The Christian Year
THE TIME OF CHRISTMAS
The Savior’s birth is second in importance only to
His resurrection on Easter Sunday. During Christmas and its season,
Christians take time to reflect on God’s great and gracious gift of
Himself.
Advent
Begins the fourth Sunday before December 25, or the
Sunday closest to St. Andrew (November 30).
Ends with midday prayer on December 24.
The calendar of the Church begins with Advent (from
Latin adventus, which means "coming into"), a four-week period of
preparation before Christmas. The story of Jesus in Advent is the story
of hope coming into the world. When the time was just right, God sent
His Son, Jesus, into the world. The Advent season teaches us to prepare
to receive Jesus, the hope of the world.
It has become common to use an Advent wreath to mark
the season. An Advent wreath has four candles—one for each week in
Advent. As these candles are lit each week, our anticipation mounts as
we look forward to Jesus’ coming.
Christmas and Its Season
Begins with evening prayer on Christmas Eve (December
24).
Ends with midday prayer on January 5.
The evening services of Christmas Eve mark the
beginning of the Church’s celebration of the Nativity of Our Lord. The
season continues after December 25 over a period traditionally known as
the twelve days of Christmas. This season includes a number of lesser
festivals: The festival of St. Stephen, the first martyr, occurs on
December 26. St. John, apostle and evangelist, is remembered on December
27. The death of the babies in Bethlehem (Matthew 2) is observed on
December 28 as the Festival of the Holy Innocents. The circumcision and
naming of Jesus on the eighth day after His birth (Luke 2:21) is
celebrated on January 1.
Epiphany and Its Season
Begins with evening prayer on January 5.
Ends the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday.
Epiphany is one of the oldest seasons in the
Christian Church Year, second only to the Easter season. This season of
lights emphasizes Jesus’ manifestation (or epiphany, from the Greek
epiphaneia) as God and man. The earliest Christians called the feast
of the Epiphany the Theophany ("revelation of God"). When the Gentile
Magi come to worship Jesus, they show that everyone now has access to
God. Now all people, Jew and Gentile, can come to God’s temple to
worship, because Jesus is the new temple: God in the flesh. The Epiphany
of Our Lord (January 6) marks the celebration of the visit of the Magi.
Epiphany may include as many as nine Sundays,
depending on the date of Easter. The season is marked at its beginning
and at its end by two important feasts of Christ. On the First Sunday
after the Epiphany, the Church celebrates the Baptism of Our Lord. The
Father had sent Jesus to bear the sins of the world. So Jesus steps down
into baptismal waters so that He can soak up the sins of the world: He
is baptized into our sins, so that our Baptism might be into His death
and resurrection for the forgiveness of sins.
The Transfiguration, celebrated on the last Sunday in
the Epiphany season, is a significant and uniquely Lutheran contribution
to the Christian calendar. This festival commemorates the moment on the
Mount of Transfiguration when three of Jesus’ disciples glimpsed their
Lord in divine splendor, seeing Him as the center of the Law (Moses) and
the Prophets (Elijah). Jesus proclaimed to His disciples, then and now,
that He was the long-awaited one who had come to die for the sins of the
world and be raised again in glory.
THE TIME OF EASTER
Easter celebrates the chief event in the life of
Christ and was the major celebration among early Christians. Given that
Easter is both a movable date and also a principal celebration of the
Church Year, the date of Easter determines much of the rest of the
Church Year. Generally speaking, Easter is observed on the first Sunday
after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox. The date of
Easter will influence the date of Ash Wednesday, the fortieth day (not
counting Sundays) before Easter; the date of the Transfiguration, the
Sunday before Ash Wednesday; and the number of Sundays in Epiphany and
after Pentecost.
Lent
Begins on Ash Wednesday.
Ends with midday prayer on Holy Saturday.
The resurrection of Jesus is our great salvation. To
prepare to celebrate the Feast
of the Resurrection (Easter),
the Church sets aside a period of preparation. In AD 325, the Council of
Nicaea recorded the first reference to the specific number of days for
Lent: forty. This forty-day preparation was first prescribed for
baptismal candidates and became known as Lent (from the Old English word
for "spring"). During this period, the candidates were examined in
preparation for Baptism at the Easter (or Paschal) Vigil. Later, these
forty days were associated with Jesus’ forty days in the desert prior to
His temptation (Matthew 4) and with the forty years the children of
Israel spent in the wilderness (Numbers 14:34) and became a period of
preparation for every Christian.
Ash Wednesday begins the observance of Lent. The
placing of ashes on the forehead is a sign of penitence and a reminder
of human mortality. The Sundays during this season are not "of Lent" but
"in Lent." Thus the Sundays retain an Easter tone and may be less solemn
than the midweek services that congregations typically offer. The
observances of Lent are concrete reminders of the greater solemnity of
this season, yet Lutherans emphasize the Gospel of Christ as central
even to this penitential season.
Holy Week
The week before Easter is called Holy Week and
culminates the preparation time of Lent. This week begins on Palm Sunday
and ends on Holy Saturday. During these days, we focus on the events of
Jesus’ life from His entrance into Jerusalem until His glorious
resurrection from the dead. Palm Sunday, the first day of Holy Week,
commemorates the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem (Matthew 2
1:9). Because the complete account of the Lord’s Passion from Matthew,
Mark, or Luke is often read, this Sunday is also called the Sunday of
the Passion.
