Our Lady of Hope Blog

My Dear Friends,

We have arrived at the feast Christ the King and the end of the liturgical year. Next week begins Advent. Knowing the liturgical year allows us to enter into the rhythm of our faith through the seasons, beginning in Advent and Christmas then the few weeks of ordinary time before Lent and Easter and re-entering ordinary time again. It’s not only the season that we celebrate liturgically.

My Dear Friends,

On Tuesday, November 21st, we celebrate the Presentation of Mary. This is an interesting feast day in the Catholic Church. It is not in Sacred Scripture, but it is attested to in other extra biblical writings that we call apocrypha. St. Joachim and St. Anne, the parents of Mary, bring their daughter to the temple when she is three years old. The image that corresponds to this feast is that of the dove sent by Noah to find if the flood was over.

My Dear Friends,

I recently re-watched Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, Lifeboat. It is a story by John Steinbeck, (who did publicly distance himself from the film and denounced Hitchcock’s treatment of the material), and it concerns nine survivors of an American/German battle. Eight of the survivors are American and British civilians and service members while the ninth man is a German who was brought aboard on the lifeboat by the other eight. The whole movie is filmed on the lifeboat.

My Dear Friends,

The Liturgical season is winding down. November 26 is the last Sunday of the Liturgical year, which since the reform of the liturgy in 1970 has been called Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, commonly shortened to Christ the King. (In the traditional liturgy, the last Sunday in October is Christ the King.) The following Sunday, December 3, we begin the season of Advent.