YEAR (LITURGICAL). — It is the series of feasts and festive seasons in the Church, and it begins and develops independently of the civil year. The latter, in fact, begins on 1 January and on any day of the week, and ends on 31 December, whereas the former begins Advent (v.), which always falls in the last days of November or the first days of December. In the civil year, the days—365—and the months—12—are counted; these, in turn, grouped together, form the seasons, whereas in the liturgical year the weeks are counted, numbering 52, in likeness to God’s creative week. The seventh day is called the “day of the Lord,” dies dominica, while the others take their names from the place they occupy in the week: feria secunda, feria tertia, quarta, quinta, sexta, sabbatum, and begin on the preceding evening. Sunday corresponds to feria prima, because among the Jews the Sabbath was the day of the Lord. The weeks, in turn, join together to form 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 Resurrection of the Saviour, but also his passion and death, and the anniversary of these days imposed itself in a particular way 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 took place on the 14th of the month of Nisan, a Jewish lunar month, which ran approximately from mid-March to mid-April. Christ rose on the day following the Sabbath, which, Sunday (v.), was chosen in the West to commemorate his resurrection. The Western system soon prevailed throughout the Church, overcoming every resistance; thus Easter was fixed on a Sunday, the first after the 14th day of the March moon. Pentecost (v.), celebrated 50 days later. These two feasts date back to the most remote antiquity. Just as it was followed by 50 days of festivity, so it was soon preceded by a period of preparation with prayers and fasts: Lent (v.).
The celebration of Easter led to other events in the life of the Redeemer being commemorated. Christmas then came to recall the birth of Jesus, and with it a new cycle was formed which, together with the Easter cycle, constituted the two cardinal points of the liturgical year. Like Easter, Christmas also had its preparatory period: Advent, lasting four weeks, and a period of continuation, namely the time after Epiphany, in which the mysteries of Jesus’ infancy are commemorated. The rest of the year had to be drawn into the orbit of these two feasts. The Christmas season extends through all the Sundays following Epiphany, while the three Sundays of Setuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima constitute a kind of preparatory period for Lent, a time of transition from joy to sorrow, from festivity to penance. There remained the long interval after Pentecost until Advent, approximately half the year. No important event in the life of Jesus occurred that could give rise to a solemn feast. Later, this interval took the name of “the time after Pentecost,” which is the continuing season of the Easter solemnities, consisting of 24 Sundays, with which the conjunction from Pentecost to Advent is completed.
As the persecutions intensified, the Church took care to commemorate the martyrs, marking the day of their death, the dies natalis. Thus the deeds of his faithful confessors were added to those of the Redeemer, and in the Christmas and Easter cycles, from the second century onward, other new feasts were inserted, occupying the days of the year on which their martyrdom had occurred. The piety of the faithful, moreover, joined the life of Mary Most Holy to that of Jesus, and so the first feasts of Our Lady appeared in the ecclesiastical year, recalling the most important events of her life: the Nativity, the Annunciation, the Purification, and the Assumption. These were the first; others followed, as did other commemorations of Jesus, so that the days of the civil calendar came to be occupied by these new feasts; and thus, in the liturgical year, centred on Easter and consequently movable, the fixed civil year, with the feasts of the martyrs, was gradually grafted onto II.
In the present “liturgical calendar” (v.), Temporal (v.), which develops according to the Easter cycle with its movable feasts, Sanctoral (v.), which follows the civil calendar, with feasts on fixed days. This division dates from the High Middle Ages, when the hagiographical cycle came to expand, especially through the work of the numerous religious Orders that arose in that period. In more recent times, the Marian feasts have grown greatly in number, owing to the increased popular devotion to the Mother of God.
Through the centuries, the liturgical year has become increasingly ordered, and today 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 meditation on 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 upon heaven.