Paraliturgy and the “Liturgical Living” trend

If you’re a Catholic female on social media, it’s pretty impossible to escape the term “liturgical living”. Popular among homeschooling moms, moms of young children, and moms generally trying to reconnect their family rhythm with their Faith, the term generally refers to an incorporation of the liturgical year (Saints’ feasts, Holy Days, penitential seasons, etc.) into daily life through recipes, crafts, and other activities.

I do not bake feast day-related desserts, but I do have a lot of experience digging through academic books and articles on the topic of the liturgy while writing my Master’s thesis on the ad Pacem in the Old Hispanic Rite. In the wake of that deep dive into the liturgy, I have found some intriguing food for thought in how the liturgical living trend integrates (or fails to integrate) with more scholarly understandings of the topic. Were I to go on to do a PhD (hah! what a contrafactual), I would most assuredly continue to pursue medieval liturgiology. In that alternate universe, I would 100% turn this topic into an interdisciplinary article for a conference on women and religion called something like “Paraliturgical pressure: how living in a society de-tethered from religious community turns Catholic mothers into eager customers of saint-themed products.”

Consider yourself spared; I have written a blog instead. I hope that perhaps by integrating the insights of medieval scholarships on paraliturgy and medieval Catholic life in general, I can lay the groundwork for an enhanced approach to liturgical living. One which is grounded in Church tradition, attainable to the average Catholic family, and not particularly stress-inducing.

Liturgical living online: what the moms are up to

“Liturgical living” as Catholic Moms On The Internet generally mean it somewhat predates my taking interest in such things. By the time I started reading about it, there were already numerous articles aimed at frazzled mothers advising them on how to avoid being overwhelmed by the concept. Presumably, there pre-existed a few years of content pouring out with ideas for “liturgical living” that then prompted the overwhelm. Such overwhelm is apparently a huge problem in the Catholic community, given the amount of articles and instagram posts circulating about it.

• One blog is titled “Help!- Living the Liturgical Year Overwhelms Me!” with a step-by-step for preparing, planning, and executing your liturgical year activities. She refers to “Resolving to Rock the Liturgical Year” as an achievable goal with the right kind of extensive planning in advance (and tracking one’s progress in the interest of repeated traditions).
• I enjoyed this piece from Blessed is She, which suggests “starting simple” with fun feast-day related foods to integrate into your menu. The author identifies the overwhelm problem thus: “What started out as an attempt to grow spiritually can become a near occasion of sin due to the stress of bringing it all to fruition.” So, it would seem that liturgical living is an effort in spiritual growth that rapidly becomes untenable due to the inherent stress. And then “Chances are, you may be comparing your efforts with those liturgical living experts…” (Experts? In liturgical living? Who gave them this honor? Does the Dicastery for Divine Worship pass out certifications?)
• The Contemplative Homemaker has an entire series of “liturgical living for busy families.” Ideas range from family activities, to meals, to educational discussions to have with one’s children. January, for example, is the month to visit an archery range (St. Sebastian), discuss the virtue of chastity (St. Agnes), and make oxtail soup (St. Thomas Aquinas). Unusually but refreshingly, this series includes suggestions for both adults and children.
  • From this site I also learned about this liturgical living “bundle” from IamHis365 that is geared toward the Traditional Latin Mass attendees. For about $200, you can access various printable PDFs to guide your family’s liturgical living journey.
• Steffani, the lady behind His Girl Sunday addressed the hot topic of “Liturgical Living Burnout.” Steffani suggests that the issue is that mothers try to turn LL into a series of teaching moments for their children rather than just an authentic living out of the Catholic Faith. Her solution is to involve entire families and communities in your liturgical activities (so the burden does not fall on the homeschooling mother) and to rest easy knowing that the bare minimum of regularly attending Mass and receiving the Sacraments is true liturgical living.
  • I think this is a really wise critique. I also doubt that it stopped a single overwhelmed homeschooling mom reading it from continuing to compare herself to the author, who has a massive repertoire of delicious recipes, product collaborations, and theological reflections on her website. At an organizational level, she offers Liturgical Living consulting services to schools, parishes, and conferences.
• A very admirable lady named Kendra Tierney has an entire book and business called “Catholic All Year”. One of their taglines, related to the aforementioned risk of overwhelm, is “liturgical living made easy”. Catholic Link described her book as a “Liturgical living hack” (wouldn’t a hack sort of…defeat the point here). I recently had the pleasure of visiting the “Catholic All Year Market” pop-up shop and found it to be full of small children, wholesome Catholic kitsch, and elaborately specific items that I never would have dreamed of in a thousand years (you can purchase the St. Kateri-themed snow taffy kit online). Kendra, I would hazard, is what the BiS blog means by a “liturgical living” expert.

