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Pope Paul VI said, “Liturgy is like a strong tree whose beauty is derived from the continuous renewal of its leaves, but whose strength comes from the old trunk, with solid roots in the ground.”
Welcome to All Things Catholic. I’m your host, Deacon Rudy Villarreal, and I’m so glad you’re here! Together we are going to explore what it means to be Catholic. Today we celebrate the Annunciation of the Lord. In other words, today is nine months until Christmas! In the light of these extraordinary times, we look forward to Christmas with great hope.
Why should we care about the annunciation? Or for that matter, why should we care about Lent? Why is the Church calendar arranged this way? What are all these liturgical seasons about?
We all belong to different groups – like our nations. As a people, we name and we remember certain days. For example, in the United States, some of the days we celebrate include the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Veteran’s Day. Dates like these are wildly important to shaping life of our communities. They also help shape our collective national identity. But this practice of naming and remembering days is much older than the United States – indeed much older than all of our countries.
This idea of naming and remembering has its roots in our shared Judeo-Christian heritage. The Ten Commandments call on us to remember and keep the Sabbath, for example. What would the Christian calendar be with Christmas or Easter? This practice of naming and remember affect each of us personally, and yet enable us to share together as a community. <1>
The Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, organizes the way we worship God the Father and Jesus Christ throughout the course of the year. The Church also gives us opportunities to consider the lives of people who serve as powerful examples to all of us in living a life rooted in Christ Jesus. For example, today is the Annunciation. Today, we focus on Scripture readings that help us celebrate a courageous young woman named Mary who, apparently without fear or hesitation, told the archangel Gabriel yes, she would set aside her dreams and follow God’s plan for her life.
During the days of the week, the Church might ask us to remember a particular saint – someone who was not perfect, but who demonstrated heroic virtue like martyrdom or courage. We remember them because their lives offer us concrete examples about how each of us might live our lives for Jesus Christ.
But here’s the catch: none of them matter – Mary doesn’t matter and the saints don’t matter – on their own. They are only important to us in the light of Jesus Christ. Without Jesus, these people are just ordinary people whose lives we would have no reason to remember. It is because of the way they lived their lives for Jesus that matters. So when we remember these people, we remember them in the context of our faith in Jesus Christ.
So, the Church arranges the calendar in a way that we contemplate Jesus Christ. We begin the year with Advent – those weeks leading up to Christmas which serve as a challenge to reflect on our priorities and to refocus our lives on Jesus Christ. Then, we celebrate Christmas and the season Christmastime. We rejoice by remembering that the Savior has come!
The next major season is Lent, the season we currently observe. This is another opportunity to clean our respective houses and prepare ourselves for Triduum. Triduum refers to what we refer to as Holy Thursday, the Thursday before Easter, to the Great Vigil of Easter. On one level, the Triduum is one solemn commemoration of Christ’s death and resurrection. On another level, it is the culmination – the high point of the entire liturgical year.
Next comes Eastertime – fifty days of celebrating and rejoicing about the resurrection. Historically speaking, even before Lent took shape, we’ve celebrated the resurrection until Pentecost. In fact, every Sunday for Catholics is a mini-Easter when we celebrate the resurrection. Why? Because this is what it’s all about – from the incarnation to the resurrection, Jesus is the promised salvation of God.
Now for 32 weeks of the year, from Pentecost to Advent and a few weeks between Christmastime and Lent, we celebrate ordinary time. “Ordinary” in this case doesn’t mean commonplace. In this case, “ordinal” or “counted.” <2> You see, the Church includes as much Scripture as possible and to do that, it divides Scripture by weeks. Since the Gospel accounts each have a particular theme, and since we pull from John’s account during Lent, the Church dedicates time for us to consider the Gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark and Luke.
We spend the Sundays in one year focusing on Matthew which we call Year A; then Mark in Year B, and Luke in Year C. During the week, there’s a two-year cycle of readings, some repeats from the Sundays, and some not. I know this is a digression, but if you include the cycle of Scripture prayed during the Liturgy of the Hours or the Daily Office, then altogether the Church will have read nearly 80% of the entire Bible over the course of three years. Just like in everyday life, what gets planned gets done. The Church doesn’t leave contemplating Scripture to chance.
I just mentioned the Liturgy of the Hours. What’s the Liturgy of the Hours? We’ll take that up in another episode, but here’s the reader’s digest version. It’s a sequence of psalms and other Scripture passages prayed over the course of the day. You see, Christians have from the beginning continued the Jewish tradition of praying seven times a day. Today, consecrated religious orders and priests continue this tradition, while deacons pray only part of the hours. The laity are not required to keep any of the hours, but they can voluntarily do so.
Okay, I digress, but the point is that the life of the Church over the course of the year is organized in way that helps us contemplate God’s saving action through Jesus Christ from the incarnation to the ascension. That’s why, on a day like today, we take time to recall when the archangel Gabriel visited Mary. Reflecting on the annunciation helps us look with hope to Christmas, and right now, we could use all the hope we can get!
Do you got it? Do you get it? Good! May Almighty God bless you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit! +Amen!
This episode was produced by deacon rudy’s notes. Our theme music was composed by Silent Partner. You can find all sorts of helpful information on the website at www.deaconrudysnotes.org. You’re listening to All Things Catholic. I’m your host, Deacon Rudy Villarreal. Join us again next time and don’t forget to check out the weekend edition where we break open the Word. Peace!
Notes:
<1> Huck, Gabe and Gerald T. Chinchar, Liturgy with Style and Grace, Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 1998, 92.
<2> Ibid, 105.
References:
1. Huck, Gabe and Gerald T. Chinchar. Liturgy with Style and Grace. Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 1998.
2. Metzger, Marcel. History of the Liturgy: The Major Stages. Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1997.
