By Katharine E. Harmon, August 19, 2026
My family traveled more than 3,000 miles this summer. In a mini-van.
While the van is a touch worse for wear, the hearts that it carried (including two children under 9 and a 6-year-old mutt) are a bit brighter for having made the journey. Our pilgrimage brought us to cousins, godparents, family homesteads, familiar fields, oceans, and ice cream stands.
Our journey brought us home.
It may be the case that one day it will be too noisome to pack a mini-van with 4 weeks’ worth of supplies (which included a giant stuffed fox, two volumes of The Liturgy Documents, and a large bag of salmon dog kibbles), this is the pattern of our family at present. We need to take these journeys with our hearts, for without them we would not remember who we were.
Our Christian life is also a resplendent journey. True, it may feel like a battered mini-van, carrying cranky children and at least one parent who’s wondering why we allowed the giant stuffed fox to come in the first place. But it is a journey with beauty, too, which takes place for each one of us, commissioned in baptism to take on the Christ-life. We are blessed that we have our whole life, every mile of it, to remember who we are: children of God who hope to see the Living One face to face.
But, the journey toward life in God is also a family adventure. Not one, but the many of us, mystical Body of Christ-composing, come together regularly to mark our way through the map of salvation history: year after year, from Advent to the Incarnation to the Paschal Mystery and all that resplendent green Ordinary Time in between.
The liturgical year helps us remember who we are. Advent brings us to wonder at the Incarnation, and to hope in Christ’s Second Coming. Christmas places the wonder of God’s love, and the goodness of Creation and its fragility, at our doorsteps. Lent begs us for silence, for preparation, to peel off layers of bad habits and self-absorption so that we might be ready to walk with Christ and be conformed to him as best we can, in the Paschal celebration. Ordinary Time? Far from ordinary, it places the work and words of Jesus in front of us each day. Remember who you are: you are God’s children. Love one another as I have loved you.
We don’t measure our Christian life—or our liturgical year—in mini-van miles. But the very fact of moving through the liturgical seasons should remind us that we are going somewhere—we are going home.
When we hear the same readings this year, as we get into a comfortable eschatological season with Matthew in this last long stretch of Ordinary Time, let’s take notice: these aren’t words, prayers, and rites to pass by like so many telephone poles on the highway. Each day, each liturgical celebration, is an opportunity to remember, to become who we are called to be, and to change.
And we don’t even have to sit in a mini-van.
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