Thou hast set all the borders of the earth : thou hast made summer and winter.
Psalm lxxiv.17-18
Believe it or not, the Church Year is not the same as the secular year. Liturgical time, the way time is understood through the worship, sacramental, and ritual life of the church is a special way of encountering time, a way of understanding the meaning and value of time as related to eternity.
The Church sanctifies the times through its prayer and worship, particularly through the rhythms of the Daily Office and the Mass, and through the cycles of Feasts and Ferias that form the year. In the Church’s prayer and worship, events that occurred many thousands of years ago or that will occur on some unknown day weeks, months, or many years hence are made immediate and present.
The Church uses two calendars to inform its prayer and worship: a Seasonal Calendar, and a Sanctoral Calendar.
The Seasonal Calendar
The Seasonal Calendar remembers, commemorates, enacts, the life of Christ.
Advent, Christmas, Epiphany: Incarnation
The year begins with the season of Advent, four Sundays before Christmas (which is the Feast of Christ’s Incarnation). Advent (which means “coming” or “arrival”) is a season of joyful expectation in which we anticipate two arrivals of Christ: the approaching celebration of Jesus’ birth on December 25th, and Jesus’ second coming in power and great glory at the consummation of all things. The Christmas season is a roughly twelve-day period of celebration which ends on the Feast of the Epiphany (or “Manifestation”) of Jesus to the world, celebrated on January 6th. Really, the Epiphany celebrates three manifestations: the visit of three gentile Sages to Jesus, having been led to him by a star; the baptism of Jesus in which the Father declares to the world that Jesus is his well-beloved Son; and the wedding at Cana, when Jesus performed his first public miracle: changing water into wine. The season after the Epiphany deepens our encounter with Christ’s teachings and ministry and leads into Lent (which comes from an old English word meaning “springtime”).
Lent, Easter, Pentecost: Resurrection
In Lent, we engage in penitential practices as a way of entering into a contemplation of Jesus’ passion, seeking grace to turn from sin and live toward God’s love. Lent is forty days long, the number forty speaking of pilgrimage, of journeying toward liberation on account of its association with the forty years the children of Israel journeyed in the wilderness, the forty days Noah was in the ark, and the forty days Jesus fasted, prayed and was tempted in the desert. We begin with Ash Wednesday on which we are reminded that we are dust and will return to dust. We then follow Jesus from his temptation in the wilderness to the last few days of his ministry during Passiontide (the last two weeks of Lent), culminating in Holy Week (the last week of Lent) as Jesus enters Jerusalem in triumph (on Palm Sunday); shares the Passover (the Last Supper) with his disciples and is betrayed (Maundy Thursday); suffers, is crucified, and dies (on Good Friday); and harrows hell (Holy Saturday). On Easter Sunday and throughout Eastertide, we rejoice at Jesus’ resurrection, the defeat of death through love’s endless life, the forgiveness of our sins, and the promise of glory. Fifty days later, we celebrate the Ascension, when Jesus returned to the Throne of Heaven to seat our humanity there, triumphant in him, reigning in and through him. On Pentecost, eight days after the Ascension, we celebrate the Descent of the Holy Spirit onto the Apostles and the beginnings of the Church. The Season after Pentecost reaches its peak in the Feast of Christ the King which declares Christ Sovereign over all time and space. The Sunday following Christ the King is Advent Sunday, and the cycle of the Seasonal Calendar begins anew.
Two Ways of Telling Time
It should be noted that in the Seasonal Calendar, there are two ways of telling time. One of them is based around Christmas which, while always being December 25, will fall on a different day of the week each year. The day of the week on which it falls determines Advent Sunday, four Sundays prior to Christmas. This Christmas Cycle, which includes Advent and Epiphany as well, is determined by the solar calendar: the day of the week on which the fixed date of Christmas falls. The other cycle, the Easter Cycle, is oriented toward the lunar calendar and is determined by the movable date of Easter. The way of calculating the date of Easter is similar to the way of calculating the date of Passover in the Jewish tradition, as Easter is related to Passover. Easter is the first Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Because the date of Easter is movable and can occur between March 22nd and April 25th, the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday can fall anywhere between February 4th and March 10th. It also effects when Ascension Day and Pentecost occur and determines how long both the season after Epiphany and the Season after Pentecost are.