I like these liturgical living ladies. I really do. I follow them on instagram, bookmark some of their recipes, and order gifts for friends and family from among the products they promote. Aside from the general pressure toward consumerism (which is not by any means limited to liturgical living) that social media communities exert on women, I do not take issue with the desire to orient one’s life toward the liturgical year, especially if it means adding fun things into one’s routine. While my parents managed to give me a solid grounding in the Faith with only an occasional liturgy-related craft or feast day recipe here and there, I do not doubt that regular participation in these activities can complement the Catholic homeschooling experience.

However, having spent a solid year immersed in dusty tomes written by 19th century priests and grainy PDFs of liturgical texts originally compiled in the seventh century, I sense a disconnect. The liturgy that I studied and the cycle of crafts, recipes, and subscription bundles are both Catholic. They are both connected to the same liturgical cycle (“same” here used loosely–the specifics of Visigothic Spain’s liturgical calendar differ from those of Medieval England which differ from those of the the post-Tridentine era which in turn differ from the post-VII “reforms” etc. etc). But the relationship between lay activity, community life, and the liturgical calendar has drastically changed. The modern liturgical living movement has brought about a delightful proliferation of Catholic arts, crafts, and educational opportunities, especially for more traditionally-minded families. However, what does a truly traditional relationship between the liturgy and daily life look like? What did it look like 1000 years ago?

Paraliturgical movement: what the medieval Catholics were up to.

A concept I discovered during my academic research that really helped me contextualize a lot of activities of medieval laypeople is paraliturgy. It’s really only a concept that comes up in the depths of niche medieval liturgiology articles, but it’s one that I find useful. This Brittanica article on the topic unfortunately conflates paraliturgy with any voluntary devotion, which I consider insufficient. In scholarly literature, paraliturgy usually refers to any community activity performed by the laity to commemorate a particular event in the liturgical calendar or a sacrament. As opposed to the “official” liturgy like the Sacraments, Mass, the Triduum celebrations, or basically anything done at the altar in a Church, paraliturgy is the sphere of the laity not the clergy.

While paraliturgical activities were commonplace across Medieval Europe, these activities took very different forms in e.g. seventh-century Toledo and fifteenth-century East Anglia. Much like the liturgy itself, paraliturgical movement was very local, rooted in the religious contexts of the time and place where it occurred. Processions, plays, and dances, which often combined secular and religious elements, come to mind–”paraliturgical movements” like these continue to characterize European holiday celebrations.

Many suuch longstanding cultural institutions either have their roots in paraliturgy or are inextricably involved in its sphere of influence. The English “mummer’s play” (which still takes place in some areas around Christmas, Easter, etc.) is a fascinating example of preserved paraliturgy that is inextricably entangled with secular activities. Originally featuring St. George as the hero, “mumming” has experienced several phases of suppression and restoration over the centuries. Its origins are so obscure that for a time it was thought to have predated Christianity, but the scant textual evidence points toward the middle ages. Now experiencing revival among various cultural heritage groups, mumming is popularly associated with similarly revived rituals like Morris dancing and bawdy Christmas pantomimes. Neither of the latter two activities have direct connections to Saints or the liturgical year (that we know of); the pantomime was largely borrowed from Italian Commedia dell’arte, while Morris dancing started as court entertainment. In the modern period, mummer’s plays and pantomime have had plenty of opportunity to influence each other such that it would be hard to tell which was religious and which was secular in origin.

Similarly, Morris dancing has become inextricably linked to many overtly paraliturgical activities. For example, one would be hard pressed to find a plough ceremony in England that does not include it. Plough Monday (the Monday following Epiphany) was the first agricultural “working day” after Christmas. Medieval celebrations on plough Monday or the preceding Sunday involved pagan-inspired fertility rituals as youths dragged a plough about the town followed by a serious and symbolic blessing of the plough at Church in hopes of a fruitful agricultural season. Like many customs suppressed during the Reformation, it has seen a resurgence among lovers of local heritage during the modern era. I had the pleasure of witnessing such a Plough Sunday blessing in Durham Cathedral in 2018 (featuring Morris dancing). The ceremony represents a fascinating blend of eclectic English heritage and deep connection between land, liturgy, and daily life. One can read a fascinatingly esoteric piece about Durham, plough Sunday, and Morris dancing by a Durham-based blogger here.

