I had this long rocky relationship with the Liturgy of the Hours, which finally came to a peaceful resolution when the breviary and I admitted that really what I want is the Office of Readings. Turns out it doesn’t matter how many helpful people suggest Morning, Evening, or Night prayer as the ideal place for beginners to start, what I need is the Geek Hour. Some people use their feelings to stir up their intellect, I use my intellect to stir up my feelings. I’m backwards that way.
So last night I lay down with the iBreviary to read-pray, and whoa – John the Baptist! And I think to myself, “Gosh, here I am a Catholic geeky blogger person, and I totally missed this?”
Nah, I just wasn’t reading closely. Today’s the feast, yesterday was the vigil. St. John the Baptist Eve, last night it was.
UPDATED to give you what actually happened: I read the wrong day. I went back and checked tonight. Sure enough, I was ahead of my time. No explanation to offer, other than that I might have been reading late enough in the day that my device was confused about time zones and went European on me. End of update.
***
So what this means is that there’s only six months more until Christmas, because St. John is six months older than his divine cousin. This is why Hobby Lobby has all that Christmas stuff out — if you’re planning to make wreaths or ornaments or something for all your friends and neighbors, get going now so you aren’t like us, who proposed an inter-cousin ornament exchange and then promptly failed to participate because we can’t get our craft act together.
The advanced warning is the point of the feast, the point of the saint. Not to help you manage your craft situation (thought you can use it for that, too), but to assist with your Christ situation. Christ is coming. Wake up!
Artwork: Landscape with St. John the Baptist preaching, Painting by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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