Calendar Class of November 30, 2025

A Carpe Diem Snapshot:

Carpe Tempus! Seize the Season! Happy New Year, Friends! Today we begin a new liturgical year in the Catholic church with the season of Advent. As you will read below, Advent is a beautiful time of year in which we can begin something new to go deeper into our understanding of the Faith. Many beloved traditions have grown up in different cultures to commemorate this season of anticipation, from the penitential to the celebratory. The Roman rite is a combination of the two, which is an accurate mirror of life. In the words of William Blake: "Man was made for Joy & Woe, And when this we rightly know, Thro the World we safely go. Joy & Woe are woven fine, A Clothing for the soul divine, Under every grief & pine, Runs a joy with silken twine." Given this complementary duality of the season, it's appropriate to "celebrate" it with a new Memento Mori practice- the Book of Days. As I've written before, the first "Book of Days" was the Roman poet Ovid's great work called Fasti, an account of the Roman calendar of traditions that gave rise to Roman culture. Sadly, we only have the first six months as the emperor Augustus exiled Ovid while he was in the midst of writing it! The other great "Book of Days" that has been written is that of Robert Chambers (1869). Chambers built a house on the Scores in St. Andrews, Scotland, the very same street I once lived on, and diligently wrote his magnum opus there, dying not long after. It is said that this weighty project hastened his death! Given these inauspicious attempts to create a definitive Book of Days, I've decided to adopt the medieval practice of keeping a Book of Days day-by-day instead. Inspired by the popular medieval Book of Hours, the Book of Days in the sense of a personal daily diary or journal is a catalogue of annual holidays and commemorations of importance to each owner. I will follow the same template that I have been using for Calendar Class, studying the "four cycles of life" in the day, as ultimately these are the things that matter most. Speaking of things that matter most, the four Sundays of Advent, with their wonderful tradition of lighting each candle on the wreath in the countdown to Christmas, provides an opportunity to renew the effort to set aside each Sunday as a sacred time. Ever the planner, I've created a simple formula to follow that would be difficult to forget: Mass, Stroll, Feast. Each Sunday I will write a longer Calendar Class like this, that we can read after the feast. On weekdays I will substitute the time I spend researching and writing this blog with the creation of a page in my Book of Days (of course, I will still be sharing a "Carpe Diem Snapshot" with you each day!). While I have learned so much from the internet-based research I have done to create this daily blog, our educational philosophy is to be contemplative and providence-led, so the old-fashioned pen and paper approach is more conducive to those ends. My prayers are with you for a peaceful Advent, friends.

Liturgical: First Sunday of Advent

For Catholics, the new Liturgical Year commences with the First Sunday of Advent, opening the Advent season. In this new Liturgical Year, the Church not only wishes to indicate the beginning of a period, but the beginning of a renewed commitment to the faith by all those who follow Christ, the Lord. This time of prayer and path of penance that is so powerful, rich and intense, endeavors to give us a renewed impetus to truly welcome the message of the One who was incarnated for us. In fact, the entire Liturgy of the Advent season, will spur us to an awakening in our Christian life and will put us in a ‘vigilant’ disposition, to wait for Our Lord Jesus who is coming:

‘Awaken! Remember that God comes! Not yesterday, not tomorrow, but today, now! The one true God, "the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob," is not a God who is there in Heaven, unconcerned with us and our history, but he is the-God-who-comes.’

Pope Benedict XVI, Celebration of First Vespers of Advent, Vatican Basilica, December 2006

—Excerpted from Dicastery for the Clergy

The First Sunday of Advent marks the new Liturgical Year, and the Church shifts into a new Lectionary Cycle for Sundays, with 2025-26 returning to Cycle A, the Gospel of St. Matthew. In the Sunday Gospel (Matthew 24:37-44), Jesus invites us to recognize the signs of the last days. This is a reminder that Advent is not just looking back at the first coming of Christ at Christmas, but our personal preparation for His Second Coming: "Therefore, stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come....you also must be prepared, for an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come."

A Short Explanation of the Advent season and Its Significance in the Liturgical Year

The History, Customs and Folklore of Advent

Resources for Celebrating Advent in the Home

Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon: The Season of Sacred Waiting

Fr. Plant's Homily-Scripture Lesson: Stay Awake!

Fr. Mike Schmitz: Can you really change in one month?

Sanctoral: Happy Name Day (Onomastico) to all the Andrews and Andreas out there, myself included!

