Liturgical Seasons And Cycles
By DON FIER
As we continued our consideration of “how the liturgy is celebrated” last week, we saw that sacred art (along with sacred music) plays a prominent role in our worship of God. In his 1999 Letter to Artists, Pope St. John Paul II highlighted its importance by saying:
“In order to communicate the message entrusted to her by Christ, the Church needs art….[It] has a unique capacity to take one or other facet of the [Gospel] message and translate it into colors, shapes, and sounds which nourish the intuition of those who look or listen” (n. 12). When art and music which are set apart for divine worship are “truly worthy, becoming, and beautiful” (Sacrosanctum Concilium [SC], n. 122), they lend splendor to liturgical celebrations and lift the hearts and minds of the faithful to God.
“The image of Christ is the liturgical icon par excellence,” teaches the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. “Other images, representations of Our Lady and of the saints, signify Christ who is glorified in them. They proclaim the same Gospel message that Sacred Scripture communicates by the word and they help to awaken and nourish the faith of believers” (n. 240).
In his recent book entitled A Sense of the Sacred, James Monti beautifully describes the contributions made by so many talented, inspired individuals over the centuries as “the finest gifts of their respective cultures to the worship of God, laying at the feet of their Savior the gold, frankincense, and myrrh of great art, architecture, music, and literature” (p. xviii).
In its fourfold examination of the “who, what, when, and where” of liturgical celebrations, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) now takes up the question: “When is the liturgy celebrated?” This aspect of the liturgy deals with time — one of God’s greatest gifts to mankind — and seeks to find ways to consecrate it to God. Just as human life naturally moves in cycles, like the seasons of the year, the same can be said of liturgical celebrations.
Moreover, as pointed out by Dr. Peter Kreeft in Catholic Christianity, liturgy literally “transforms the meaning of time. Judged by secular time standards, it ‘wastes’ time. But this ‘waste’ of time (and energy and even money) is the most important and joyful thing man can do in his time on earth” (p. 292).
Why is this true? As expressed by the Vatican II Fathers, “Within the cycle of a year . . . [Holy Mother Church] unfolds the whole mystery of Christ, from the incarnation and birth until the ascension, the day of Pentecost, and the expectation of blessed hope and of the coming of the Lord. Recalling thus the mysteries of redemption, the Church opens to the faithful the riches of her Lord’s powers and merits, so that these are in some way made present for all time, and the faithful are enabled to lay hold upon them and become filled with saving grace” (SC, n. 102).
In other words, Christ enters into the lives of the faithful through the events recalled throughout the liturgical year and shows them the sure path that leads to eternal life.
“From the time of the Mosaic law, the People of God have observed fixed feasts” (CCC, n. 1164). This heartfelt practice passed from the Old Covenant to the New not only as a means to commemorate and give thanks to God for His astounding salvific actions, but also to “perpetuate their remembrance and to teach new generations to conform their conduct to them.”
Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ, elaborates further on their continuance: “Since the coming of Christ, the Church has consistently set aside certain days or seasons for believers to express their common profession of faith and devotion to the Savior, His Mother, and the holy ones of God” (The Faith, p. 108).
The Catechism now gives special emphasis to a word that consistently marks the prayer of the Church as she celebrates the mystery of Christ: “Today!” (CCC, n. 1165) For those who pray the Liturgy of the Hours, it is evident that this is a word that applies not only to the great feasts of the Church, but one that echoes forth from the People of God on a daily basis as their prayer begins: “Today, listen to the voice of the Lord: Do not grow stubborn, as your fathers did in the wilderness, when at Meribah and Massah, they challenged me and provoked me” (Psalm 95:5-7).
The New Testament resounds with similar words: “Today, when you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years” (Heb. 3:7-9). The Letter to the Hebrews gives explanation just a few verses later:
“Exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we share in Christ, if only we hold our first confidence firm to the end” (Heb. 3:13-14).
In commenting on these verses in Living the Catechism of the Catholic Church: The Sacraments (LC-W), Christoph Cardinal Schönborn insightfully observes, “For believers, every day is this ‘today’ of God. The reason for this is Christ himself….Since Christ rose from the dead, returned to the Father, and sent us the Holy Spirit, the time in which we live has been made new. Time no longer runs away from us. It does not merely flow toward death but is filled with Christ’s promise, ‘I am with you’ (Matt. 28:20)” (p. 40).
This is what is meant by the “today” that rings out day after day in the Church’s liturgy, especially in her great solemnities.
St. Thérèse of Lisieux penned a beautiful poem that profoundly captures the essence of what it means to live each “today” fully: “My life is but a moment, an hour that passes by; My life is just a day that flees and flies away; You know this well, O my God! To love you on earth; I have nothing but today” (as cited in LC-W, p. 40).
How relevant is this gem of wisdom in the frenetic culture in which we live, when time for holy leisure has been taken hostage — often due to the frivolous use of the precious gift of time for which we will one day have to give an account!
Once again citing Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, the Catechism now focuses on the Lord’s Day: “By a tradition handed down from the apostles which took its origin from the very day of Christ’s resurrection, the Church celebrates the paschal mystery every eighth day; with good reason this, then, bears the name of the Lord’s day or Sunday” (SC, n. 106). Indeed, from the very beginning of Christianity, “the Sunday celebration of the Lord’s Day and his Eucharist is at the heart of the Church’s life” (CCC, n. 2177).
The importance of the Lord’s Day is solemnly codified in the 1983 Code of Canon Law: “Sunday, on which by apostolic tradition the paschal mystery is celebrated, must be observed in the universal Church as the primordial holy day of obligation” (canon 1246 § 1).
Joy And Freedom
What do the Church Fathers have to say? “As early as the second century we have the witness of St. Justin Martyr for the basic lines of the order of the Eucharistic celebration” (CCC, n. 1345), who describes the divine worship of Christians on the Lord’s Day in the following way: “On the day we call the day of the sun, all who dwell in the city or country gather in the same place” (Apol. 1, 67).
About two centuries later, St. Jerome (331-420) wrote: “The Lord’s day, the day of Resurrection, the day of Christians, is our day. It is called the Lord’s day because on it the Lord rose victorious to the Father. If pagans call it the ‘day of the sun,’ we willingly agree, for today the light of the world is raised, today is revealed the sun of justice with healing in his rays” (Pasch.: Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 78, 550).
Sunday, which the Catechism describes as “the pre-eminent day for the liturgical assembly” (CCC, n. 1168), can be seen to have its heritage in the creation account of the Book of Genesis, for “creation was fashioned with a view to the sabbath and therefore for the worship and adoration of God. Worship is inscribed in the order of creation” (CCC, n. 347). The Lord’s Day, thus, is “the memorial of the first day of creation, and the ‘eighth day,’ on which Christ after his ‘rest’ on the great sabbath inaugurates the ‘day that the Lord has made,’ the ‘day that knows no evening’” (CCC, n. 1166).
Just as “God rested from all his work which he had done in creation” (Gen. 2:3), the faithful are called not only to gather together to celebrate the Eucharist, but to set the Lord’s Day aside as “a day of joy and of freedom from work” (SC, n. 106). As proclaimed in The Syriac Office of Antioch, “Blessed is Sunday, for on it began creation . . . the world’s salvation . . . the renewal of the human race” (as cited in CCC, n. 1167)
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(Don Fier serves on the board of directors for The Catholic Servant, a Minneapolis-based monthly publication. He and his wife are the parents of seven children. Fier is a 2009 graduate of Ave Maria University’s Institute for Pastoral Theology. He is doing research for writing a definitive biography of Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ.)
