I was on the hook for all of it: the care of the children and our home, parenting and school and financial decisions, decisions in my personal life, and no one, really, who could even be a sounding board. And THAT, day to day was what I found the most difficult.

I kept thinking back to that bondswoman in Deuteronomy and how much I’d love to get a quick awl through the ear and be able to abdicate all this responsibility. Because that wasn’t going to be possible in the literal sense, I felt really drawn to the devotion of holy enslavement. I could, in prayer, say to God, “I don’t know what I’m doing, and you know that. So I give myself to you as your slave. You make the decisions. This is all your responsibility now.” It was an extreme way to pray, I know. But it gave me great comfort at the time, and helped me to feel comfortable later when I faced big decisions. 

I didn’t know what God’s plan was for me, but I couldn’t get it off my heart that I had a vocation to marriage. I knew that wasn’t the case for all widows, that in theory I might have a vocation to single life, or religious life, but I felt that I still had a vocation to marriage. If I was right, that meant that it was through marriage that I was supposed to continue to grow in personal holiness and try to gain heaven. But, you know, the middle-aged widows with ten children aren’t exactly flying off the shelves you guys. It felt . . . unlikely. All I could find to say to God was, “God, I am yours. I want what you want, and only what you want. I have this desire to be married, and *I* can’t make this happen. So, either YOU make it happen, or take the desire away.” That was my pretty constant prayer for a year.

Then some mutual friends, all of whom are under this tent right now, introduced me to a handsome Catholic man named John, with four almost all grown kids. They conspired to introduce us at a hastily thrown together Halloween party. Those of you who used to read my blog might remember that I threw my own fake Halloween party when I wanted to get to know Jim. So, I don’t know who needs to hear this, but it is October: fake Halloween party you guys. Maybe try it. 

Anyway, I met John and he absolutely WAS overwhelmed by the idea of a widow with ten kids the youngest of whom was four and who not infrequently gets recognized by friendly strangers in public places. He did not call me. 

Okay. Let’s back up a minute to my little throwaway mention before, in the trustful surrender to divine providence part, of three different kids barfing all over three different rooms. That happened in the middle of the night and required a lot of cleaning up, obviously, and the driving home of a couple of Micaela’s kids who had been sleeping over, because, yeah, they didn’t want to stay in Barf-town, USA. But she’s the one who gave me the book, remember? And I was, by this time, committed to the concept. Her daughter even mentioned to her how weirdly unfazed I seemed in the moment, how I was just rolling with it. And that’s how it felt to me too. 

I decided I’d better get up and go to the early Sunday Mass the next morning, because who knew when the next wave of barfing was going to occur. So I was at Sunday Mass alone, which never happens. And John was there, even though he usually goes to the later Mass as well. I didn’t see him, but he saw me, and God put it on his heart to call me and see where things might go.

So three months after the fake Halloween party, he asked me out. We really enjoyed each other’s company right from the get-go, but we both had some preconceived notions to get past. We both had questions to ask each other, and to ask God. We started hanging out right as Lent was beginning, and my kids and I don’t use screens for entertainment during Lent, so he’d come by and we’d all be sitting by the fire, playing cards or reading aloud, and we might have allowed him to think that that calm idyl was our usual MO. 

Our first meet up was Saturday morning Mass and then coffee. Our second was Saturday morning Mass then a hike, and a lot of hard questions and good answers. Our third was a visit to the LA Cathedral to venerate their tiny piece of the tilma of our Lady of Guadalupe. Then our parish Lenten mission started and he offered to pick me up each evening so we could go together. On one of the drives home, he mentioned that he had told his daughters that we were dating, and I was like, “ARE we dating? Or do we just go to church a lot?” And he took the hint and took me out to dinner.

But, of course, going to church a lot is the best possible start to a relationship. He had faced hardship and heartbreak of a different kind, but both of us had thrown ourselves into prayer and the sacraments. Both of us had read Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence. I think I was kind of on my own on the voluntary slavery thing, but it’s probably best if both parties don’t enter into a relationship with the goal of relinquishing responsibility. Both of us had discerned that we had a vocation to marriage, and it pretty quickly felt like God had had a hand in our friends’ schemes to introduce us. We felt strongly that, however complicated this all might seem in the short term, in the long term, it could only work for good for us and all the people we love.

John is a cool guy and he drives a red Jeep Wrangler, stick shift and everything. During covid, jeep people started giving each other little attaboys in the form of what they called “ducking” other jeeps. This meant leaving a rubber duck on or in a fellow jeep-driver’s car. John had received a duck, which he kept on his dashboard. My kids saw it and decided that his little duck looked lonely, so they grabbed a duck from their bathtub collection and snuck it onto his dashboard. So now he had a John duck and a Kendra duck. For the record the John duck is a duck duck. The Kendra duck is lavender, one-eyed, and has, like, cow horns.

One evening, John came to pick me up for a date, to a restaurant, not to church. We went out to the car and there was the John duck and the Kendra “duck” sitting on the passenger seat, and they were surrounded by fourteen little baby rubber ducks, and in the middle of it all was an engagement ring. It was pretty cute. I said yes.

We got married five months to the day after our first date—well, Mass—together, and now, instead of being an empty-nester, with, like, hobbies and whatnot, he’s been doing math homework with little kids and heaving things into a giant dumpster all week, because you just never know what’s going to happen when you let God take over.

Thanks for being here today!

P.S. The 2025 Liturgical Wall Calendar just dropped in the CAY Marketplace and, you guys, it’s the most beautiful one yet! It has artwork featuring a different liturgical living tradition from each month and we can’t stop looking at it

Grab one for your home here!

