The Christian year includes the various seasons of the year designated by the church. It does not begin on January 1 but on the first Sunday of Advent, which usually falls about a month before Christmas. The central feast within the seasons of the year is Easter rather than Christmas. Time is made holy within this yearly experience, and it helps lead human beings toward heaven. The various feast days of the seasons help mankind to remember aspects of the life of Jesus Christ and various saints who have sought to follow in the footsteps of Christ.
Vatican Council II discusses the year in its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. The seasons and feasts all have a liturgical aspect since each of them has the worship of God as its ultimate purpose. Vatican Council II is very careful to show how the feasts of the saints and of the Blessed Virgin Mary are related to the mysteries of Christ. The paschal mystery is shown forth in the life of Mary and the lives of the saints. Pius XII in his writing Mediator Dei asks Christians to concentrate ever more seriously upon the paschal mysteries in order to more clearly realise how they are redeemed by Christ. He insists that the year of the church is not a boring record of a previous time period, but rather a vibrant reliving of the paschal mysteries.
There are actually two levels in the year. One deals with the feasts of Jesus Christ while the other deals with the feasts of Mary and the saints. The feasts of the saints grew out of the celebrations of various particular communities. As these communities corresponded among themselves, they began to copy feasts and to devise a kind of temporal sequence concerning them. Pius V decided to schematize the year more clearly in the sixteenth century.
By the twentieth century there were over 250 feasts. It was feared that the feasts of the saints were overshadowing the celebration of the mysteries of Jesus Christ, so Pius X made it very clear in his writings that all feasts had to be centred ultimately upon Jesus Christ. In 1960 some of the feasts of the saints were actually dropped from the year for various reasons. Vatican Council II attempted to simplify things to an even greater extent. The feasts which are still celebrated always involve remembering a particular historical happening. In reference to saints, their deaths rather than their births are celebrated. It is believed that their death has become their birth or entrance into heaven.
Many feast days are movable in the sense that they can happen on various dates within the year, but some feasts are fixed to a particular day in the year. Easter is the most notable movable feast, whereas Christmas is the most notable fixed feast day. Some fixed feast days cannot be celebrated if they occur on a Sunday because Sunday always celebrates God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The feasts always must draw one to reflect upon God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in one way or another.
The most important parts of the Christian year celebrate the historical aspects of the redeeming power of Jesus Christ in union with events in his own life. Every Sunday celebrates the paschal event of Jesus Christ. The apostles began the custom of celebrating Sunday, but many of the Jewish Christians retained sabbath worship together with Sunday for several decades.
For some reason Fridays and Wednesdays became more important days in between Sundays. They were declared to be fasting days. Friday was usually held to be more important than Wednesday. Sometimes the fasting on these two days was related to a series of prayers which helped prepare the early Christians for Sunday celebrations. The least important weekday was Saturday.
THE EASTER SEASON:
The prime feast of the Christian year is Easter. The Sunday called Septuagesima begins the preparation of the faithful for Easter. The Easter celebration in a sense does not end until the celebration of Pentecost. Easter celebrates not only the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ but also his passion and death within the context of his resurrection. His death and resurrection must always be held together in the minds of the faithful.
Holy Week is the most important preparation for Easter. Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday. It introduces us to the life of Jesus as he advances toward his passion and death. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of Holy Week are not too important, but Holy Thursday celebrates in vivid form the Last Supper of our Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles.
Part of the vividness involves the washing of feet in remembrance of Christ, who washed the feet of his apostles to demonstrate his humility and his desire to serve mankind. Good Friday celebrates the passion and death of Christ. No Mass is celebrated on Good Friday. Holy Communion consecrated on Holy Thursday is retained for Good Friday, when it is distributed to the faithful. The veneration of the cross is the most moving experience for many of the faithful on Good Friday because it dramatically reminds them of the death of their Lord Jesus Christ. Holy Saturday consists in quiet and reflective preparation for Easter itself.