These English traditions are an excellent example of how some paraliturgical activities can seep into secular community life such that their religious origin is unrecognizable to the ignorant, but a liturgical marker to those who who are attentive. England is, in general, particularly good at this (likely due to the Oxford Movement and its reinstatement of many pre-reformation traditions in the 19th century). Even today, the grocery stores in England prominently display pancake mix on Shrove Tuesday and Hot Cross buns during Holy Week. Even Mother’s Day is celebrated on Mothering Sunday (Laetare Sunday), when, due to the preponderance of mothers mentioned in the liturgy of the Word, medieval laypeople would make a pilgrimage to their “Mother Church”–either the local cathedral or the parish where they were baptized.

I am inclined to think that, if American secular culture were similarly steeped in the vestiges of paraliturgy, the homeschooling moms of Catholic instagram would feel far less pressure to concoct so many special recipes on their own. However, it should not go unmentioned that traditionally the laity engaged in some far less jovial forms of paraliturgy, many of which have been lost to the secular culture even in countries with strong medieval roots like England. Eamon Duffy writes of one such practice while discussing the the laity’s enthusiasm for paraliturgical activity around Lady Day (The Annunciation) and other Marian Feasts:

In the parish church at Yaxley there survives a “sexton’s wheel”, a bizarre roulette-like device with six spokes, each assigned to one of the major feasts of the Virgin. Coloured strings were attached to each spoke and the wheel was spun: the devotee seized a string and observed the weekday on which the relevant feast fell as a fast in honour of the Virgin throughout the ensuing year.

Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, 42

Colored strings and extra penance–what could be more in line with Catholic homeschooling?

But seriously–it is activities like this that best capture the paraliturgy to which the liturgical living trend, perhaps unconsciously, aspires. The interactivity, the light-hearted ritual in a public space which then lead to a serious devotional practice…what sets this apart from ye local mommy blogger’s lenten craft digital download? I would suggest two things, which will lead me to my final reflections on how to integrate a more traditional sense of paraliturgy into liturgical living.

1. This was a “locally grown” ritual.
2. This was an activity for adults.

Final reflections for paraliturgical progress.

These two key differentiators teach us a lot about the traditional role of paraliturgy in Catholic life and how it differs from liturgical living as we know it today.

1. Marian-fast-roulette did not require Google, Pinterest, or buying an Etsy digital download. It was a publicly accessible, organic product of local parish life. The more impious laypeople of Yaxley likely joked about it while bustling about the marketplace; the pious old busybodies of the parish probably kept tabs throughout the year on who observed their promised fast. There was little concern about “missing out” on the richness of the Faith because, unless you were a recluse, local peer pressure kept you “in the know”. If another neighboring village dared to observe different traditions, one of three things might occur: the tradition could be adopted, adapted, or ignored; in the absence of overt heresy there was a great deal of leeway.
   
2. Medieval paraliturgy in general concerned adults and/or entire families rather than children as an isolated group. A great deal of modern liturgical living content centers around teaching children the faith. Mom reads the Saint of the day, sets up the craft station, and spends hours in the kitchen; the kids enjoy the fruits of her labor; dad enjoys the leftovers from the first, failed attempt at an appropriately liturgically shaped dessert.
   

The anxieties and belabored discussions of the anxieties around liturgical living suggest that a problem lurks within liturgical living. I think the medieval paraliturgy can provide a solution, albeit not a quick fix.

The average American Catholic family has it tough when it comes to achieving any sort of organic paraliturgy. Catholicism’s comparatively brief history in America has been quite the rollercoaster; the shift away from ethnocentric Catholic neighborhoods and parishes, the severing of the Catholic schools from their traditional role in community life, and of course the myriad effects of Vatican II for better or worse. Rarely does an American family rub shoulders with their fellow-parishioners in the market square; their best bet is running into someone they recognize at the grocery store after Mass on Sunday. Even those families more nostalgic about their (European) heritage only have a vague, modernized concept thereof, as any St. Patrick’s Day parade will show.

Hispanic-American communities are a notable exception. I would posit that the melange of pagan, Catholic, and secular traditions in Latin America shares far more commonalities with the paraliturgical trends of medieval Europe than many of the more isolated attempts at liturgical living by American Catholics enamored by the Western European traditions.

