The Cloud of Witnesses

How to keep a feast

The calendar ranks its days. A Solemnity is kept like a Sunday — the highest festivity: Mass, rest where you can, and the best meal of the week (a solemnity even lifts a Friday’s penance). A Feast is a step below: a saint or mystery the whole Church celebrates — mark the day at table and in prayer. A Memorial is a working day that remembers its saint — a collect at prayer, their story read aloud, one small festivity. An Optional memorial is an invitation, not an obligation: keep it if the saint is yours. The old rhythm underneath is simple — the church fasts before it feasts, and feasts without apology: read the day’s entry in the Martyrology, pray with the saint, and put something good on the table. Where a real folk tradition survives for the table, this calendar sets it out below.

Carry it in your pocket

This room, cut small: a deck of thirty-six holy cards — twenty-four of the saints below and twelve prayers. Each saint card names the feast, the years and what they are asked for, and carries the saint’s own words on the back with the source printed under them. The prayer cards carry the prayer entire, in the words the Chapel prays them.

Four sheets of ordinary card stock. Print both sides, flip on the long edge, print at 100% rather than “fit to page,” and cut on the marks — the file opens with a page that says so again. They come out 2.5 × 3.5 inches, which is the size every card sleeve and snap wallet already fits. Freely you have received; freely give — print it, copy it, and hand it on without asking us.

Print the deck (free PDF)