By Annie-Rose Keith
Connecting Liturgy and Life
Editor’s note: For 2026, the weekly Connecting Faith and Life column has been renamed Connecting Liturgy and Life. The columns consist of reflections on Part Two of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC): The Celebration of the Christian Mystery.
The Liturgy I. The Mystery: CCC 1076-1083; 1084-1090
In my younger days, a story was shared with me from the controversial naturalist Eustace Conway. Regardless of whatever silliness Conway throws into the cultural zeitgeist, this story has stuck with me. In a chapter of “The Last American Man,”a short work written by Elizabeth Gilbert on Conway, readers are presented with Conway’s philosophy that “everything is circular.” He writes, “Nature, where everything is connected, is circular. The seasons are circular. The planet is circular, and so is its passage around the sun. The course of water over the earth is circular, coming down from the sky and circulating through the world to spread life and then evaporating up again.”
Conway goes on to remark that we live in boxes, rather than in the circles of old. He maintains that we wake up in the boxes of our bedrooms, eat breakfast from a box, drive to work in a box to sit in another office box, and stare at a computer box. All of this only to drive back home in a box to be entertained by a television box, which will then return us to our boxes in which we sleep. He delivers a theory that is ultimately reductive of the human experience, but it nevertheless gave me pause. Things work better when everything works together. Relationships work better when both parties put forth effort to help the relationship thrive. Things work better in circles, to put it geometrically. The older I get, the more I find this to be true, even with regard to our Catholic faith and our very existence in the Body of Christ.
My parish has started implementing Catechesis of the Good Shepherd into our faith formation programming. It’s been going very well, and I’m excited to see how the program continues to grow and develop. In the weeks leading up to Advent, students are given the Liturgical Calendar and materials with which they are to work and ponder this great gift. The materials for this presentation are simple, yet enable students to relate the colors of the seasons to things like Father’s chasuble color, how the church is decorated for the season, and even how the liturgical colors relate to the changing of earth’s seasons. Beginning days for each liturgical season might change on the “secular calendar,” but the length of these seasons does not change. After the “growing” of Ordinary Time, we prepare in Advent for the coming of our Savior. We then celebrate the coming of our Savior at Christmas (and for eight days following!), and we prepare for the death of our Savior only to celebrate His triumphant Resurrection at Eastertide. We then move into Ordinary Time, allowing God to help us grow in new ways towards him until Advent begins again.
Each season is marked with changes in visual elements, changes to auditory and participatory elements in our liturgy, and even changes to our behavior and homes if we want to really embrace the flavors of liturgical living. All of this because God, the Father, fills us with his blessings in the Word “made flesh” who died and rose for us and pours into our hearts the Holy Spirit through the liturgy. We then participate to bring attention to the Paschal Mystery and to “bless the Father” with our “worship, praise, and thanksgiving” (Compendium of the Catechism, 1077-1083). God gives us his grace through the liturgy and the sacraments, and we, in turn, thank God for his blessings by living our lives with eternity in mind, with Christ the Word made flesh as our example and help from the Holy Spirit.
The circular nature of our faith through our holy Mass is a mystery. By embracing this mystery, we are filled with the desire to search for the fullest understanding of this mystery revealed only through the church, created by Jesus. A mystery, in light of the Catholic church, is something the church militant cannot fully comprehend, yet are obligated to live in this mystery because it both subsists in God, is revealed by God, and is for the glory of God.
Annie-Rose Keith is the Director of Faith Formation for Resurrection Parish in Evansville. A native of Southern Illinois, Annie-Rose enjoys dabbling in various creative outlets like painting, music, crochet and graphic design, and spending time with her husband Joe and children, Juliana, Theo and Paul.