"Beauty pierces her heart and draws her into the sacred. She wants not only her wedding, but her marriage to reflect this in every way: through awe-inspiring liturgy, decor, and photographs, each infused, above all, with the radiant beauty only made manifest in sincere holiness. No matter her past, she has a love for all that is pure. She desires nothing more or less than to make a complete gift of herself. She chases fearlessly after virtue, knowing excellence is the path to true freedom, and freedom is for love. Deeply, profoundly, she is in love..."

The Art of Letter Writing: A Practice in Hospitality

January 04, 2021/ Editor Spoken Bride

SHANNON MESSINK

“She gives of her best everywhere adding a touch of generosity, tenderness, and joy of life.” -Pope St. John Paul the Great

PHOTOGRAPHY: MEL WATSON PHOTOGRAPHY AS SEEN IN MAGGIE AND RYAN’S VINEYARD BRUNCH WEDDING — *PHOTOGRAPHY:* MEL WATSON PHOTOGRAPHY AS SEEN IN MAGGIE AND RYAN’S VINEYARD BRUNCH WEDDING

As a bride, one of our obligations within marriage is to consider how we, with our husband, can practice hospitality. The task of letter writing is one I consider the greatest (and simplest) way to practice hospitality, regardless of living situation, financials, number of little ones, highest college-English course completed, or personality type.

Good Old “Snail Mail”

Complementary to the art of homemaking, letter writing provides an opportunity for our feminine genius and generosity to blossom. Whether it be a thank you note to a friend, a get well card to an elderly relative, or a Mass card to someone who recently lost a family member, all these instances provide a chance for us as wives – the heart of the family – to express God’s love, care, and mercy to those within our relational community.

The reason email, the internet, and social media have caught on so fast, aside from it’s obvious conveniences, is the human desire for making intentional, personal connections. As a child, if you had a pen-pal (do children today still have pen-pals?) or received the annual birthday card from Great-Aunt Jean, then you know what it feels like to be filled with anticipation at what awaits you when going to the mailbox or post office. This desire for personal, intentional, affirming words to and from another person is truly a gift.

Where to begin?

If the art of letter writing has piqued your interest, here are a few pointers on how to begin. Pull out that family calendar or that handy, old address book and start with your immediate family and friends. Is your best friend’s birthday coming up? Send her a card! The holidays are (always) around the corner; consider sending Easter, Thanksgiving, or Christmas cards to some of your closest friends and relatives.

Once you start , don’t stop with just these common occasions. Consider the events in people’s lives that are truly unique and meaningful and then go the extra mile to show that you are thinking about them. Engagements and wedding anniversaries, a new pregnancy or news of a miscarriage, reception of the sacraments, having a rough week, a Marian Consecration anniversary, the death of a family member, a move to a new town far from family–all of these occasions present opportunities of prayer for that special someone and a letter or even a Spiritual Bouquet card is one way to make tangible your prayers and kind thoughts.

I assure you that the response to this simple gesture will surprise you; in fact, it often encourages others to pick up this “dated” habit and you might even find a few surprises in your own mailbox!

Have Fun!

In the end, hospitality or letter writing is not meant to be a chore, have fun with it and start where you are comfortable. Get creative by printing your own address labels, adding stickers or stamps, or even crafting your own greeting cards. If you’re not at that point yet, there are a plethora of stores that sell sweet, fun, and personal stationary for you to use.

So try sitting down and writing to someone special in your life (even if it’s only to your husband). You’ll be gracefully affirmed for your thoughtful gesture.

About the Author: I am a cradle Catholic, wife to the most amazing husband ever, and mother to three little ones (the oldest of which awaits us in Heaven). My family and I reside in North Florida where we will soon be building a house and farming. I am an avid Eucharistic Adorer, servant of Mamma Mary, and love exploring the vast depths of our Catholic Faith and the feminine genius.