Easter is celebrated as an octave lasting eight days. Each day deals with various aspects of the resurrected Christ. The faithful experience how the life of the resurrected Christ affects them in the order of redemption by seeing how he affected the early Christians after his resurrection and before his ascension into heaven. The entire Easter season is to be a period of joy culminating in the happiness surrounding the placing of Jesus at the right hand of God, his Father, in heaven. The season closes with Pentecost, which celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit to the early Christians so that they might rejoice in their strength and find the inspiration to go out and convert the world to Jesus Christ.
THE CHRISTMAS SEASON:
The Christmas period is second in importance to Easter, although some of the faithful appear to place more stress upon Christmas, although the stress may not be for a spiritual reason. The Christmas season not only celebrates the birth of Christ; it also celebrates his childhood with Mary and Joseph. As part of the Christian year the Christmas season developed later than the Easter season, although the feast of Christmas itself comes from Roman times.
The feast of Christmas was developed by the church to combat a pagan feast which was celebrated yearly on December 25. The Advent period deals with the coming of Christ and the preparation the faithful should make to receive him in their hearts. His incarnation celebrates not only his birth but also his messianic age, which is the beginning of the end of the world as it marches toward enternity. Advent combines some recognition of sin on the part of the faithful with the joy that Jesus, their Savior, is coming.
The feast of the Epiphany ends the Christmas season, but the Sundays after the Epiphany have themes which are related to it. (The Sundays after Pentecost appear to be quite
separate from the Easter season.) The only real order in those Sundays revolves around the fact that each of them is celebrating the paschal mysteries of our Lord Jesus Christ.
FEASTS OF THE SAINTS:
The Christian year as described above revolves around Jesus Christ. Within this Christian year on a less important level are the feasts of the saints. Many of these involve a celebration of the early martyrs. When Constantine declared Christianity to be the religion of the Roman Empire, the martyrs began to be revered for the suffering and death they experienced previous to the time of Constantine. The deaths of the martyrs were related to the death of Christ. Relics of the martyrs also became important aspects of various feasts. Charlemagne continued the celebration of the martyrs after the Roman Empire fell apart.
Martyrs still today are considered to be the most important representatives of the saints in their feast days. There are about 120 feast of martyrs. Some of the feasts are suspect, in part in reference to the exploits of certain martyrs. The positivist approach to the historicity of some martyrs and their exploits cannot, however, take too much away from the symbolic lessons which various feasts of martyrs seek to teach to the faithful. A martyr must have shed his blood for Christ, which reminds the faithful symbolically of the shedding of Christ's blood for our redemption.
Confessors are not martyrs in the strict sense of having shed their blood for Christ, but it is required of a confessor that he or she should have suffered in one way or another for Christ. Ascetics and bishops on occasion were considered to be types of confessors of the faith. Ascetics led a life of partial suffering in an effort to be like the martyrs of the age of persecution.
The notion that virginity was a very holy way of living caused the faithful to revere various women. Some virgin or "holy women" who were widows were also truly martyrs. Agatha and Perpetua are revered not only for being martyrs, but also for their courage when tortured for refusing to submit sexually to their tormentors.
The church has a series of feasts celebrating various aspects of the life of the Virgin Mary. Devotion to the Blessed Virgin developed in the early church. One of the first feasts somewhat related to Mary was the Feast of the Purification, which has Jesus as its central aspect. Although the assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary did not become a dogma of the church until much later, the Feast of the Assumption was being celebrated as early as the eighth century. Some people overdid their devotion to Mary, so that Vatican Council II has trimmed back Marian devotions.
The Christian year must always ultimately seek to immerse the faithful in the experiences of the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ in union with the other paschal mysteries. Ultimately the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints are revered as a means of leading the faithful closer to Jesus Christ and also as an encouragement to the faithful that they too can become saints if they seek to be like Christ.
[Elwell’s Theological Dictionary]
