LITURGICAL YEAR. – It is the series of feasts and festive times in the Church, beginning and evolving independently of the civil year. The latter, in fact, begins on January 19 and ends on December 31 on any day of the week, whereas the liturgical year begins on the first Sunday of Advent (q.v.), which always falls in the last days of November or the first days of December. In the civil year, days are counted—365—and months, 12, which are then grouped to form the seasons, whereas in the liturgical year weeks are counted, in the number of 52, in imitation of God’s creative week. The seventh day is called “the Lord’s day,” *dies dominica*, while the others take their name from their place in the week: *feria secunda*, *feria tertia*, *quarta*, *quinta*, *sexta*, *sabbatum*, and they begin on the preceding evening. Sunday corresponds to *feria prima*, because among the Jews the Sabbath was the Lord’s day. The weeks, in turn, are grouped to form the liturgical seasons, which constitute cycles around which the year is organized. The two principal ones are those of Easter and Christmas.
Easter (q.v.) included not only the feast of the Saviour’s Resurrection but also His Passion and Death, and the anniversary of these days was particularly impressed upon the attention of the early Christians, for whom it was the first feast, both in antiquity and in importance. But the date of Easter was not fixed. Christ’s death occurred on the 14th day of the Jewish month of Nisan, a lunar month that ran approximately from mid-March to mid-April. Christ rose on the day after the Sabbath, which, later called Sunday (q.v.), was chosen in the West to commemorate His Resurrection. The Western system soon prevailed throughout the Church, overcoming all resistance; thus Easter was fixed on Sunday, the first after the 14th day of the March moon. Easter was followed by Pentecost (q.v.), celebrated fifty days later. These two feasts date back to the most remote antiquity. Just as it was followed by fifty days of celebration, so a period of preparation with prayers and fasts soon began to precede it: Lent (q.v.).
The celebration of Easter led to other events in the Redeemer’s life being commemorated. Thus Christmas came to recall the birth of Jesus, and with it a new cycle was formed that, together with the Paschal cycle, constituted the two cardinal points of the liturgical year. Like Easter, Christmas also had its preparatory period: Advent, lasting four weeks, and a continuation period after Epiphany, in which the mysteries of Jesus’ infancy are commemorated. The rest of the year was drawn into the orbit of these two feasts. The Christmas season extends through all the Sundays following 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 festivity to penance. There remained the long stretch after Pentecost until Advent, about half the year. No important event in Jesus’ life was found that could give rise to a solemn feast. Later this space took the name of “time after Pentecost,” which is the time that completes the Paschal solemnities, consisting of twenty-four Sundays, with which the connection from Pentecost to Advent is made.
With the increase of persecutions, the Church took care to commemorate the martyrs, marking the day of their death, the *dies natalis*. Thus to the deeds of the Redeemer were added those of His faithful confessors, and in the Christmas and Paschal cycles, from the 2nd century onward, other new feasts were inserted, occupying the days of the year on which their martyrdom occurred. Moreover, the piety of the faithful linked the life of Jesus to that of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and so the first feasts of the Madonna appeared in the ecclesiastical year, commemorating the most salient events of her life: her Nativity, the Annunciation, the Purification, the Assumption. These were the first, others followed, as did other remembrances of Jesus, so that the days of the civil calendar were occupied by these new feasts; and thus in the liturgical year, centered on Easter and consequently movable, the fixed civil year with the feasts of the martyrs was grafted on.
In the present “liturgical calendar” (q.v.) the year consists of the Proper of Time (q.v.), which unfolds according to the Paschal cycle with its movable feasts, and the Proper of Saints (q.v.), which follows the civil calendar with feasts on fixed days; this division dates back to the High Middle Ages, when the updated cycle was enlarged, especially through the work of the numerous religious orders that arose at that time. In more recent times Marian feasts have greatly increased, due to the heightened popular piety toward the Mother of God.
Through the centuries the liturgical year has become ever more organized, and today it constitutes one of the most harmonious products of Christian piety, one of the most effective means by which the Church leads souls to God. Through the contemplation of the great mysteries of the Incarnation and the Redemption, through meditation on the life of the Redeemer, the Virgin Mother, and the saints, the Christian, while a pilgrim on earth, has reason to fix his gaze on heaven.
YEAR OF GRACE (MILLENARIAN): see MILLE, LEGGENDA DELL'ANNO.
HOLY YEAR: see GIUBILEO.