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1765 Regina Begin the Thirty Days

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The Liturgical Home

The Church's year at your table: today's feast and season, the days of fasting, the feasts ahead, and your own family's name days and baptism days beside them.

I · What it is

The year the Church keeps, kept at home

Across one year the Church unfolds the whole mystery of Christ, from His Incarnation and birth to His Ascension, Pentecost and the hope of His coming again (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 1168 to 1173 and 1194). The family is the domestic church, the first place where faith is learned and prayed (paragraphs 1655 to 1658). So the year the Church keeps at the altar is a year a household can keep at its table.

Our Lady is the model. Of her life at Nazareth, St Luke writes:

And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them. And his mother kept all these words in her heart.

Luke 2:51, Douay-Rheims

II · How to use it

Five places, one year

  • Today. The day's celebration, its colour and the saints kept, whether it is a day of fast or abstinence in the United States, the noon prayer (the Angelus, or the Regina Caeli in Easter Time), and one thing to do at home. Mark a day "kept at your table" and the tool remembers it.
  • The season. What the season means, what goes on the table, and customs your household can make its own. Mark the ones you keep and print the season card for the kitchen.
  • Feasts. A month calendar in the colours of the year, holy days and fast days marked, and the next ten feasts. Tap a day to read it; a day already past can be marked kept there too. Print the month as your household calendar, or add the next twelve months to your phone's calendar with one file.
  • Family. Your own name day, and, if you have them, your husband's and your children's: name days, birthdays, baptism days and a wedding anniversary, with the days you keep in remembrance, beside the Church's feasts. Enter them once: every Regina tool reads the same details.
  • The library. The Angelus, the Regina Caeli, the Hail, Holy Queen and the Memorare in English and Latin, and the Magnificat in the Douay-Rheims, with the O Antiphons of Advent, the colours of the year, the months, and the law of fast and abstinence.

III · Fast and abstinence

The law, plainly stated

Every Friday of the year is a day of penance. In the United States, outside Lent, you may keep it by abstaining from meat or by another act of penance; the bishops gave abstinence the first place. On Ash Wednesday and Good Friday Catholics fast and abstain; on the Fridays of Lent they abstain from meat. Abstinence binds from the age of fourteen; fasting from eighteen until fifty-nine, and means one full meal and two smaller meals that together do not equal a full meal. Excused from both fast and abstinence: the physically or mentally ill, including those with a chronic illness such as diabetes, and women who are pregnant or nursing (USCCB). When in doubt, ask your parish priest. When a solemnity falls on a Friday, the Friday abstinence does not bind.

IV · Name days

A feast for every name

A name day is the feast of the saint whose name you bear. The tool suggests one for each person from the saints on the US calendar, and asks you to choose when several share the name (there are many Johns and Teresas). If your child's patron is not on the calendar, choose the day your family keeps. A name day you choose for a child or your husband is saved in your profile, so the other Regina tools keep it too.

Questions

Which calendar does the tool follow?

The General Roman Calendar as kept in the dioceses of the United States, with the US holy days of obligation, the transfers of solemnities, and the Ascension kept on Sunday in most US provinces. Where your diocese differs, your parish calendar comes first.

Are the household customs obligations?

No. The customs for each season and feast are suggestions written for 1765 Regina. The obligations the tool names are the Church's own law: Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation (canons 1246 and 1247) and the law of fast and abstinence (canons 1250 to 1253), set out with its sources in the library.

Where are my family's dates kept?

On your own device. The calendar file is made on your device too. Nothing is sent to 1765 Regina unless you turn on Regina Key sync, which sends only an encrypted copy that 1765 Regina cannot read.

Sources

The explanations, the household customs and the name-day guidance are written for 1765 Regina in our own words. The prayers are the Church's traditional prayers, each given with its source.

Further reading in the Library: What Is the Domestic Church? A Catholic Guide · How to Make a Catholic Home Altar · Epiphany House Blessing with Chalk · How to Celebrate a Baptism Anniversary