P.S. If you’re a CAY Member your FREE Liturgical Wall Calendar is on the way already! And if you aren’t a member you can learn more and join us here, and we’ll send you a FREE calendar too!

The post Deciding to Get Married Again (after being widowed): My Talk at the 2024 Fiat Conference appeared first on Catholic All Year.

Dear Family and Friends,

Here we go on Christmas letters again. Let’s see if we’ve still got it! We were all working on getting our bearings again in 2023, and settling back into the comfortable normalcy of being just bonkers busy all the time. 

Lulu, Midge, and George joined Gus, Anita, and Frankie at Saint Monica Academy, so, basically, we are taking that place over. There’s a Tierney in every odd grade from 1st to 11th. The kids love it and are getting an excellent education, but Mom suspects it’s exactly as much school work for her as when they were homeschooled, except now she does it while trying to make dinner. And there’s more driving. And, like, ninety more birthday parties. So, we’ll see what next year brings on the schooling front. For now, we are focused on how grateful we are for the SMA community, and all the help with rides and the last-minute texting of spelling lists, without which we would have drowned long ago.

We visited Chicago over the summer to celebrate Gramma & Papa’s fiftieth anniversary, and will head down to San Diego later this month to celebrate the same for Nana & Grandad. What a blessing to our family to have such beautiful examples of the sacrament of marriage!

We took a road trip to visit Catholic sites and National Parks in Arizona and New Mexico . . . in July. The local meteorologist was hanging out at our hotel pool in Tucson wielding his infrared thermometer and reporting a record high temperature of 112 degrees F. But, you know, it was a dry heat. That was followed by an eerie pinky-orange thunder-sandstorm that chased everyone inside. The trip was really amazing. Two thumbs up for the Chapel of the Holy Cross in Sedona, Montezuma Castle National Monument, all the historic churches in Santa Fe (and the miraculous staircase!), the Benedictine Monastery of Christ in the Desert, and Mission San Xavier del Bac.

Our “camping” Thanksgiving this year was at an Airbnb in Temecula, CA. We had all ten Tierney kids, plus Dosé extended family. We ate turkey, swam in the pool, dressed up for a western saloon-themed murder mystery party, had these photos taken by the very sweet and talented Cher of Cher Marie Photography, and managed to keep Barbara from “kid”-napping the baby goats (you get it). 

Kendra is happy and sad and grateful and heartsick and swamped and lackadaisical all at the same time, always. 2023 has been trying to find her footing, failing, and going again. She is acutely conscious of how lucky she is to be surrounded by her truly and deeply wonderful children, her generous and self-sacrificing parents and in-laws, her amazing community of friends at CTK, SMA, and CAY, and the worldwide network of people who loved Jim. Professionally, this year was mostly speaking engagements and video projects. She gave a talk at the Napa Conference, appeared on the Lila Rose podcast, and the whole family filmed four more episodes of Catholic All Year at Home for FORMED. She’s got four episodes of Ascension Presents that will air in the spring. She hopes to get back to any number of unfinished book manuscripts . . . someday.

Jack (21) is a senior at USC in aerospace engineering, but is going to go ahead and hang out for one more semester. As Teen Talk Barbie prophesied in 1992, “Math class is tough.” Since last summer, he has also been gainfully employed part time at Fenix Space, working on RF systems, satellites, and, um, something about parabolas? His hobbies include poker, chess, and Smash Bros, and he comes home on weekends to do laundry, teach little kids how to ride bikes, and tell his mother that dishwasher repair is, unfortunately, not part of the engineering school curriculum, but he will take a look. He’s a good young man. 

Betty (19) is a sophomore studying nursing at UMary in Bismarck, North Dakota. So far she gives it a thumbs up for roommates, classes, professors, and administrators, and a thumbs down for the ND record low temperature of 13 below on March 29. She’s a member of the intramural Musical Theater Troupe and has performed in three shows. In a move she expects to be the crowning achievement of her life, she secured tickets for the L.A. Taylor Swift concert, attended with Anita, and then got to watch the same concert again as a movie. 

Bobby (18) graduated from Saint Monica Academy after closing out his high school theater career with memorable roles as Caleb in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Richard III in Richard III (see the whole performance here). As a graduation gift, he and Jack got to see their dad’s favorite band, U2, at the Sphere in Las Vegas. No one was more surprised than Bob when he was accepted into the prestigious USC film school. So, Jack’s got a new old roommate and Bobby is making cool board games and very cute faux claymation animations. He gave the two most celebrated gifts of 2023: an old timey record player for mom (that the whole family loves) and a dead monarch butterfly cherished by Barbara.

Gus (16) keeps himself busy at SMA, appearing in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Richard III, and Much Ado About Nothing, altar serving, and participating on the varsity swim and basketball teams. He won 2nd place in the schoolwide Poetry Out Loud competition with his recitations of “Surprised by Joy” by Wordsworth and “The Hyenas” by Kipling. Over the summer he attended the Napa Institute Conference as his mom’s assistant, having read How to Win Friends and Influence People . . . twice. To be more specific, he listened to it as an audiobook on triple speed, which is how he listens to everything. This makes his mother want to interrupt him to ask listening comprehension questions (which he can answer). In related news, he bought himself some air pods.

