Nazareth Family Spirituality: Celebrating Your Faith at Home with Catherine Doherty

by Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Father Blair Bernard (Editor)

Meditations and Seasonal Traditions
“We go to Nazareth, that hidden little village…to become whole again” taught Madonna House Foundress Catherine Doherty. In Nazareth-based meditations such as The Spirit of Nazareth: Community of Love, Duty of the Moment—Duty of God, and Becoming a Prayer she reveals herself an expert at demonstrating how family life can be a pathway to God.

Catherine also meditates on the vocation of marriage and family in chatty chapters such as “May I Come Into Your Kitchen?” where she will go over a checklist of the basic religious practices essential to the soul of any Catholic home.

With children, the best way to communicate the Faith is to “celebrate” it. Here the unique cycle of seasonal liturgical traditions carried out by the Madonna House family, a hidden gem of Christianity in North America, is presented for adaptation in your home. Gathered from the Christian East and West, these seasonal traditions include the Epiphany marking and blessing of door lintels to Holy Thursday’s Supper of the Lamb, and dozens more.

Profoundly insightful meditations on suffering united with Christ and unity with the Trinity in marriage.

146 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 2, 2014

About the author

Ekaterina Fyodorovna Kolyschkine Doherty, better known as Catherine Doherty, CM (1896-1985) was a social activist and foundress of the Madonna House Apostolate. A pioneer of social justice and a renowned national speaker, Catherine was also a prolific writer of hundreds of articles, best-selling author of dozens of books, and a dedicated wife and mother. Her cause for canonization as a saint is under consideration by the Catholic Church.

Reviews

[Tori Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a world of countless Catholic mom blogs and books and online groups about liturgical living, the long middle section on that topic was not terribly exciting, although I appreciated the emphasis on simple practices. (I laughed at the passage about being gifted a word to meditate on for the year since that is so popular these days, although the version described in the book is several steps up from an online generator.) I liked the descriptions of Catherine's philosophy, her Q&A, and texts taken from letters, talks, etc., and I wish there had been more development of those parts; the treatment of the ideas that stood out to me as most unique/different from what I've read before was brief. The whole thing was rather disjointed as well, but that would be hard to avoid in a book like this, made up of collections of this and that from the editor and Catherine herself.

[Kathleen Kirchner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super good, simple look at the grace of everyday tasks and ways to form your life around the liturgical year.