Understanding Our Faith

The Liturgical Year: End and Beginning

It is hard to believe but next Sunday we come to the end of the liturgical or the church year. It rings the bell on the end of the civil year as we move towards 2026.

I suspect we all say often that we can’t believe that the year has gone and each year does seem to take wings. Sometimes we feel as if it has almost left us behind!

Why do we celebrate a different year to the civil year? Why do we see the start of Advent as the start of our year rather than New Year’s Day? Well, we look at time differently!

From the beginning, we have looked at time differently. At times, Christians spoke of Sunday as the eighth day. Is this absurd? No, it carries a message about how Christians see time. That is, we are not confined to the ever-repeating seven days of the week. We do not see ourselves as encased in that ever-repeating cycle of time. Speaking of the 8th day was a way of saying that we and our world are not imprisoned in time as we know it, but because of Christ, we go beyond the apparent cycle of life into another understanding of life and the world which see us and it unchained from the ever-repeating cycle of time. This was a poetic way of speaking of the resurrection and poetry speaks of reality beyond appearances.   

We believe in the resurrection of Jesus and our own to come. This is the core of our faith and so finds expression in our view of the world and of time.

So, we see the Lord Jesus as always at the centre: we celebrate Advent and Christmas as his coming among us in history and as the anticipation that he will keep coming until his coming is complete. And then we celebrate the Three Days of his death and resurrection with Lent leading up to it and Eastertime until Pentecost continuing it. 

Our Christian celebration of time runs alongside that of our society as a constant commentary on it. Next week: Advent.

By:  Fr Frank O’Loughlin