August 31, 2020

Cooking through the Liturgical Year

August 31, 2020/ Editor Spoken Bride

MAGGIE STRICKLAND

As a newlywed, I struggled with how to incorporate liturgical living into our lives. The traditions I was familiar with, crafts and storybooks and the like, are geared towards teaching children about the saints and the seasons of the church year. We had received an Advent wreath as a wedding present, but, beyond that, I didn’t have a vision of how to anchor our lives into the church year; we didn’t have a list of family patrons whose feast days we desired to celebrate and I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of feast days that we could celebrate.

After a few years of floundering--including several before our son was born when I made my convert husband put out his shoes for St. Nicholas, since he didn’t get to do that as a child--I’ve started to think about participating in the liturgical year in a simpler way. This practice will undoubtedly get more complex as our family grows, but an easy way for me to think about living liturgically right now is through our menus, choosing simple foods like soup and bread during penitential seasons and going all out during feasting seasons. Here are some cookbooks our family has tried that help me do just that.

Advent

12 Months of Monastery Soups by Brother Victor Antoine d’Avila-Latourrette

I discovered this cookbook at the library one fall when we were part of a vegetable co-op through my husband’s work. With its recipes grouped by month and focused on using seasonally available produce, it quickly became a staple in my meal planning rotation. All of the soups are simple, with just a few steps beyond chopping the produce, and some months even have soups named for particular saints. During Advent, any of the fall or winter soups, served with some bread and perhaps fruit, would make a delightful, filling meal that is both cozy and fitting for a penitential season.

Lent

This Good Food: Contemporary French Vegetarian Recipes from a Monastery Kitchen by Brother Victor Antoine d’Avila-Latourrette Another seasonal cookbook from the same monastery, this one is also filled with recipes that are just as easy as the soups and don’t use lots of exotic ingredients, since the monastery aims to be as self-sufficient as possible. In this cookbook, Brother Victor also includes suggestions for how the monks would serve the dishes; the Italian frittata might be served with salad and fruit as the main meal on a fast day, for example. Using seasonal ingredients is often more cost-effective, as they are in plentiful supply and therefore less expensive, which makes this a perfect cookbook to utilize during Lent, when many people try to make more money available for charitable giving.

Easter and Christmas:

Holiday and Celebration Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois

This is one of our favorite cookbooks for special feast days; like the original cookbook, the base dough recipes are simple and mix up in five minutes, but they are then used in a variety of recipes that range from simple to complex. One of our family favorites is the brioche dough; we’ve used it to make the Holiday Star Bread for Christmas and Easter, as well as making it the base for our king cake on Fat Tuesday and birthday danishes. I like having a few tried-and-true recipes for special feast days and holidays, and I’ve learned not to be afraid of attempting complicated recipes for special occasions, because practice makes those dishes easier to produce each time.

Drinking with the Saints: The Sinner’s Guide to a Holy Happy Hour by Michael P. Foley

This recipe book is a fun way for adults who drink alcohol to participate in the liturgical calendar; Foley has gathered drink recipes and paired them with brief biographies of saints and descriptions of feast days. The first section of the book is arranged by month, with another section of the book for the seasons of the church year, so you have lots of options for how to approach this style of liturgical living. He does use the old pre-Vatican II calendar because there are more saints’ days on it, but there is an appendix in the back that allows you to switch to the newer calendar, which is the one that most people use. The introduction explains how to use the book, which is excellent if you’re novice cocktail makers like us, and the author discusses how to temperately use the book.

About the Author: Maggie Strickland has loved reading and writing stories since her earliest memory. An English teacher by training and an avid reader by avocation, she now spends her days homemaking, chasing her toddler son, and reading during naptime. She and her husband are originally from the Carolinas, but now make their home in Birmingham, Alabama.

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June 29, 2020

About Food: An Opportunity for Virtue and Hospitality

June 29, 2020/ Editor Spoken Bride

MAGGIE STRICKLAND

Food plays an important role in our lives. Families gather at table for daily meals and family reunions; the Eucharist was initiated at the last supper and operates under the physical properties of bread and wine; similarly, for a wedding, the reception often plays significant social role and contributes to the bulk of the budget. Unfortunately for many brides, their relationship with food is in conflict.