Anita (14) continues to be an MVP at home: keeping track of schedules, packing lunches, and organizing day-after-Thanksgiving murder mystery parties, and at school: captain and setter on the JV volleyball team, voted to be 8th grade graduation speaker by her teachers and classmates, as well as voted to be Mary in the living stations and freshman representative to student council. She earned First Honors and a music award, and was in two school plays. She has expanded her wardrobe quite a bit this year by learning to sew and discovering that she now fits in mom’s clothes.  

Frankie (12) has taken over the role of “guy with a broken arm” from George, and is on his second cast of the year. When not on the DL, he plays flag football and basketball. He is an altar server at SMA and Saint  Andrew, and—when accompanying mom on a “work trip” cruise down the Rhine River—also in Switzerland, Holland, France, and Germany. His favorite parts of the trip were climbing the tower of Strasbourg Cathedral and then having nutella crepes for lunch, and being pressed into service by the maitre’d, who put him to work all over the ship. In Boy Scouts, he is working diligently on his second class rank and his pine cone-throwing skills. Over Thanksgiving, he was determined to have murdered Mitch Maverick (Bobby) in an act of vigilante justice.

Lulu (10) sang “Maybe” from Annie in the CTK homeschool group musical showcase and was an evil unicorn in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. She attended her first sleepover camp over the summer, with Anita there as a junior counselor. On our family road trip she convinced the group to swim/hike up the Chama River against the current to a tiny island which she claimed for her own. In her first year at “real” school, she played volleyball, earned First Honors and the Citizenship Award, and claims to be doing a LOT of “gold slip” worthy good deeds that have, so far, gone unnoticed by the powers that be.

Midge (8) also sang “Maybe” from Annie in the CTK homeschool group musical showcase and was a fellow evil unicorn in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. She and Lulu also do pretty much everything else together: biking and scootering, sewing and bracelet-making, baking and leaving the kitchen a mess to go out scootering again. She was Joan of Arc in the SMA All Saints’ Day pageant, likes recess and school field trips, and has a cowlick and dimples that just won’t quit.

George (6) chose a beaver plush as a road trip souvenir after a stop at Beaver Creek in AZ, and named it Justin Beaver. On his first week in the 1st grade, he proudly announced that everyone in his class had cried except him and one girl. He turned six this year, and so got his official family trip to Disneyland, where he liked Space Mountain and was definitely not afraid of the Haunted Mansion.

Barbara (4) experienced every ride at Disneyland as a challenge to be accepted and overcome. Not against her own fears, but rather against the characters in the ride. She thoroughly enjoyed her day personally vanquishing pirates, ghosts, and Mr. Toad / hell. Being the only kid at home and entertaining herself while mom works at home does NOT particularly suit her tastes, so she’s talked herself into a regular playdate rotation with local friends. On days that she is home with mom, she likes to hang out and offer running commentary and suggestions for how mom could improve her work habits and home management. 

Thank you again to all of you who have kept us in your prayers for all these months. Please keep it up! And come by to visit.

May your Christmas be merry and bright and your 2024 be filled with joy and hope for the future.

With love from the Tierneys,

Kendra, Jack, Betty, Bobby, Gus, Anita, Frankie, Lulu, Midge, George, and Barbara

P.S. In case you haven’t heard, I’m leading a pilgrimage to England, and I’d really love to have you join me! All ages are welcome, I’ll be bringing a couple kids with me, and my parents would be coming if they hadn’t offered to stay home with the rest of the kids!

Get more details here. It would make a great Christmas gift. #justsayin

The post Merry Christmas from the Tierneys appeared first on Catholic All Year.

Dear Friends and Family,

Thank you so much for all your prayers, Masses, cards, gifts, kind words, rides for the kids, and other support since Jim passed away in July. I am so grateful. Even if you didn’t receive a personal thank you note from me, please know it was appreciated.

We really are doing quite well, all things considered. Jack (20) is a junior at USC, studying aerospace engineering. Betty (18) is a freshman at UMary in Bismarck, ND where she plans to study nursing. We loaded the big van with all her worldly possessions and all but one of her siblings and drove up there to drop her off. It was an adventure! Bobby (17) is a senior at St. Monica Academy and has applied to a wide range of colleges. He’ll be Richard III in Richard III this spring before he graduates. Gus (15), Anita (13), and Frankie (11) are doing well at SMA, and continuing to participate in sports, theater, and choir.

Lulu (9), Midge (7), and George (5) are the homeschool crew this year. In the past three months, George has fallen three different times in three different places and broken an arm. He’s currently sporting red and green full-arm casts, and is—as always—in excellent spirits. Barbara (3) is the sweetest little thing. We all shot a couple episodes of a TV show called Catholic All Year at Home for FORMED, a Catholic streaming platform. I think they turned out cute. 

On Nov. 1, All Saints’ Day, I received about a dozen emails from Jim that he had scheduled over the first few months of the year, to remind me of things that had happened that I might want to include in this card. Instead, I’m going to keep it short, but leave you all with that. Still thoughtful, still looking out for us, even now. 

Memento Mori and Merry Christmas.

Love, Kendra, Jack, Betty, Bobby, Gus, Anita, Frankie, Lulu, Midge, George, & Barbara

p.s. If you usually get a card in the mail from us, and haven’t yet, please email or text me your address. We don’t have access to Jim’s address book with the Christmas card list.

The post Merry Christmas from the Tierneys appeared first on Catholic All Year.

Access to all the great Catholic audio and video resources on FORMED is free if your parish has a subscription.

Signing up for FORMED is quick and easy.  Just follow the simple instructions below. 

