Church year, also called liturgical year, annual cycle of seasons and days observed in the Christian churches in commemoration of the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ and of his virtues as exhibited in the lives of the saints.

Origins of the church year

Religious times and seasons

The church year has deep roots in the primitive human impulse to mark certain times with sacral significance and ritual observance. These are times when conscious attention is given to the mysterious forces that surround and involve all living creatures in the natural and inexorable cycles of light and darkness; labour and rest; birth, growth, decay, and death.

Two interrelated cycles have had primary importance in the shaping of religious calendars. One is cosmic: the phases of the moon and the solar equinoxes and solstices. The other is the periodic succession of the seasons of nature that determines times of sowing and reaping. Both cycles speak to the mystery of birth, death, and rebirth and to human dependence upon the fecundity of life given in the natural creation.

Jewish background

The Jewish religious year, grounded in the divinely revealed Law of the Hebrew Bible, was the foundation for the church year of Christians. It is a lunar-month calendar stemming from the primitive nomadic life of the Hebrews, with its chief festival at the first full moon of spring, known later as the Passover. Grafted onto this calendar after the settlement of the Hebrew tribes in Palestine were the agricultural festivals—dependent upon “the early and later rains”—the first fruits at Passover, the first harvest at Shavuot, or the Festival of Weeks, and the autumn harvest at Sukkoth, or the Feast of Tabernacles or Booths.

Of uncertain origin, but prior to the monarchical period (11th–6th century BCE), the Hebrews observed a seven-day week, of which the last day, or Sabbath, was a holiday and day of rest. Whatever its original purpose, it became transformed into a sacral day, consecrated to Yahweh, the one God of the Hebrews, and increasingly surrounded with restrictions upon all activity other than worship. In the time of Jesus (1st century CE), “keeping holy the sabbath day” was a principal hallmark of adherence to Judaism.

To be continued…