The Sanctoral Calendar
The other calendar of the Church commemorates the life and activity of the Church, Christ’s Body, by commemorating the lives and acts of the Saints. The Saints are people in whom the Church has recognized that the life of Christ is extraordinarily visible, people whose lives are particularly transparent to the life of Jesus. Even now, we believe the Saints share with Christ the glories of heaven and, sharing his love for us and his ministry to us, they intercede for us before God’s throne. With very few exceptions, a saint’s day will be the day of their death, though not for any morbid reason: in, with, and through Christ, the Saints share in Christ’s victory over death. Devotion to the Saints (which is a way of talking about remembering their lives, emulating their virtues, rejoicing in their triumph, and seeking their prayers) begins with honoring the early martyrs, who were put to death for their faith and who bore witness (martyr means “witness”), even in their death, to the triumph of love won in Jesus Christ.
Feasts and Ferias and Fasts
Every day devoted to a celebration of a title, an act, or an event in the life of Jesus or Saint Mary, or dedicated to the remembrance of any saint, is considered a feast: a day of celebration. All Sundays are feasts, since all Sundays celebrate the Resurrection. In fact, Sundays are so special that there is never any fasting or abstinence that’s meant to occur on a Sunday, even in a penitential season like Lent.
Days that are not feasts are called ferias…which is a little ironic given that the word “feria” is Latin for “festival”! The Church names every day of the year a festival since Christ’s Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection have hallowed all of time. Every day, then, is special, is holy.
Some ferias, though, are days of special penitence, like Ash Wednesday or Good Friday. These days are fast days, days on which limiting our intake of food is meant to help us understand what we really hunger and yearn for: the grace of God, the presence of God. Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are also days of abstinence when we’re meant to refrain from eating any meat. Other possible days of fasting include the Vigil or Eve (the day before) of a major feast, while many practice abstinence throughout the year on every Friday (or on all Fridays in Lent) to honor Our Lord’s passion. Practices like fasting and abstinence are meant to pitch us toward a greater fast: the fast from the evil, hatred, malice, and injustice on which we so often feed. In this way, fasting doesn’t always need to mean limiting food (and penitence isn’t about being or becoming miserable, but about consciously seeking the grace needed to heal our brokenness and to grow in love!). If you’re considering fasting as part of a spiritual practice or discipline, you may want to talk with your doctor first. You’ll also want to talk with a priest.
Colors of the Seasons
Each Season has its own special color on account of each color having a particular meaning.
White/Gold is an attempt to represent the Resurrection Light as color. It is the color of Christmas, Easter, Feasts of Our Lord and of Our Lady, and Feasts of Saints who are not Martyrs (who are often called Confessors because their lives confess Christ).
Purple/Violet, anciently denoting royalty, represents penitence by recognizing Christ’s sovereign kingship through his sacrifice and his reign from the tree of the Cross. It is the color of Advent and of Lent.
Red represents the fire of the Holy Spirit, the witness of the Church, and the blood of the martyrs. It is the color of Pentecost Day, Palm Sunday, and Feasts of Martyrs and Apostles.
Green is the color of growing and flourishing life. It is the color of the season after Epiphany and the season after Pentecost.
Black isn’t so much meant to be a color as the absence of color (as the absence of light is darkness): it denotes mourning, bereavement. It is the color of Good Friday and of funerals.
Rose is also used. When used on the third Sunday of Advent (called Gaudete Sunday, Gaudete meaning “Rejoice!”) or the fourth Sunday in Lent (called Laetare Sunday, Laetare also meaning “Rejoice!”), the rose color signifies a lightening of the purple of the penitential season to accord with the special gladness of the day. When used in association with Our Lady, it represents one of her ancient titles, that of “Mystic Rose”.
