Welcome and Happy New Year!

Happy New Year? Has this guy lost it? No, I haven’t. For those of you who identify with Western Christianity, mainly Roman Catholicism, you probably will not be familiar with this date. We celebrate the Catholic Church’s New Year on the First Sunday of Advent and the “Get your party on” New Year on January 1st.

For those of you who identify with Eastern Christianity, mainly Eastern Orthodox or Eastern Catholicism, their New Church Year starts on September 1.  To be honest, their calendar makes more sense to me. Their first great feast is the Nativity of Mary, and their last great feast is her Dormition. But I digress.
I like doing important things on days that are easy to remember. My wife and I were friends long before we ever dated, but my first date with her was on 1/1/10. I proposed on 10/10/10. And we got married on 12/31/11. So I figured the Eastern Church’s New Year was a good day to start a new blog, especially since, Advent is way too far away.

I won't bore you with details about me again. If you would like to read them, you can refer to the About Me section of this blog. I will just tell you the schedule I intend to post on this blog. Mondays will be for book reviews, so look for the first review coming in just two days. I will try to be fair and address both Western and Eastern books, so I will alternate my selection each week.

Posts related to Catholic Religious Education will be on Friday, just in case people need last minute ideas or just want to read about my struggles. I teach 7th Grade, so bear in mind most of my lessons and thoughts will be drawing from the New Testament. However, there might be some good ideas, for catechists of all ages. If not, I might at least have some entertaining stories.

Well, that's all I have for today. Thank you for taking the time to read this. And I hope to see you again on September 3rd for my review of the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: New Testament. Don’t forget to tell your friends to stop by too, if you like what you read.