On Holy Thursday, the Church gives thanks to Jesus
for the institution of the Lord’s Supper. The Holy Thursday service
closes with the stripping of the altar while Psalm 22—a prophecy of the
crucifixion—is read or sung. This reminds us of how our Lord stripped to
the waist to wash His disciples’ feet—and how He was stripped and beaten
before His crucifixion.
Good Friday is the most solemn of all days in the
Christian Church, yet a note of joy remains, as the title of the day
indicates. On Good Friday, as we remember that on account of our sin the
Lord was crucified and died, we give joyful thanks to God that all sin
and God’s wrath over sin falls on Jesus and not on us, and that by His
grace we receive the benefit of this most sacrificial act.
Easter and Its Season
Begins with evening prayer on Holy Saturday.
Ends with midday prayer on Pentecost.
Easter is a victory celebration, a time for all
Christians to proclaim boldly their faith in a risen and victorious
Savior. For the early Christians, Easter was not merely one day, it was
(and is) a whole season that also includes the celebration of Jesus’
ascension. The fifty days between Easter and Pentecost, known as the
Great Fifty Days, was the first liturgical season observed in the first
three centuries of the Church. This fifty-day celebration is a week of
weeks, renewed in the last decades by emphasizing the Sundays as being
"of Easter." The season’s length is fitting because we are dedicating
one seventh of the year to the celebration of the Lord’s resurrection.
The first celebration of Easter is the Easter Vigil,
the evening of Holy Saturday. The Vigil includes a service of light, in
which fire symbolizes Jesus as the light of the world. The service is
designed to take the Christian from the solemnity of Good Friday to the
predawn joy of Easter.
Easter is the richest and most lavishly celebrated
festival of the Church Year. Congregations may hold a sunrise service,
commemorating the surprise of the women visiting the empty tomb of
Christ, as well as services that celebrate the resurrection of Jesus
Christ. While not as lavish, this joyous and celebratory tone echoes
down through the Sundays of the Easter season.
Forty days after Easter (Acts 1:3), the Church
celebrates the Ascension of Our Lord, who ascended into heaven not only
as God but also as man. The final Sunday of the Easter season,
celebrated as Pentecost, was adopted by early Christians to commemorate
the first great harvest of believers for Christ (Acts 2:1-41). Thus
Pentecost is the birthday of the Christian Church as the Holy Spirit
came upon the disciples and they gave their compelling witness about the
resurrected Lord. Pentecost is a day of joy in the gifts of the Spirit
as He still reaches into our lives just as He did to the crowds on that
first Pentecost: through the apostolic preaching of God’s Word and Holy
Baptism.
THE TIME OF THE CHURCH
Jesus told His disciples, "I am the vine; you are the
branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in him, he it is that bears much
fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing" (John 15:5). We are each
grafted into Jesus and made a branch of the Vine by the power of the
Spirit in Holy Baptism. We stay connected to Jesus, our Vine, by hearing
the preaching of God’s Word and receiving Absolution and the Lord’s
Supper. This is how our life in Christ grows: by the power of the Spirit
working in our hearts through Word and Sacrament. The Sundays after
Pentecost make up the longest portion of the Church Year. This is the
Time of the Church—the time we focus on growing together in the life of
the Holy Trinity.
The Holy Trinity
The first Sunday after Pentecost.
We are baptized into only one name, the name of God.
But that name is "of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
There is only one name, only one God—but there are three persons: the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each person is God, and each is
not the others, but there is only one God. This is the great mystery of
the Holy Trinity. On the first Sunday after Pentecost, the Church
celebrates Holy Trinity Sunday and teaches us to confess the mystery of
God’s being.
The Season after Pentecost
Begins the day after Pentecost.
Ends with midday prayer on the Saturday before the
First Sunday in Advent.
The Sundays of this time of the Church Year are known
as Sundays after Pentecost. Picking up on Pentecost as the season of
growth, the Sundays after Pentecost are often referred to as the Green
Sundays. It is during this season that the Readings focus on the
teachings of the Lord for the Church. We hear Jesus teaching His
disciples and healing the faithful.
Because the Pentecost season is "ordinary," as the
Roman Catholic Church identifies it, congregations may choose to observe
some of the lesser festivals of the season. When significant saint days
or commemorations fall on Sundays, worship leaders could highlight these
to offer teaching moments about the breadth of the Church’s life and
work. These noteworthy days enable the Christian to reflect on how we
worship "with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven"
(Lutheran Service Book: Altar Book, p. 161).
Last Sunday of the Church Year
The Church Year began with Advent and the joyful hope
and expectation of Jesus’ coming to save the world through His
incarnation. On the Last Sunday after Pentecost, the Church gives voice
to the joyful hope of the second coming of Jesus for the resurrection of
the dead and the last judgment. The end-times focus of the Last Sunday
of the Church Year bears themes of hope and preparation that are similar
to those of Advent, which soon follows.
This liturgical calendar was essentially complete by
the end of the sixth century, though it continues to be transmuted
(transmitted and adjusted) through additions and emphases.
Taken from Treasury
of Daily Prayer, General Editor: Scot A. Kinnaman,
Concordia Publishing House,
3558 S. Jefferson Avenue, Saint Louis, MO. 63118-3968, Copyright 2008
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