Introducing the Church Calendar
When you get to the reading schedule, you'll notice the peculiar detail that we're starting our reading in the middle of the books. That's because, to borrow a phrase from TV news breaks, we're joining a program already in progress. From early on in the history of the church, communities of followers of Jesus-particularly communities of monks and nuns-began to put some structure to their common life of prayer, worship, and reading. They generally organized their devotional life around the major seasons of the church year, also known as the liturgical year (Liturgy basically means, 'pattern of worship'). While more contemporary churches like ours tend only to celebrate a few major holidays, in the more ancient church traditions the year is divided into whole seasons of fasting and feasting. While there are some differences among the various communities, the 'liturgical' churches all basically follow this pattern in their calendars:
- Advent: the month of December, a fasting period with the theme of waiting for the coming of Jesus. Besides specifically being a preparation for Christmas, Advent is a time to reflect in general on things we are waiting for. And as we look back to Jesus' birth, we also look forward to the time when Jesus will return and set everything right in the world;
- Christmas: a 12-day feast to celebrate Jesus' birth and his promise to one day come again;
- Epiphany: something of a break between the major seasons, the Epiphany Season is kicked off by the day of Epiphany, January 6th. Epiphany Day is a commemoration of the visit of the wise men to the child Jesus;
- Lent: a forty-day period of fasting during which we grieve the ways our sins separate us from God. This forty-day fast is modelled after the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness, fasting and confronting the devil. The season of Lent takes us to Jesus' crucifixion and death on Good Friday.
- Easter: a long season of feasting to celebrate Jesus' resurrection;
- Ordinary time: another break, of about 6 months, between the Easter feast and the Advent fast.