St. Andrew (1st c.) was the first of the twelve Apostles to follow Jesus, after being a disciple of St. John the Baptist, the Precursor of Christ. St. Andrew was a fisherman by trade and the younger brother of St. Peter. Andrew recognized Jesus as the prophesied Messiah and left his fishing trade behind to follow Jesus, convincing his brother Simon Peter to do the same. After Jesus' ascension into heaven, Andrew preached the Gospel throughout the world as commanded by Christ. He ministered and preached in Asia Minor before finally being martyred by crucifixion in the city of Patras in Achaea, Greece. He was tied to an X-shaped cross by request, not deeming himself worthy to die on the same kind of cross as his Savior. Andrew suffered for two days before dying, while continuing to preach Christ from his cross.

Human: 1016 King of Denmark, Cnut the Great [Canute], claims the English throne after the death of Edmund Ironside

1487 The first German Beer Purity Law (Reinheitsgebot) is promulgated in Munich by Albert IV, Duke of Bavaria, stating that beer should be brewed from only three ingredients: water, malt, and hops

​1786 Grand Duke of Tuscany Leopold II promulgates a penal reform, making Tuscany the first state to abolish the death penalty; November 30 is now commemorated as Cities for Life Day

1876 Archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovers the gold Mask of Agamemnon at Mycenae in modern Greece, known as "the Mona Lisa of prehistory"

Birthday of Mark Twain (1835) and Winston Churchill (1874)

Natural: Is Advent a season of fasting? Little practices to help us prepare

In 490, Bishop Perpetuus of Tours officially declared Advent a penitential season in the Frankish Church of Western Europe, ordering a fast on three days of every week from November 11 (the feast of St. Martin of Tours) till Christmas. This forty days' fast, similar to Lent, was originally called Quadragesima Sancti Martini (Forty Days' Fast of Saint Martin's).

By contrast, the Advent season of the Roman liturgy, developing a century after that of the Frankish Church, was a non-penitential, festive and joyful time of preparation for Christmas. When the Church unified the liturgical season, the non-penitential nature of the Roman Advent conflicted with the longer and penitential Gallic Advent. By the thirteenth century a compromise was reached, which combined the fasting and penitential character of the Gallic observance with the Mass texts and shorter four-week cycle of the Roman Advent liturgy. The liturgy of Advent remained substantially unaltered until Vatican II mandated a few minor changes to more clearly delineate the spirit of the Lenten and Advent seasons.

The most perfect way to embrace the spirit of Advent is to attend daily Mass and pray the Liturgy of the Hours. If this is not possible, try smaller goals, such as attending one extra mass during the week; praying the Saturday Evening Prayer with the family in preparation for Sunday; reading and discussing the readings of the Mass of the day with the family.

The members of the domestic church should also try to receive the Sacrament of Penance during the Advent season to prepare for the coming of Christ “for it is not possible coherently to celebrate the birth of him ‘who saves his people from their sins’ without some effort to overcome sin in one’s own life.” (Directory on Popular Piety, #105)

There are many customs that can be incorporated in the domestic church to teach and reinforce the Advent spirit. For example, the first Sunday of Advent is a good time for each family member to choose a secret "Christkindl" or Christ Child for whom he or she will perform little acts of love — such as a prayer, a small gift, a sacrifice, a note or a piece of candy — throughout Advent.

Another such Advent practice is that of having an empty crib or manger, which each family member will soften with straw earned by a sacrifice, a prayer or a work of mercy. After Christmas, the family will gather before the Infant Savior, in his now-padded crib, for their evening prayers or for Scripture reading.

Find more suggestions for Advent here.

Italian: Essere come il prezzemolo (to appear everywhere)

In Italian, there is a fun idiomatic expression to describe a person who seems to turn up everywhere, and that is essere come il prezzemolo.

Why they chose prezzemolo – that’s parsley in English – is anyone’s guess. I can think of dozens of plants that spread far more aggressively. The most likely explanation is the fact that Italians tend to use prezzemolo in many of their recipes. Another variation on this you might hear is Sei sempre in mezzo come il prezzemolo! which means You are always in the way like parsley!

Quote: “We know certainly that our God calls us to a holy life. We know that he gives us every grace, every abundant grace; and though we are so weak of ourselves, this grace is able to carry us through every obstacle and difficulty.”

-St. Elizabeth Ann Seton