What's "Liturgical Year"? It's our name for the Church's Cycle of Readings. The 'Church Year' is arranged in seasons - Advent, Christmas, Ordinary time, Lent, Easter, and Ordinary time again. Within each season, the Church celebrates by pondering on Jesus' birth, life, death, Resurrection, and Ascension.
The decorations on the Altar help us celebrate. And, the priest also helps by wearing the color of the season on his chasuble. For example... Violent is the color used to symbolize penance and preparation. We see it in Advent and Lent. White represents innocence and joy. It is worn at Christmas and Easter (as well as on some other special feast days.) Green is used in ordinary time and symbolizes hope. Take a look at a couple of different versions of a liturgical calendar:
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Note that all are shown as cyclical. That's because we never end in our Worship of God! Note that all have the colors mentioned on them. You can see that the Gospel reading for the Sundays are listed on two of them. Holy Days of Obligation and other special celebration days can also be seen. The Church's Liturgical Year begins on the first Sunday of Advent. The last week is the Feast of Christ the King.
In the first picture, you'll note that even the weekday readings are listed - which is why the wheel is so thick - The Sunday is on the outside of the wheel and the weekdays are listed towards the middle of the ring.
On the last picture, you can see that the Cycle Year is listed. 2015 is Cycle B in the Church Calendar. What does that mean? Well, if you went to Mass every single day for three years, you'd hear the entire Bible read at the Masses. Every time we celebrate Mass, we hear a reading from the Old Testament, the Psalms, the New Testament, and the Gospels. Each year the Gospel readings come primarily from one Gospel... Year B Gospel readings will be mostly from Mark. Wait! there are 4 Gospels, you say? How right you are! Every year, the Gospel of John is visited at different times too.
Why so many green weeks of ordinary time? Well, I like to have my students think about it like this: What happens in the ordinary time of the year ie: when the weather is not too rainy, when it's not too cold, not too dry, not too hot etc? The green grass just grows. That's what we are supposed to do during ordinary time. We are to be nurturing our faith life so that we can blossom during the special times.
We delve intensely into preparing for Jesus' birth at Advent, and into his passion, death, and resurrection during Lent. Christmas and Easter are the mountaintop moments which shine brightly in our year.
You will notice some numbering differences on the calendar also. They aren't listed from 1 - 52 like a yearly calendar. We count the weeks of each period separately. We have 34 weeks of Ordinary time with the other seasons falling into place among those weeks. Check it out and see what you discover!
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