Tag: liturgical calendar

Coming soon: a new church year. New step in one’s faith?

November 26, 2024
visual display of liturgical seasons

Just as the earth has annual weather seasons, schools have academic years, some organizations have fiscal years, and we individuals have seasons in our lives, the church has a liturgical year – with established seasons.

The church year begins at the beginning of Advent – four weeks before Christmas. The six seasons in the liturgical calendar (each having a corresponding liturgical color) are:

  • Advent (purple, with one week of pink)
  • Christmas (white)
  • Lent (again, purple)
  • Triduum (red)
  • Easter (white)
  • Ordinary Time (green)

The church year lays out a calendrical way to walk through important faith themes.

As we approach a new liturgical year – beginning with Advent – on December 1, how is this important for us as individuals? In watching the Church seasons, we learn about religious themes that have been woven together over Christianity’s history. We collectively travel through faith seasons together. On a personal level, Church seasons and religious holidays provide opportunities for us to journey deeper into our faith experience. When we truly engage in the processes provided in the Church’s liturgical calendar, what I have heard called “the genius of Christianity’s processes” brings us into a deeper relationship with God. Our own inner workings are stirred in such a way that our spirituality broadens, deepens, and matures.

As we enter a new Church year on this upcoming First Sunday of Advent, what aspects of faith can you reflect upon this Advent season? Learning more about Church liturgy? Re-committing to a regular prayer life? Surrendering some aspect of your life to being changed – and improved upon – by God? Being kinder to and of more active service to the people around you?

If you would like to connect with Advent at home this year, print out the Advent calendar provided below for daily Advent thoughts, reflections, and tips.

Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist (and is a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). Blogging is sustainable via blog readership (i.e. readers/subscribers). If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you subscribe to follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them and invite them to subscribe (thank you!).

Lent in 40 Days: Day Two

February 15, 2024
Rosary and two wooden crosses

Religious seasons follow an established liturgical calendar (calendars with quite a surprising intricate level of planning).

Having a regularly-scheduled liturgical calendar provides a rhythm to our communal faith experience and the opportunity to connect with the myriad of faith concepts during the times set aside to celebrate – and engage with – these concepts.

Our faith experience is at the same time personal. I have struggled at times with engaging with liturgical seasons on a fixed calendar, preferring to engage with faith concepts when such concepts become personally meaningful – and therefore easy to connect with – in the seasons of my own life.

Yet, the photo above speaks to the communal nature of faith. The rosary shown above is the rosary I was given for my First Communion at age seven. My classmates and I received our First Communion together – in community. The occasion was special enough that I’ve kept my first communion rosary all these years (I keep it in a special place at home where it won’t get lost). The wooden cross outside of the rosary was handmade for me by an acquaintance when I was in high school. I don’t remember the name of the fellow who made the cross for me, but the communal nature of the gift was meaningful – I’ve likewise kept the cross all these years. The cross laid inside the rosary likewise has a story; when churches were again able to have limited church services as we began emerging from COVID lockdowns, we couldn’t each “kiss a cross” at my parish at the Easter Vigil – so we were each given one of these small crosses at the Easter Vigil. Again, a communal experience. Again, I kept the cross….. Rosaries can be prayed alone, anywhere; rosaries are also often prayed communally. Placing one wooden cross in the rosary speaks to Jesus within prayers to his mother, while another cross placed outside the rosary (on purple fabric for the color of Lent) speaks to Jesus’ sacrificial death being for all of us – those of us who are both within community and for all those who are not in community.

We grow in faith in community. We are meant serve our communities. We have the opportunity to grow religiously in community with one another during liturgical seasons such as Lent – as well as within the flow of our own life’s seasons. 

Welcome to 2024’s communal season of Lent – a time of reflection, fasting, being of service. We spend 40 days anticipating Christianity’s holiest religious day of the year – the anniversary of God’s ultimate display of love for all of us.

Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages (and a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them (thank you!). You can also support this blog by clicking here when you are going to shop on Amazon (that lands A Parish Catechist a commission on Amazon sales).