Keeping Sunday Holy
Posted on August 11th, 2008 by Steve Skojec
It seems to me that one of the easiest ways to plant the seeds of Catholic Culture is to follow Sunday traditions, or, if you haven’t established them yet, to find ways to do so.
So, I’m curious - how do you keep Sunday Holy? Going to Church is a given. The Family Rosary is another obvious choice. What else do you do? Does your family have regular traditions, read certain books, engage in particular activities, eat special meals?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Filed under: Catholicism
Being a fairly new convert, I am very interested in this as well. I would love to hear anything even if it does seem obvious.
We have very strict rules against anything resembling “work,” with exceptions for farm chores, critical weather-dependent farm projects (”make hay while the sun shines”), and periods where my professional work is unavoidable (it’s highly cyclical). We also make every effort not to buy anything or shop in stores.
On nearly every Sunday, we either have someone over for dinner or visit another family for dinner. We make a point of not running around doing too many things, however. Either one visit or one visitor — we don’t try to cram in more than one. The point is to relax and be “present” to the other members of the family.
I blogged about Sunday awhile back. Here is a link to that:
http://theyeomanfarmer.blogspot.com/2007/01/sunday.html
We have a strict rule about no shopping and no work except for feeding the animals or emergency repairs (like if a pig or goat gets out.) We do say the family rosary, of course we do this almost every day any way. We often talk about the homily or the readings at meals, asking each what they remember about it. At times (although we have fallen down lately) we have had a religion class with one or more of the kids. This is often on Sunday evenings with the older kids. If it rains and we have no company, we may watch a family movie. We stay off the computer. Sometimes we have friends over or visit. For a period of 2-3 years when we lived in the city, 2-5 families regualarly got together after Sunday Mass for breakfast and the rosary. Now once a month, with Catholic families in proximity (relatively speaking) to our new home, we get together for a covered dish. We try to spend more time together with prayer integrated somehow.