1. Go to formed.org/signup

2. Search for your parish by Zip Code/ Postal Code. Click on your parish. 

3. Register with your name and email address

4. Check that email account for a link to begin using FORMED

• Please NOTE: Formed longer uses custom URLs or Parish Codes. The only thing you need is your parish’s Zip Code.

If your parish doesn’t offer FORMED, you can sign up for a free 7-day trial of the individual membership, and if you choose to keep it, it’s just $10 per month.

THIS EPISODE’S RECIPES

Christmas Eve – December 24th

Ensalada de Nochebuena

Spätzle Kartoffelsuppe (Potato Dumpling Soup)

Easy Beer Bread

FEATURED PRODUCTS

Wooden Manger with Baby Jesus

Christmas Socks

Feast Day Prep Squad Apron

Missed the first episode?

These two are our pilot episodes, so the more people who watch, the more likely it is that FORMED will order more episodes. If you’d like to see more, please consider watching, commenting, and sharing the links with your friends, family members, parish and school/homeschool groups.

We had such fun making these!

Special thanks from me to the awesome CAY at Home team.

• Leo Severino, executive producer, you might know him from Bella (2006) and Sound of Freedom (2022)
• John Haggard, producer and director, also Dean of Students and Faculty at my kids’ school
• Elizabeth Mirzaei, director of photographer/editor, academy award-nominated documentary filmmaker known for Three Songs for Benazir (2021) and also my YouTube videos
• Charley Blum, director of photographer/editor, JP Catholic alum
• Jennifer Rueda, makeup, wardrobe, set design, and fellow homeschool mom
• Keeley Bowler, production manager, also CAY marketing manager and homeschool mom
• Brian Battles, colorist, also visual effects for Star Wars and Star Trek and Transformers movies

They’re all super talented and super Catholic and it’s an honor to collaborate with them on my little show. Have you watched it? I’d love to hear what you think!

The post Catholic All Year at Home, Ep. 2: Christmas Eve appeared first on Catholic All Year.

FORMED provides the very best Catholic content to help parishes, families and individuals explore their faith anywhere. Supporting thousands of movies, children’s programs, ebooks, audio, parish programs and studies direct to your browser, mobile or connected device.

Many Catholic churches offer FORMED free to their parishioners, so call your parish office to see if you already have access. If not, you can subscribe for less than $10/month.

The first episode of Catholic All Year at Home is steaming now and it’s all about St. Nicholas Day.

You’ll get to see the kids and I make mulled wine and cider, speculaas cookies, and a Dutch fried meatball pub snack called bitterballen. Also, Bobby cries. #theonionsgothim I’ll share about some of the stories associated with these fun feast day foods, like why St. Nicholas is often pictured with three golden balls and without his mitre.

Most importantly you’ll get to see what actual feast day prep looks like in our kitchen. I hope you’ll be inspired to give it a try in your own home.

St. Nicholas’ Feast Day – December 6th

Complete recipes from this episode are available here:

Speculaas Cookies

Bitterballen

Hot Mulled Wine / Bisschopswijn

Hot Mulled Cider

If you like liturgical living recipes, check out the Catholic All Year Membership. CAY Members get exclusive access to the complete library of hundreds of recipes, organized by month and feast day, plus lots of other liturgical living resources.

We’ve got one more episode of Catholic All Year at Home in post-production right now, for Christmas Eve, so be on the lookout for that one.

If you like the show, please share it with your friends, family members, parish, school, and homeschool communities. We’ve got more episodes planned, but in order to get them greenlit, we need a lot of folks to watch these first two!

You can also find lots more Catholic All Year liturgical living video content on FORMED. Check that out here.

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As most of you will already be aware, my husband Jim passed away peacefully in our home on July 9, 2022 after a long battle with cancer. More details, as well as a video of the funeral are available on this page: Funeral and Memorial Scholarship Information. If you’d like to help us support young scholars at an authentically Catholic school, as well as help keep Jim’s memory alive, please consider making a donation to the Jim Tierney Memorial Scholarship Fund at Saint Monica Academy. You can do that directly through the school’s donation portal here. Or you can purchase one-of-a-kind Catholic charm bracelets, handmade by me. 100% of the purchase price of the bracelets goes to the scholarship fund. Find those here.

I hosted the 2022 Fiat Conference at my home last weekend. Preparing my talk for the conference gave me a chance to reflect on what I have and haven’t learned over the past few months and years. Here it is in video format: https://youtu.be/sOEXTeb_cfI

And here’s the text of the talk:

First off, thank you all so much for being here, and for the love and prayers with which you have so generously supported me and my family for the past months and years. I’ll get into it in more detail here in a bit, but I hope each of you knows how real and important that has been for us. We’re just going to have a winding little chat, kind of informal like, if you guys don’t mind. I do have a couple points I’d like to make today, that I think are in keeping with our general theme of resilience and our patroness, Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

We have sort of a running family joke that we get recognized by ONE PERSON . . . everywhere. When our whole family is out together at a national park, or an amusement park, or at Mass somewhere on the road, usually someone will recognize us and come up to say hi. I think it’s great, really. I mean, we ARE rather a spectacle when out in a group regardless. So it’s nice to be getting some of that attention from Catholics who have been following our family’s ups and downs since before many of the kiddos were born.  

Sometimes it will beg the question from some of the kids as to whether I am “famous.” So I explain about fish and ponds and all that and say that I am a very tiny bit famous among a small and very nice group of like-minded folks. But it does make one reflect on the idea of “celebrity.” And especially Catholic “celebrity.” What does that word mean? “Celebrity”? It means to be “celebrated”. To be held up as a noteworthy example of something.

