Into the Wild: a blog by the Discalced Carmelites UK

For many families, the first sign of the coming festivities comes, after the advent wreath, with baking. Smells of cookies, cakes and bread pervade many homes. From spice cookies to almond crescents there is a joy that accompanies this activity. Especially in homes with small, and not so small, children using the cookie cutters is a way to include all members of the family in the process. A lot of thought goes into baking. Choosing the recipes, finding the ingredients, and baking takes time but it is a time that during Christmas many don't quite measure, it simply goes by in a way that reminds me of something an old professor commented once. He was reminiscing about his childhood Christmases and one of the things he remembered noticing was that time seemed to not exist during Christmas. Family members came and time was spent sharing, eating, playing, and singing, but this time spent wasn't measured. No one stopped to notice the time spent during preparation or the time spent to

 As Catholics we stand in an interesting place: we follow two calendars that are not always in sync. There is the liturgical calendar according to which our year ended with Christ the King and the every day, everyone calendar (in more cases this will be according to the old Gregorian calendar), which has the year ending on the 31st of Dec. While this might appears as if Catholics live torn between two worlds it is really a reminder of the call we have to maintain a balance. A reminder that while we are not of this world we are in it and in being in it we are called to bring God into it so that it can return to God.  Catholics are constantly exposed to both the earthly and the divine through the liturgy, it is the divine entering our everyday lives. This is enacted in a very real way by the intertwining of the liturgical calendar with the everyday calendar even when they do not align with each other perfectly. This is especially visible during Advent and Christmas. We prepare expectantl

There really is no passage in the entire Bible that for me forms the link between the Old and the New Testament quite so clearly as the Virgin Mary travelling to visit her cousin Elizabeth. While the encounter is in everyone's mind, especially if they pray the liturgy of the hours, because of the Magnificat, the fact that Mary travels from Nazareth to the hill country of Judah is a small detail, often read quickly but which carries with it great significance. Judah is where the ark of the covenant dwelt and Mary, in carrying the Messiah, being thus the new ark of the covenant, was travelling to the same hill country. What follows is their encounter, the baby John (the baptist) leaps in Elizabeth's womb and she exclaims "And why has this happened to me that the mother of my Lord comes to me?"  and Mary responds with her song of praise. It can sometimes be easy to forget that these two women were Israelites, that the babies they carried were Israelites and that their Go