Matthaeus

Ever since I discovered Enid M. Chadwick’s absolutely delightful, one-of-a-kind My Book of the Church’s Year, I have been upset at the fact that it has long been out of print. The rare original copies still floating around fetch exorbitant prices on the internet. I decided that it was time to do something about it, and have created a new paperback edition available here.

But why get so excited about this book? Quite simply, it’s the loveliest, most charming, and in many ways most clever introduction to the liturgical calendar I've ever come across. It is informed by such a deep Catholic love for the seasons of the year, the feasting and fasting, the great holy days, the pageantry of the saints and their stories, the underlying rhythm that connects nature, culture, and sanctity. If you take a few minutes to explore the pages (some examples are found below; the Amazon product page offers access to more), you will see what I’m talking about.

As one who believes that the Catholic imagination has utterly withered and is in desperate need of revitalization, and that we must begin in earnest with our children, what I especially appreciate is Chadwick’s compelling sense of beauty, order, and mystery. She is captivated by the fullness of the Church’s year and conveys a sense of it to the viewer in bright images without the need for excess verbiage. She sees that the calendar follows a comforting logic, traces out a pattern of its own, into which we are privileged to insert ourselves. Her careful planning of the illustrations and her equally intelligent choice of texts reveal a profound grasp of the fundamental dogmas of the Faith.

Let me give just a few examples of the accessible richness of doctrine we find in these pages. In her Advent bifold, Chadwick introduces the Patristic and medieval doctrine of the threefold coming of Christ: in the flesh at Christmas, in the sacrament at Mass, and on the last day at the Judgment. In her pages on December, she provides the classic perspective on the three feasts following Christmas: St. Stephen is a martyr in will and deed; St. John is a martyr in will but not in deed; the Holy Innocents are martyrs in deed but not in will. Her page for Pentecost shows the Spirit pouring forth the seven sacraments of the Church. One of the pages for Lent speaks of prayer as our weapon against the devil, fasting as our weapon against the flesh, and almsgiving as our weapon against the world. It’s so well done! Why are books like this so rare?

There is here a sensibility for beauty, a love for the mysteries of Christ and the Church, which goes vastly beyond almost anything we can see in today’s Catholic or Christian children’s books. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It makes a fine catechetical tool for teaching children about the liturgical year and the feasts of each month, and beyond that, offers a plethora of eye-catching details that would suffice to keep many a child contentedly occupied during Mass or family Rosary (Enid Chadwick obviously knew what little children like in books: lots and lots of details to fascinate the eye and exercise the mind).

Well... I can make a confession, too. I'm not a wee lad anymore, but I find My Book of the Church’s Year comforting and inspiring. It reminds me that our Faith, however it may strain to the fullest the greatest intellectual gifts of the most towering intellectuals like St. Thomas Aquinas, is, at root, a gathering of earthly and heavenly friends, a colorful tapestry of their stories, and a fragrant garden of mysteries in which we are free to play. Enid Chadwick captured this universally childlike freshness in My Book of the Church's Year, and I hope you will take advantage of it for yourself, your children, or your parishioners.

Some notes: As mentioned above, the book corresponds to the traditional Western calendar, as indicated in such features as the page on Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima Sundays. Chadwick was a High Church Anglican (frankly, this book is more obviously Catholic than most Roman Catholic publications nowadays), so there are a few features in the book that need to be adapted for the Roman Catholic calendar — e.g., she speaks of “Sundays after Trinity” when we would speak of “Sundays after Pentecost,” and gives March 8th as the date of St. Thomas Aquinas's feast, when it is March 7th on our traditional calendar. And “Charles the White King,” listed as a martyr on January 30th, the day he was executed under Cromwell, is going to take a little explaining, although it would make an interesting subject of conversation. Also, Chadwick was writing for a British audience, so a few of her saints are chosen with a view to the British Isles. She calls Pentecost “Whit Sunday,” which will require an explanation for Americans who have never heard this expression before.