And the problem with that, for Catholics, is that WE have an established system for that already, don’t we? We have a longstanding method by which we determine which Catholics are to be celebrated and held up as an example and it’s called the canonization process and, importantly, no one is admitted to that process while still living.

So a living “famous” Catholic, a Catholic “celebrity” is always going to be a bit of a liability for all of us. Someone still living can mess up, can get something wrong, can let us down.

The word bandied about on social media is “influencer” right? And I guess, as cringy as it is, I guess that feels a bit more appropriate, a bit more accurate. There are Catholics I follow on social media, and Catholics that I know in real life, who “influence” my worldview and my practice of the faith. That seems fine. Good even. As long as we keep the right perspective.

For me, personally, the angle I prefer is “subject matter expert.” You know? Like on the 24-hour news networks, when some world event happens or a particular book or movie is all the rage and all of a sudden there’s a demand for someone who knows everything there is to know about Borneo or 17th century sewing techniques or that indegenous sport with the hips and the peach baskets. For whatever reason, now we have questions for THAT person.

That’s how I’ve always tried to approach my books and social media. As a subject matter expert. As a person who loves the Catholic faith and loves the saints and Catholic history and tradition and obscure customs and who wants to share that information with you. So it seems appropriate when someone messages me to ask if there are any recipes associated with a particular upcoming feast day, or when folks start leaving comments asking if it’s going to be a meat friday, or when a friend texts me a photo of a saint statue she found at a thrift shop to see if I can figure out who it is based on its little attributes.

I love that sort of thing. I like a challenge, and I have spent a decade working on gaining very niche knowledge for moments just like those.

When I give a Fiat talk, what I want is to give you some answers. I want to give you 5 easy tips for getting your kids to say the rosary or eat their vegetables. I want to be a resource for you. I want to be that subject matter expert.

But then, this summer, my situation changed. My husband of 21 years passed away peacefully in our home, after a 16-year battle with melanoma skin cancer that eventually metastasized to his brain. So, all of a sudden, I had all these people watching me for a different reason. I had new people watching me. Thousands and thousands of new people. And they were still good, Catholic people. People who had been praying for us. But also, I’m sure, people were curious about what happens to a family when they lose someone. People who were curious about what life looks like for a widow with many children. I’m still not quite sure what to do with those people.

Honestly, the most comforting thing anyone said to me over those first couple weeks was my friend Hope who told me, “People look to you to see what a Catholic life looks like. And most people never see this part. You shared with people what a sacramental Catholic death looks like.” I appreciated that perspective on it. And I’m deeply grateful that I listened to the nudge of the Holy Spirit on that one, to go ahead and open our home when it seemed like the end was near. American culture sees death as a hidden, private matter. But that’s not at all how CATHOLIC culture sees it.

But then, you know, that part is over. And now it’s me, and my new life, and I’m not a subject matter expert in any of this. And every new TV show I start features what I now call the “VSW” for “very sad widow.” This character was in ALL shows I tried to watch this summer. She is a recent widow who is very sad and can’t function or care for herself or her home and basically abandons her children because she is so heartbroken. It wasn’t very heartening to find that this was the expectation that Hollywood, at least, had of me and my prospects.

Micaela mentioned that we chose Our Lady of Perpetual Help as our patroness because we knew that I was likely facing a challenging year. I wanted to invite speakers who knew what it was to overcome adversity. I wanted to hear those stories and know that it was possible to hold tight to the cross and keep the faith.

So now, here I am. A person trying to figure out a new different life. A life in which I am not a subject matter expert. So what am I going to talk to you guys about today? It took me a very long time to figure it out. But I’m fortunate enough to have good friends and to have had good conversations with those friends lately, and a couple things kept coming up again and again in those conversations. And they helped me to sort some things out. So this isn’t about to turn into a real talk. We’re just going to have MY side of those conversations, with me standing up here. I want to share a couple things about which I feel I have gained some understanding through the process of living with Jim’s illness and that uncertainty and with loss and widowhood.

The first is a strategy that served me well throughout the long years since Jim’s diagnosis and to which I’ve still had recourse over these more recent weeks since his death. In some ways, it was my St. Paul on the Road to Damascus moment. It came to me, undeserved, in a flash, and changed my perspective. It’s useful for big, life-changing events, but it’s also helpful in little everyday moments. 

It came about on the day that Jim was diagnosed with melanoma, originating in a mole on his back. First it was just a malignant mole. Eventually we learned that the cancer had spread to his lymphatic system. He underwent a course of treatment and it appeared that he was in remission for nearly ten years, but we later found that the cancer was back or, more likely, had never really been gone. At that point it spread to his lungs and eventually his brain. But on that day, it was just a melanoma tumor in a mole.  

I went to pick my oldest son up from the little neighborhood preschool he attended and, when his teacher asked me how the day was going, I told her. Which, looking back, was definitely an awkward choice. We were not close friends or anything. But, that’s what happened. She says, “Hi, Mrs. Tierney, how’s your day been going?” And I say, “Well, my husband was just diagnosed with cancer.” Fun, right? But she rolls with it. She says, “Wow. You must be really worried.” A reasonable thing to say. Polite. But I remember it like it had one of those tire screeching cartoon sound effects. I *MUST* be really worried. Somehow that turn of phrase really hit me. MUST. As in, it is REQUIRED of me to be really worried. 

And in that moment I was infused with supernatural grace and/or my contrary little self rebelled against the thought that the universe was telling me what to do. I don’t like that. So I told her, “You know, I’ve decided that I’m going to wait to worry.” 

