Maine Catholic Rural Life Festival 2019
“When a festival goes as it should, men receive something that it is not in human power to give.”
“In celebrating festivals festively, man passes beyond the barriers of this present life on earth.”
-Joseph Pieper
“In celebrating festivals festively, man passes beyond the barriers of this present life on earth.”
-Joseph Pieper
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Join us for the 4th Annual Catholic Rural Life Festival on September 13th and 14th!
Admission is free, but some events are ticketed. Buy Tickets here.
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Matthew Maloney Interviews Max Becher about last year's festival and Catholic Rural Life.
Pastor Fr. Paul Dumais offers the following description of the festival
"In brief, why would a parish host such a festival? Because we all need to expand our capacity for joyful celebration. The genius of Catholic Christianity is transformation; not merely rule keeping, religious habit, tradition for its own sake nor merely formal religious piety. One expression of the transformation made possible in Christ is an increased capacity for joy. Often those we think of as poor have a lesson to teach about the origin and purpose of festivity.
Religious feasts provide us with the opportunity to exercise and grow our capacity for joy. Other festivals that are not simply religious, in a narrow formulaic sense, witness to the transformation of the temporal order. The Catholic Rural Life Festival, inspired by the Autumn Ember Days, combines elements of the temporal cycle, which deserved to be observed along with the Church’s liturgical practices and prayers, which integrate us into the order of grace marked by the sanctoral cycle. This inclination to festivity is in the human heart. When festivals are dislodged from the deeper meaning of joyfully embracing what is good and becoming transformed by the highest goods then they tend toward functional or merely commercial activities. A true festival combines the need for leisure as well as a sense of common participation in the community. The author of In Tune with the World, Josef Pieper, maintains true festivity, genuine festivals, are dependent upon worship of the divine; otherwise, “the root of both festivity and the arts is destroyed.” The Catholic Rural Life Festival, requested by Bishop Deeley, aims at providing a festival experience as Pieper describes.
You will note that we are doing some things like any other festival might do such as practical life as well as artistic demonstrations. We also have developed a program for liturgical prayer and sacred music including not only Mass but also Night Prayer and Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, Confessions, Stations of the Cross and Marian devotions as well as uniquely agrarian traditions of Rogation Litanies. Notice we are deliberately interspersing seemingly secular activities alongside conversation and presentations and also liturgical prayer because Catholics do not have a perfunctory view of the transforming love of God in Christ and His Church because we rejoice in the relationship between the ephemeral and the eternal in so far as Providence governs both! Oh, and enjoy this time and opportunity to invite family and friends to join you and us in a time of leisure bearing in mind the that true leisure prevents us from being “half hearted men with flat souls,” as Fr. James Schall would say."
-Fr. Paul Dumais, Pastor
St. Joseph and St. Rose Parishes
Farmington and Jay, ME
Religious feasts provide us with the opportunity to exercise and grow our capacity for joy. Other festivals that are not simply religious, in a narrow formulaic sense, witness to the transformation of the temporal order. The Catholic Rural Life Festival, inspired by the Autumn Ember Days, combines elements of the temporal cycle, which deserved to be observed along with the Church’s liturgical practices and prayers, which integrate us into the order of grace marked by the sanctoral cycle. This inclination to festivity is in the human heart. When festivals are dislodged from the deeper meaning of joyfully embracing what is good and becoming transformed by the highest goods then they tend toward functional or merely commercial activities. A true festival combines the need for leisure as well as a sense of common participation in the community. The author of In Tune with the World, Josef Pieper, maintains true festivity, genuine festivals, are dependent upon worship of the divine; otherwise, “the root of both festivity and the arts is destroyed.” The Catholic Rural Life Festival, requested by Bishop Deeley, aims at providing a festival experience as Pieper describes.
You will note that we are doing some things like any other festival might do such as practical life as well as artistic demonstrations. We also have developed a program for liturgical prayer and sacred music including not only Mass but also Night Prayer and Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, Confessions, Stations of the Cross and Marian devotions as well as uniquely agrarian traditions of Rogation Litanies. Notice we are deliberately interspersing seemingly secular activities alongside conversation and presentations and also liturgical prayer because Catholics do not have a perfunctory view of the transforming love of God in Christ and His Church because we rejoice in the relationship between the ephemeral and the eternal in so far as Providence governs both! Oh, and enjoy this time and opportunity to invite family and friends to join you and us in a time of leisure bearing in mind the that true leisure prevents us from being “half hearted men with flat souls,” as Fr. James Schall would say."
-Fr. Paul Dumais, Pastor
St. Joseph and St. Rose Parishes
Farmington and Jay, ME
For questions or more information, please call St. Rose Parish Office at 207-897-2173
or email Max.Becher@PortlandDiocese.org
or email Max.Becher@PortlandDiocese.org
