Does anybody have any suggestions on how to honor the day’s saint if you’re unable to attend Mass or pray the Liturgy of the Hours on that day and you don’t know any traditional prayers to invoke his/her intercession?
Thanks.
A few suggestions:
Try a liturgical selection
Even if you can’t attend those liturgical functions in their fullness, you can still consider learning from parts of them to the best of your ability. You can pray a collect (opening prayer) at least once during the day; you can read at least some of the readings appointed.
As it turns out, we here have a thread called “Saints and the Liturgical Year,” which has these prayers and links to readings and reflecions. The thread keeps expanding as we go through the year, but at least as of this writing the latest material has reached
page 60, and a new thread is probably coming relatively soon. In the future, just look for the newest thread, heh.
Learn more about the saints
The same thread has links to biographical and similar resources that will help you learn more about them.
One suggestion of mine is along the lines of a what’s been called a “spiritual nosegay.” You may have heard of the term if you’ve learned some forms of meditation on a theme: like having a flower that you can keep around for the day and smell often, you can draw a lesson from the meditation to keep around in a similar, spiritual fashion. Well, after reading about the life of a saint, learn at least one lesson from it and return to that thought as a recurring theme through the day.
In fact, some of the links make doing so even easier by offering specific suggestions for thoughts and actions based on the life of a saint.
Practice some customs
If you’re able, you may learn about and practice customs associated with a saint or a feast of a saint.