Because, really, in that moment, things were fine. My husband was well. He wasn’t experiencing any pain symptoms. I was well. Maybe later it would make sense to worry. I was going to give myself permission for that should it become necessary. But on that day, it didn’t seem like I needed to worry. So I didn’t.

I don’t think I had yet made Padre Pio’s acquaintance, so I wouldn’t have yet known his quote “Pray, hope, and don’t worry”. It’s good advice, but I’m not sure I would have been ready for that kind of commitment. I couldn’t promise that I was never going to worry. It just seemed like I could manage not to worry today.

The first real challenge to the policy came three days later when I learned that I was pregnant with baby number four. There are a lot of what ifs available to a pregnant lady, right? But still, I stuck with my plan. I decided that today again seemed okay. Today I didn’t need to worry. I’d wait.

Against all odds, after sixteen years and six more children and surgeries and seizures and hospitalizations and, eventually, hospice and death . . . each day on THAT day, it has been okay. I’ve been able to wait. I didn’t need to be really worried that day.

I think, when we look at it honestly, that teacher was unintentionally giving me very bad advice. She was telling me that my only choice was despair. Despair is a sin and worry, in my case, would have been just another way of describing despair. Despair is a turning away from hope. Hope is the virtue opposite to despair. Hope says that I trust that no matter what happens in my life, no matter my circumstances, God is good. 

On the day that I found out that Jim had cancer. We were okay. I could trust. I could hope. I could believe that God had a plan for me. I could, at the very least . . . WAIT to worry. And on the day Jim died, the same was true. On that day, we were okay. I was surrounded by friends and family. Jim had received last rites. He had made a good confession with our friend Fr. Matt, it was the last conversation he had. He had said, “yes” when our pastor Fr. Gonzales asked him if he wanted to receive the eucharist. It was the last word he spoke and the last food he ate. I was surrounded by consolations, I was covered in prayer. On that day also, I could wait to worry.

And since then, each day, it has been the same. It has sucked, in many ways, don’t get me wrong. But each day, in itself, has been okay. I’ve joked that the movie version of my life is going to have the lamest-ever inspirational montage sequence consisting of me . . . making phone calls . . . and . . . finding important documents . . . and . . . filling out paperwork . . . and figuring out how to scan paperwork . . . and miraculously having enough stamps. Super exciting stuff you guys. But it’s also been NOT being a VSW. Spending time with friends and trying to be there for my kids. Praying. Participating in the sacraments. Believing that God still has a plan for me and my life. Allowing myself to see that TODAY is okay. Today, I don’t need to worry. I can still wait.

I’m doing okay. I haven’t dissolved into VSW status. The kids are doing okay. Waiting to worry is working for all of us. But, then, one might reasonably ask, WHY would such a thing work? How is it possible that I’ve been able to wait to worry even though the thing I was waiting to worry about . . . went ahead and happened.

And that is the other topic I wanted to talk about today. I believe that the main reason I have been able to keep up hope and trust and to avoid worry and despair is intercessory prayer. Most of you have been responsible for part of that prayer, so thank you.

While the distinction is really academic, and all are interrelated, Catholics recognize five different general “types” of prayer: we call them worship, praise, thanksgiving, petition, and intercession.

Worship exalts the greatness of God and focuses on our dependence upon him. Praise gives God glory for God’s own sake. Thanksgiving is being grateful for the gifts God has given us. Petition is asking God for what we need, or what we think we need anyway.

Intercession is when we ask God for something for someone else. 

People all over the world have been praying for my family for a decade.

And now I would like to pause to tell you about my favorite children’s book. It’s called The Bearskinner. It’s an adaptation of a Grimm’s fairy tale in which a soldier returns from war to find his town destroyed and his family gone, and so, he makes a deal with the devil. It’s great for kids. Anyway, the deal is that for seven years he must wear a bearskin and his pockets will be full of the devil’s gold. He can spend the money, but he cannot tell anyone why he wears the bearskin. He cannot pray. And he cannot kill himself. If he does, his soul will belong to the devil. But if he does not, at the end of the seven years he’ll get to lose the bearskin and keep the pockets full of gold. 

So at first, of course, he has a grand old time spending the money, but soon, the bearskin begins to rot and he becomes isolated and begins to lose hope. He begins to despair. One day, he has the idea that he can give his money to the poor and ask them to pray for him.

There’s a beautiful illustration in the book in which the bearskinner is walking along the river, and the prayers of the poor are butterflies shielding him from the devil and the darkness, keeping his despair at bay. And that’s really how I see intercessory prayer.

I’m standing here as a witness to the fact that prayers are not always answered in the way we would like. And it’s not because we didn’t have enough faith, or because we didn’t pray in just the right way, or because not quite enough people liked and shared a particular Facebook post. 

It might just be that it was not God’s will. 

I don’t have to understand it. But if I’m willing to submit my will to his will, I can accept it.

We have to remember that there must be a caveat attached to every prayer, spoken or unspoken, and that is, “Lord, if it is your will . . . dot dot dot.” Any time we ask God for something that we think we want we must remember that we only want it if God wants it. We must remember that God is not bound by our prayers. The goal of prayer isn’t to change God, the goal of prayer is to change US.  

And, I cannot claim to be an expert in that. But I’m going to keep on keepin’ on. I’m continuing to hope and trust. I’m continuing to wait to worry. And I’m continuing to rely on intercessory prayer, so please keep it up. Thank you!