The families fretting over the calendar of Saints and spending money on liturgical living are tasked with a Catholicism that is largely unrooted. The local parish might have some mediocre felt banner-type activities for children in the vestibule, but adults are largely left out of the equation. The secular culture offers no help. Even chocolate “Advent” calendars follow the month of December, not the liturgical season. Parents therefore undertake the aforementioned “overwhelming” efforts to properly instill the significance of the liturgical year into children by buying or dreaming up products and activities that they hope will retain some level of spiritual significance into their home.

I truly think a more holistic understanding of liturgy and paraliturgy in history could significantly lighten the mental load of liturgical living on mothers. Taking on added responsibility to recreate a family life tied to the liturgical calendar is admirable, but the liturgical calendar itself grew out of an age when “liturgical” living was just “living” and varied greatly from place to place. For a large part of the history of the Catholic Church, saints esteemed in one area were unknown in another; different countries started Lent and Advent on different days; and the Mass celebrated in Spain had readings and propers entirely foreign to the Masses in Italy. If only such diversity were still present in the Western Church!

As each locale chose which devotions to cultivate and which paraliturgies to preserve, Catholic families can likewise pick and choose with which liturgically-inspired activities they will enrich their daily lives–or not. Just because it explicitly commemorated a religious event in no way meant that any given paraliturgical exercise was particularly holy. Many a “devout” medieval Catholic took more interest in the free-flowing Ale and day off of work that accompanied various feast days than the Saint to which they were attached. Devotion to martyrs was often accompanied by macabre obsession with lurid accounts of torture which were conflated with one another to create even more sensational stories which werre then memorialized for the congregation to admire in reliefs and rood screens. On some feast days, such as the Eve of St. Agnes, young ladies got together and baked bizarre ritualistic recipes meant to reveal visions of their future husbands (these “dumb cake” baking ceremonies are far more reminiscent of a middle school slumber party than anything else). All of these things developed organically alongside a liturgically oriented daily rhythm.

In short, truly “traditional Catholic” paraliturgy was messy. It does not pristinely run on schedule, it does not primarily concern children, and it does not exclude the integration of more humble, non-religious activities.

What paraliturgy did do is simple.

First of all, it pointed even secular activities back to Christ and the Church. In Visigothic Spain, multi-day wedding rituals combining time at home and time in Church gradually grew out of the sacrament. On the other hand, the regal ceremonies of the kings in Toledo became intensely paraliturgical displays of piety despite originating in imitation of pagan Roman processional traditions. Such activities which might not seem overtly Catholic became so by nature of the Catholicity of their participants.

Secondly, all these activities, especially those that arose spontaneously and organically with very little institutional oversight, bound together communities. The diversity of practices from village to village allowed for paraliturgy to be something intensely personal and flexible. I don’t think anybody should drag a plough around their local suburb surrounded by a troupe of homeschooled Morris Dancers. I do think there are many secular and even “frivolous” activities in which many families already engage that can be organically connected to the liturgical year with minimal effort. Something as simple as getting donuts after Mass with another family is, frankly, a form of paraliturgy. It is also an incredibly sustainable form of community building–something which profoundly characterized the lay traditions of the middle ages. In their efforts to integrate liturgical living, I would encourage Catholic families to focus less on elaborate and explicit connections to the calendar and more on community life.

I am merely a Catholic medievalist, not a liturgical living expert. I do not have a horde of children who have special handmade costumes for saints days and eat special meals for Marian feasts. But I suspect that a shift from a pre-planned checklist to organic, spontaneous paraliturgy might ease the unnecessary burden that the spectre of liturgical living sometimes imposes on Catholic moms and their bank accounts.

If you go to Mass every Sunday, you are living liturgically. To live paraliturgically requires only a little bit of additional spontaneity and creativity.

A few notes:

• I don’t dislike everything that has come out of the liturgical living trend. I think the proliferation of small businesses that make Catholic products is great for gifts, sacramental milestones, and other special occasions. At the same time, I don’t think one needs any special Catholic “Stuff” to live paraliturgically.
• Spain and England happen to be the medieval societies I know the most about; there exists scholarship which I have yet to read on parallel paraliturgical activities in Italy, France, etc.
• I highly recommend the work of Eamon Duffy for understanding liturgical life in medieval England and Andrew Kurt and Jocelyn Hillgarth for the same in medieval Spain.