The Christian Year
An Introduction to the Church Calendar
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“Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm 90:12) The Christian year refers to Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, Trinity, and the season after Trinity. These seasons shape the life of the Church by:
- Addressing the problem of time
- Celebrating God’s mighty acts of salvation
- Teaching the historic Christian faith
- Proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God
Addressing the problem of time
All philosophy, all religion is ultimately an attempt to solve “the problem of time.” Through time on the one hand, we experience life as a possibility, growth, fulfillment, as a movement toward a future. Through time, on the other hand, all future is dissolved in death and annihilation. Time constantly dissolves life in a past which no longer is, and in a future which always leads to death.
Take a moment to reflect upon this statement – “Tell me what you celebrate, and I will tell you who you are.” Our culture, like all human societies, seeks to deal with “the problem of time” through our major holidays, celebrations, and feasts. What do these holidays tell us about our culture’s identities, goals, ambitions, and worldviews? Are these feasts ultimately satisfying and edifying? In the materialist narrative between the Big Bang and the Big Crunch (or Big Cool Down), do they give us rest and joy and meaning and life? Or do they prove, as the Teacher in Ecclesiastes insists, “Meaningless, meaningless; all is meaningless”?
The Christian year is meant to be the counter-cultural response of the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church” – Christians around the world and through the ages – to “the problem of time,” the meaningless cycle beginning in chaos and ending in death. Through the Christian year, the Church recognizes the inability of secularism, religion, or philosophy to satisfy our hunger and thirst for God. Thus, the Church seeks to minister to humanity’s absolutely irrepressible need for rest, for feasting, for joy, for meaning, for life by leading us to God – as he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ – through a weekly Sunday feast that celebrates the resurrection and through seasonal feasts that walk us through the events of Jesus’ life.
In this way, we do not merely live through the endless cycle of winter, spring, summer, and fall; rather, our time begins and ends in Jesus Christ, the Alpha and Omega (Revelation 1:8, 17). As opposed to merely trying to bring Christian emphases into secular time, the Church transforms the day, the week, and the year into the very means of experiencing God’s saving work. The prayers, lessons, and themes of our weekly celebrations and daily prayer cause us to experience time in terms of our redemption. Our personal life stories take on new context and meaning in our connection with God’s story. Our minds are transformed and renewed (Romans 12:2; Ephesians 4:22-24) by constantly remembering and experiencing again the drama of our salvation.
“We must understand that the intensive, almost pathological, preoccupation of our modern world with time and its ‘problem’ is rooted in a specifically Christian failure. It is because of us Christians that the world in which we live has literally no time… For the modern Christian the relation between the ‘Christian year’ and time has become incomprehensible and, therefore, irrelevant… No [Christian] seriously thinks of [the feasts] as the very heart of the Church’s life and mission… Feast means joy. Yet, if there is something that we – the serious, adult, and frustrated Christians of the twentieth century – look at with suspicion, it is certainly joy… Consciously or subconsciously Christians have accepted the whole ethos of our joyless and business-minded culture… Christians have ceased to believe that the joy of the feast has something to do precisely with the ‘serious problems’ of life itself, may even be the Christian answer to them.” (Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World, 1963)
Celebrating God’s mighty acts of salvation
Think about the appointed feasts that Jesus and the apostles celebrated (Leviticus 23; Gospel of John). How do they draw each generation of the people of God into the Grand Story about God’s redeeming love for his people and the world?
- Rosh Hashanah: new year celebration of the creation of humanity
- Yom Kippur: the day of atonement for sin
- Sukkot (Tabernacles): protection in the wilderness
- Chanukah: protection from the Romans
- Purim: protection from the Persians
- Pesach (Passover): liberation from slavery in Egypt by the blood of the lamb
- Bikkurim (First Fruits): harvest time between Passover and Pentecost
- Shavuot (Pentecost): completion of the harvest and the giving of Torah
Likewise, the feasts of the Church, as fulfillments of the Jewish feasts, help us celebrate God’s mighty acts of salvation in Christ. The following children’s song is a helpful guide through the Christian year:
Advent tells us Christ is near;
Christmas tells us Christ is here!
In Epiphany we trace
all the glory of his grace.
Those three Sundays before Lent
will prepare us to repent;
that in Lent we may begin
earnestly to mourn for sin.
Holy Week and Easter, then,
tell who died and rose again;
O that happy Easter Day!
"Christ is risen indeed," we say.
Yes, and Christ ascended, too,
to prepare a place for you;
so, we give him special praise,
after those great Forty Days.
Then, he sent the Holy Ghost,
on the Day of Pentecost,
with us ever to abide;
well may we keep Whitsuntide!
Last of all, we humbly sing
glory to our God and King,
glory to the One in Three,
on the Feast of Trinity. By retelling the story of God’s mighty acts of salvation through Jesus, the Christian fasts and feasts root the Church more deeply in our identity and mission as followers of Jesus.
Teaching the historic Christian faith
One might say that the Christian year is the first curriculum of the Church to teach the faith. The embodied celebrations of Christmas and Easter, for instance, express the historic Christian faith better than abstract dogmatic and theological formulas about the Incarnation and Resurrection. Through each feast we grow in our knowledge about the words and deeds of Jesus and what it means to follow him.
We may think of the Christian Year as two semesters for reliving the events of Jesus’ life:
- Semester 1: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany
- Semester 2: Lent, Holy Week/Easter, Pentecost
Each of the feasts in the two semesters are mirror images of one another that shape the life and vocation of the Church:
- Anticipation: Advent, Lent
- Fulfillment: Christmas, Holy Week/Easter
- Proclamation Epiphany, Pentecost
Proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God
Jesus said, “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15). When we read the Gospels, Jesus is a broken record about the coming kingdom of God. The Christian year gives the Church the opportunity to continue Jesus’ broken-record proclamation in our time to our culture: The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!
Ask yourself, “When are my friends, neighbors, and co-workers most likely to come to church with me?” Most folks in the Bay Area will likely take you up on an invitation to a Christmas or Easter worship service (especially if you host a party afterwards!).
G.K. Chesterton wrote, "The great majority of people will go on observing forms that cannot be explained; they will keep Christmas Day with Christmas gifts and Christmas benedictions; they will continue to do it; and some day suddenly wake up and discover why."
Thus, we devote much prayer, thought, and energy to the Christmas and Easter seasons for the sake of those you bring to Christ Church. Our hope is that you, and those you bring to our celebrations, might hear the good news and “enter into the joy of the master” (Matthew 25).