The new 2023 Catholic All Year Liturgical Wall Calendar is now available. See it here.

The post On Not Being a VSW (Very Sad Widow): My Talk at the 2022 Fiat Conference appeared first on Catholic All Year.

THE QUESTION

Kendra, this is a truly beautiful story with a happy ending. But where does this make space for my dear friend [ . . . ], who at seven weeks pregnant, seven years ago, had to navigate the impossible decision about having to choose her three young children living without their mom vs. her fledgling little one, when her doctor walked into the room and told her that she had aggressive Stage 3C breast cancer and needed a) a mastectomy, and b) must start chemo pretty much immediately? . . .

I ask you this in all seriousness, as I have gotten so much from this site over the years. Where is there space for my friend in this ruling? She is a faith-filled mother, who was pregnant with a child who her family deeply wanted. Please just admit to me that this is an impossible choice. I get that we have to let go and let God. So why don’t we let this be between my friend [. . . ] and God? I think she is and was smart, faithful, and obedient. Why do we think this is our job to question other people’s relationships with our Father?

MY ANSWER

Dear [ . . . ], I don’t think I’ll comment on someone’s life decisions at the request of a third party, when it’s unlikely that the involved individual wants my input. But what I can do is speak to my own personal experience as someone whose husband has stage IV metastatic melanoma with tumors in his brain and lungs. (Read more in his blog here.)

There is no situation in which my husband would sacrifice the life of one of his children to save his own life. Nor would I.

Catholic moral teaching allows for the necessary treatment of disease in anyone, even in an expectant mother, even if it may harm or kill the unborn baby as an unintended secondary effect (see directive 47 of the USCCB’s Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services) but it never allows for the direct killing of the unborn child.

I see these rules as a gift. The Church, in its role as “Mater et Magistra” (mother and teacher) bears this burden of decision for us. I don’t have to, in a moment of fear and panic, make a decision like this. Others, with the benefit of time and wisdom, have considered the moral implications, and my responsibility is to understand that these teachings exist, and use them to properly form my conscience so I can rely upon it in difficult times.

I often think of this quote from Jane Eyre, and find solace in it: “Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?”

For me, it comes down (as so much in life does) to faith and trust. Do I *see* how my life will be okay with ten children, the youngest of whom is two, without my husband to care for us? No. I do not. But I *trust* that God is good, all the time, and, therefore, it will be okay, somehow. I will not choose to sin out of a lack of trust in God. My husband could be miraculously healed, as is our prayer. He could continue to live with his disease for many years, as he has done so far, against all medical statistics. He could die. And in all scenarios, I will trust God.

THE REPLY

Thank you so much for responding! I hope you didn’t interpret my post as incendiary. I truly want all of us to have these kinds of dialogues about what is clearly a moral dilemma for so many, and knowing your family’s journey with cancer, I knew you would help continue this conversation in a way that helps all of us understand each other and ourselves a little bit better.

TO WRAP UP

So, hey, sometimes talking about difficult topics on social media works out! Thanks so much to everyone who commented on Emily’s post. I know it meant a lot to her and her mom that so many of you found their story touching.

Read more on Catholic teaching on this topic here: Abortion and Double Effect and Ectopic Pregnancy and Double Effect

Read more about real people who made heroic decisions in difficult circumstances: 4 SAINTS WHO WERE ENCOURAGED TO HAVE ABORTIONS

Read more about Catholic Bioethics here: The National Catholic Bioethics Center

Read more about our family’s situation here: Another Kind of Meal Train

The post Mailbag: My Friend Had an Abortion Because She Needed Cancer Treatment. Can’t We Agree That’s Okay? appeared first on Catholic All Year.

The feast of the Sacred Heart almost always falls in June, and, in fact, the entire month of June is dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The feast day falls 19 days after Pentecost Sunday, always on a Friday. And you know what that means . . . MEAT FRIDAY! A solemnity on a Friday means there is no obligation to observe a Friday penance. So, bring on the meat! If you have no idea what I’m talking about here, keep reading. All will be explained.

WHAT IS THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS?

The Sacred Heart of Jesus is depicted as a flaming heart, usually surrounded by a crown of thorns, with a cross on the top, and it is often bleeding from a wound in the side. It can be shown on Jesus’ body (often with Jesus pointing to it) or it can be presented on its own.

It is often displayed together with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which is traditionally also on fire, surrounded by a crown of flowers rather than thorns, and is sometimes shown pierced by a sword. (The feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is celebrated the day after the feast of the Sacred Heart.)

Sometimes you’ll also see a third heart, with lilies on it. That’s for St. Joseph.

While a devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is one of gratitude for Jesus’ love for us, a devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary indicates a desire to emulate the way in which Mary loves Jesus.

In 1673, Jesus began appearing to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, a French nun. He told her that he wished to be honored in Eucharistic adoration during a holy hour on Thursdays, and with a feast day devoted to his Sacred Heart, and that he wished to encourage the faithful to receive communion on the first Friday of each month.

It took a couple hundred years, but eventually, devotion to the Sacred Heart, and the recommended observances, spread throughout the world, and it was named a universal feast.

WHAT TO PRAY FOR THE SACRED HEART

A plenary indulgence is available for the day, under the usual conditions, for the recitation of the Act of Reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The Manual of Indulgences specifies that it must be a “public recitation,” but all that means is that it’s meant to be recited in a church, a religious community, or a family or group of friends, rather than by oneself.

Note: If you’re doing the #catholicsummerchallenge, be sure to check this one off! Getting a late start on it? That’s okay! Makeups and substitutions are allowed!

