Library: The Story of the Christian Year
by Father Richard Nardone
Welcome! Whether you’re a longtime friend or a new kindred spirit here (I recommend visiting the Village Green to get your bearings), I’m delighted to be a companion to you through the liturgical year.
Pax+bonum, Kristin.
Welcome to the Hearthstone Library!
For every single post I share on Substack, every single piece of artwork, every video, I do a pretty wild amount of research and then think/write/paint my way through it as I reflect on it all.
A lot of folks have asked for more info on the resources I lean on the most, so I’m thrilled to begin sharing more about these gems - I’ll be pulling a book from my library shelves to share in detail with you every so often…best read with a cup of tea or piping hot coffee, of course.
You can also peek back at a video tour of my library, if you want to do a quick flyover of some of my favorite books I use for research.
From our modern, digital era, I find that it’s easy to slip into really anachronistic thinking about the history of the Church calendar. With the whole swath of feast days available in an instant, it can also feel as if the calendar itself were just as instantaneous…as if it had just appeared, as-is. This, of course, invites scrupulosity…assuming that however we receive the calendar now, this is how it ‘should’ be celebrated, always has been celebrated, and always will be. In other words, I can easily take for granted the current form of this infrastructure that we’ve inherited.
It’s also easy to fall into a ‘catch ‘em all’ mindset, as if we need to grind our way through every current dedication of the modern calendar.
This overview by the late Father Richard Nardone, though - The Story of the Christian Year - is one of the most impactful books I’ve found in widening (and deepening) my perspective of our faith history of sacred timekeeping.