PHOTOGRAPHY: VISUAL GRACE — PHOTOGRAPHY: *VISUAL GRACE*

Despite the personal and social good that food brings, brides are often encouraged to take up strict diet and exercise regimes to look their “best” for their wedding day, and then provide a lavish feast at the reception for their guests, even when the bride and groom may or may not be able to sit down and eat. This was certainly the case when I was planning my wedding, and I believed much of this advice, especially about not eating during the reception. Although my parents helped us throw a wonderful event, I wish I had a healthier view of the event in the planning stages.

Much of this internal conflict comes when we misunderstand the importance of food and its proper role in our lives. When we see dessert as a reward, or a starvation diet as a fast way to lose weight, then we are acknowledging externally a disordered internal moral approach to the food we eat and, moreover to the way we view our bodies. When starvation is a means to losing weight, then we deprive ourselves of the nourishment we need, and when dessert is a reward, then we abandon discipline in the name of celebrating discipline. In extreme cases, these internal views of the body can yield eating disorders.

Emily Stimpson Chapman’s The Catholic Table: Finding Joy Where Food and Faith Meet addresses these issues head on. This short book--only 170 pages--looks at food and eating from a truly Catholic perspective.

Chapman states in her introduction that “The Church, in her great wisdom, offers us a way to see the world that can restore the gift of food to its proper place. In her teachings on grace, the Eucharist, the virtues, fasting, hospitality, and the body, she charts a course for us quite different from the one the world urges us to follow” (xvii). The book includes Chapman’s own story of recovering from an eating disorder as well as profiles of saints, food film and Catholic cookbook recommendations, recipes, and quotes from saints and Catholic writers.

The Catholic Table has been instrumental in helping me not only see how the food I eat fits in with my own pursuit of holiness, but also develop a healthy home culture for our children. For couples planning their wedding and reception, three themes stand out as especially insightful.

Exercise and Control

This Catholic view of the body and exercise makes it clear that it’s not wrong to pursue physical fitness, as long as you’re using exercise to care for your body and not to punish it. Chapman explains, “To control something isn’t to care for it. Control is about power. It’s about managing a problem. Caring, on the other hand, is about love. It sees to honor a good. Someone who seeks to control their body and someone who seeks to care for their body are doing two entirely different things. One is treating the body like a problem; the other is treating the body like a gift. One sees the body as a thing; the other sees the body as the person – as me, as you” (57).

“Eating and the Virtues”

Chapter 9, titled “Table Lessons – Eating and the Virtues,” is a reminder that, rather than being “an opportunity for vice,” eating is “a daily invitation to flex our spiritual muscles and grow in justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude. It’s also a chance to demonstrate faith, hope, and charity” (110). Through this virtue-focused lens, the discussion unfolds to reveal ways to practically live out those virtues, rather than going to extremes--which leads to burnout and the formation of bad habits. What better time than engagement to work on developing those spiritual habits that you will need in married life?

For example, instead of eating clean or eliminating a food group, focus on eating with gratitude and in community with others. By shifting a focus away from the food and seeing food as a means to grow in virtue, we are invited to bring prayer and discernment into an ordinary daily task. Many couples strive to prepare for marriage by growing in virtue; making changes around meal times is a frequent opportunity to build virtuous habits and seek God every day.

Hosting and Hospitality

No matter how many times you have hosted dinner parties or social gatherings, a wedding reception is a one-of-a-kind event to offer hospitality to loved ones. Too often we fall into the trap of thinking that a reception should look like a spread in a magazine in order to impress our guests, an event “meant to demonstrate to all who walk through our doors how perfectly fabulous we are” (130). This mindset misses the point of Christian hospitality: loving others and “giv[ing] people a foretaste of the supper to which we’re all invited: the marriage supper of the Lamb” (139).

Just as your wedding Mass is an opportunity to show your guests the goodness of God, the reception can be another opportunity to show them how much they are loved and valued as a member of your community, even if your financial means are limited. If you offer what you have in love and a spirit of real hospitality, the impact will be more meaningful and longer-lasting than an Instagram post.