YEAR (LITURGICAL). - It is the series of feasts and festive seasons in the Church, and it has its beginning and development independently of the civil year. The latter, in fact, begins on January 1 and on any day of the week and ends on December 31, whereas the former begins on the first Sunday of Advent (v.), which always falls in the last days of November or the first days of December. In the civil year one counts the days, 365, and the months, 12, which then, grouped together, form the seasons, whereas in the liturgical year one counts the weeks, 52 in number, in imitation of God's week of creation. The seventh day is called the "day of the Lord," dies dominica, while the others take their name from the place they hold in the week: feria secunda, feria tertia, quarta, quinta, sexta, sabbatum, and they begin on the preceding evening. Sunday corresponds to the feria prima, because among the Jews the sabbath was the day of the Lord. The weeks, in turn, come together to form the seasons, which constitute cycles, around which they are grouped. The two principal ones are those of Easter and Christmas.
Easter (v.) comprised not only the feast of the Savior's Resurrection, but also his passion and death, and the anniversary of these days imposed itself in a particular way on the attention of the first Christians, for whom it was the first feast, both for antiquity and for importance. But the date of Easter was not fixed. Christ's death occurred on the 14th of the month Nisan, a Jewish lunar month, which ran roughly from the middle of March to the middle of April. Christ rose on the day after the sabbath, which, later called Sunday (v.), was chosen in the West to commemorate his resurrection. The Western system soon prevailed throughout the whole Church, overcoming all resistance; thus Easter was fixed on a Sunday, the first after the 14th day of the March moon. Easter was followed by Pentecost (v.), celebrated 50 days later. These two feasts go back to the most remote antiquity. As it was followed by 50 days of feasting, so it soon began to be preceded by a period of preparation with prayers and fasts: Lent (v.).
The celebration of Easter caused other events of the Redeemer's life to be celebrated. Thus Christmas came to commemorate the birth of Jesus, and with it a new cycle was formed which, together with the paschal cycle, constituted the two cardinal points of the liturgical year. Like Easter, Christmas too had its preparatory period: Advent, lasting four weeks, and a period of continuation, that after the Epiphany, in which the mysteries of Jesus' infancy are commemorated. The rest of the year was to be drawn into the orbit of these two feasts. The Christmas season extends through all the Sundays that follow the Epiphany, while the three Sundays of Septuagesima, Sexagesima and Quinquagesima are a kind of preparatory period for Lent, a time of transition from joy to sorrow, from feasting to penance. There remained the long stretch after Pentecost until Advent, roughly a good half of the year. No important event of Jesus' life was to be found that could give rise to a solemn feast. Later this stretch took the name of "time after Pentecost," which is the continuing time of the paschal solemnities, formed of 24 Sundays, with which the junction from Pentecost to Advent is completed.
With the onset of persecutions the Church took care to commemorate the martyrs, marking the day of their death, the dies natalis. To the deeds of the Redeemer were thus added those of his faithful confessors, and in the Christmas and Easter cycles, from the 2nd century on, other new feasts were inserted, which occupied the days of the year on which their martyrdom occurred. The piety of the faithful, moreover, joined to the life of Jesus that of Mary Most Holy, and so the first feasts of Our Lady appeared in the ecclesiastical year, with the commemoration of the most salient events of her life: the Nativity, the Annunciation, the Purification, the Assumption. These were the first; others followed later, as did other commemorations of Jesus, so that the days of the civil calendar were occupied by these new feasts; and thus into the liturgical year, centered on Easter and consequently movable, there came to be grafted the civil year, fixed, with the feasts of the martyrs.
In the present "liturgical calendar" (v.) the year consists of the Temporal cycle (v.), which develops according to the paschal cycle with its movable feasts, and of the Sanctoral cycle (v.), which follows the civil calendar, with feasts on fixed days; this division dates from the early Middle Ages, when the hagiographic cycle came to grow larger, especially through the work of the numerous religious Orders that arose in that era. In more recent times the Marian feasts have greatly increased, because of the increased popular piety toward the Mother of God.
Through the centuries the liturgical year has become ever more ordered, and today it constitutes one of the most harmonious products of Christian piety, one of the Church's most effective means of leading souls to God. Through the vision of the great mysteries of the Incarnation and the Redemption, through the meditation of the life of the Redeemer, of the Virgin Mother and of the saints, the Christian, while a pilgrim on earth, has reason to fix his gaze on heaven.
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Antonino Silli