AND NOW, A MEAT FRIDAY ASIDE

The feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a solemnity, and always falls on a Friday and that means . . . Meat Friday. Now, some of you, hearing that, are getting excited. As well you should. We do in my family. It’s very exciting.

But others of you are thinking . . . huh? Because the fact that Friday penance is still a real thing that is required of Catholics is, like, top secret these days. If you don’t know this, you are definitely not alone. I was pretty flabbergasted when I found out that, in fact, we ARE still bound to observe Friday penance every week, and that abstaining from meat is still the recommended penance. At that point I had been Catholic for over thirty years. How had it never come up ever that this was something we were supposed to be doing? It’s crazy. But it’s true. Let’s break it down, shall we?

Canon law 1250-1251 tells us: “The penitential days and times in the universal Church are every Friday of the whole year and the season of Lent. Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday”.

So, abstinence on all Fridays, unless a solemnity falls on a Friday, abstinence and fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Sounds pretty straightforward.

However, in 1966, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops issued the Pastoral Statement On Penance And Abstinence. In it, they state that for some Catholics, the substitution of a different weekly penance, rather than abstinence from meat, would feel more penitential. The bishops make permissible such substitutions, all the while reiterating,

“Even though we hereby terminate the traditional law of abstinence binding under pain of sin, as the sole prescribed means of observing Friday, we give first place to abstinence from flesh meat. We do so in the hope that the Catholic community will ordinarily continue to abstain from meat by free choice as formerly we did in obedience to Church law.”

They conclude with,

“Let it not be said that by this action, implementing the spirit of renewal coming out of the Council, we have abolished Friday, repudiated the holy traditions of our fathers, or diminished the insistence of the Church on the fact of sin and the need for penance.”

Unfortunately . . . it must be said. Friday got abolished. Holy traditions got repudiated.

But there has been a big resurgence over the last ten years or so in the observance of required Friday penance in general and the practice of Friday abstinence from meat in particular. In some places in the world the faithful even have the obligation back, which I personally think is a lovely thing.

For many years now, in our home, we have observed the traditional Friday abstinence from meat as a family, alongside many of our Catholic friends. I have come to love that it is a penance we do in communion with other Catholics, all over the world and throughout time. We can nod knowingly at each other over our cheese pizzas and fish tacos. It’s like we’re in a cool club with a secret handshake, but instead of a handshake, it’s a filet o’fish sandwich.

It’s pretty mild overall, as penances go, right? For me the hard part at the beginning was to remember that it was Friday. I’d go days during the week not eating meat at all, then forget and eat pepperoni pizza—which I don’t even prefer—on a Friday. It was so frustrating!

But, as I got better at remembering that it was Friday, I realized that THEREIN is really the secret beauty of this penance. I have to remember that it’s going to be Friday when I’m meal planning for the week. I have to account for Friday if we are planning a party or a vacation or a date night.

I have to wake up in the morning and say to myself, “Remember it’s Friday!” and then when I get downstairs for breakfast I have to remind myself again and remind the kids and then I have to remember not to serve those meat leftovers for lunch.

And every time I have to remember that it’s Friday . . . I have to think about why that matters.

It requires me to keep Jesus’ Friday suffering and death at the forefront of my mind all day long. It’s brilliant. It’s almost as if thousands of years of Catholic tradition was, I don’t know, on to something!

All that Friday remembering makes us appreciate Friday solemnities when they come. There are seventeen universal solemnities throughout the year, plus some regions have extra ones (for instance, St. Patrick’s day is a solemnity in Ireland, but an optional memorial in the U.S.).

Most of them will fall on a Friday approximately every seven years. We get two for sure each year: Easter Friday and The Sacred Heart of Jesus.

WHAT TO EAT FOR THE FEAST OF THE SACRED HEART

For dinner on the feast of the Sacred Heart, we do meat. Any kind will do, but since the weather is usually nice, it’s a great day to grill steaks on the barbecue, hopefully with friends.

One year, a friend brought over the most amazing hors d’oeuvres platters. There was an Immaculate Heart made of fruit, and a Sacred Heart made of veggies. So cool. I’ve also seen lovely cakes and cookies decorated as the two hearts.

But (and if you have read the introduction to The Catholic All Year Compendium, my book on liturgical living in the home, you’ll know this already) MY go to dessert for this feast day is a slightly weepy red jello heart.

It hasn’t always looked beautiful but, as I explain in that story, in my experience, kids DO NOT MIND imperfect desserts. And whipped cream usually helps.

One of the things we offer at Catholic All Year is a liturgical living box subscription and I am very excited to have shipped out hundreds of heart-shaped pans for this feast day, along with a much-improved recipe, so the next round of families can start building liturgical living memories of their own! Also very cool French counter-revolutionary Vendee Sacred Heart Badges and a game of pin the Sacred Heart on Jesus! You can also grab the special heart-shaped pan to make your own Jell-o Sacred Heart in the CAY marketplace.

If you want to learn more about celebrating feast days, check out my books The Catholic All Year Compendium, and The Catholic All Year Prayer Companion. Catholic All Year Members have access to the print-and-go membership library with prayer, hymn, recipes, and decor for hundreds of feast days, and Catholic All Year Subscription Boxes will deliver liturgical living essentials to your doorstep every month.

I hope you’ll give it a try! Catholic All Year is here to help.

The post Why I Love Friday Abstinence, Meat Fridays, & the Sacred Heart of Jesus appeared first on Catholic All Year.