New Years Come and Go So Quickly Around Here

First there was the start of the fiscal year, then the beginning of school (I still haven’t broken myself of the habit of marking time in semesters), then Rosh Hashanah, and now, sneaking in just before Advent, is start of the Year of Faith (beginning on Oct 11, the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council).

I’ve signed up for two interesting readings meant to supplement the year, so I wanted to pass on the information to the Catholic (or just very curious) readers of the blog.

The first, found via Aggie Catholics, is Flocknote’s Read the Catechism in a Year project.

For this Year of Faith, Pope Benedict has encouraged you to study and reflect on the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Well, here’s an easy way to do it. Simply enter your email address and – starting October 11, 2012 – you’ll start getting a little bit of the Catechism emailed to you every morning. Read that little bit every day and you’ll read the whole catechism in a year. Cool, right?

The second resource, found via the Anchoress, is the Magnificat Year of Faith Companion.  If you order it now, you’ll have to hurry to catch up with the daily readings.  They’re up to a third printing, so if you tarried like me, you won’t get a copy til the end of October.  Every day, there’s a reading in one of these categories:

• Profiles of the holy men and women of the Bible
• Reflections on Sacred Scripture
• Short explanations on the Catechism
• Devotions for deepening faith
• Essays on key aspects of the Faith
• Meditations from saints and spiritual masters
• Prayers both ancient and modern
• Poems capturing the beauty of faith

I like that both of these tie-ins are a way to encounter a lot of different entry points into Catholicism in an orderly way.  And I imagine both will give me plenty of blog fodder to mull over with all of you.  Perhaps you’ll see some of those meditations pop up on Patheos’s about to launch page for the Year of Faith.

I love giant bookclubs; the universality of Harry Potter made it a delight to know I could always strike up a conversation with almost anyone my age on what the remaining Horcruxes were, which side Snape was on, whether Hermione was getting a little too ruthless and if this might be how Snape fell, and whether Hermione/Ron was the worst pairing in the world (there is a right answer).

So I’m delighted to know that the Anchoress and other Catholics will all be in this book club with me, along with as many of you that care to join in.