Worship in the Anglican Communion is structured by a liturgical celebration of the Christian year, centering on Easter. In recent decades, greater emphasis has been placed on the paschal and baptismal nature of the church year and on observing the complete yearly cycle, not just major festivals.
The churches of the Anglican Communion inherited the Christian year from the pre-Reformation church in England. It has been an integral part of the worship of the Book of Common Prayer since 1549, and its use was staunchly defended in the seventeenth-century Anglican-Puritan controversy.
The liturgical movement of the twentieth century has brought renewal and deepening of the theological understanding of the Christian year and the reform of many details in its practice. The Episcopal liturgist Massey H. Shepherd has aptly summarized the theological conception behind such reform.
The Christian year is a mystery through which every moment and all the times and seasons of this life are transcended and fulfilled in that reality that is beyond time. Every single holy day … is of itself a sacrament of the whole gospel. Every single feast renews the fullness and fulfillment of the Feast of Feasts, our death, and resurrection with Christ.
Celebrating the Paschal Mystery
In the renewed understanding of the year, the weekly celebration of Sunday as the Lord’s Day, the day of resurrection, is primary. But the paschal mystery of our dying and rising with Christ is celebrated not only weekly but in the whole framework of the year. The celebration of Easter, beginning with the Great Vigil in the night between Holy Saturday and Easter day and continuing for fifty days until the day of Pentecost, is the year’s theological and structural center. The celebrations of the ascension of Christ on the fortieth day and the descent of the Holy Spirit on the fiftieth day are a part of one overarching celebration.
The forty-day observance of Lent, beginning on Ash Wednesday and continuing through Holy Week, is a season of solemn preparation, expressed in fasting and penitence, for the joy of Easter. Increasingly, Lent is also seen as a time for the preparation of catechumens for Easter baptism. Palm Sunday, the first day of Holy Week, is also the Sunday of Passion and celebrates both the triumphal entry into Jerusalem and the passion and death of Christ. Maundy Thursday commemorates the Last Supper, with its foot washing and institution of the Eucharist. Good Friday celebrates the Crucifixion and Christ’s conquest of death. The importance of the Great Vigil, marking the transition from Lent to Easter, is being gradually realized, and the Vigil is appearing in increasing numbers of parish calendars.
The Christmas festival—the twelve days from Christmas to Epiphany—forms the center of a secondary cycle celebrating redemption viewed through the lens of the incarnation. Christmas is preceded by four weeks of Advent, and its celebration continues until the Baptism of Christ on the Sunday after Epiphany. The seasons after Epiphany and after Pentecost complete the cycle of the year.
In addition, a cycle of major and minor holy days commemorates the saints and heroes of the Christian church on fixed dates throughout the year. These observances also refer back to the main theme of our participation in Christ’s resurrection, “since the triumphs of the saints are a continuation and manifestation of the Paschal victory of Christ” (Lesser Feasts and Fasts [1979], 58). The major holy days have been a part of the calendar since the sixteenth century but have not always been everywhere observed. The liturgical celebration of the minor holy days began officially in 1963 in the United States and is now quite common.
Recent Changes
Specific changes in the latest service books (the 1985 Book of Alternative Services in Canada and the 1979 Book of Common Prayer in the United States) include the designation of the Sunday after Epiphany (January 6) as the Baptism of our Lord, the elimination of the seasons of pre-Lent and Passiontide, the inclusion of the former Ascensiontide within the fifty days of Easter, and the designation of the Sundays following Pentecost as Sundays after Pentecost, rather than after Trinity. The central theme of the Advent season has also been changed, no longer emphasizing almost exclusively the eschatological Second Advent. Now, after attention is given to the Second Advent on the last Sunday after Pentecost and the first Sunday of Advent, the focus shifts to the Annunciation and the First Advent on the fourth and final Sunday. This procedure ties the season more obviously to Christmas and Epiphany and makes clearer the nature of the Advent celebration as both the beginning and the end of the Christian year.
Canadian Anglicans and American Episcopalians celebrate the Christian year through the use of a lectionary which, with minor variations, is common to Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, and several other North American churches.
Although the celebration of the Christian year has always been a part of Anglican worship, the emphasis on its paschal nature has only been common since the 1960s. Also, the integration of the entire yearly cycle, not just Lent and the major festivals, into Sunday worship, has become more general. Over this same period, the baptismal nature of the church year has become more apparent. Public baptisms have been incorporated into Sunday services at specific points on the calendar, with the Easter Vigil as the great baptismal day, and secondary baptismal celebrations on Pentecost, the Baptism of Christ, and All Saints’ Day (November 1).
The Christian year and its accompanying lectionary are widely used as the framework for educational programs for both children and adults, and an increased emphasis throughout the church on liturgical preaching has made the preaching much more seasonal. A similar emphasis is seen in an increased number of seasonal hymns in The Hymnal 1982. The seasons are also marked by the burning of the paschal candle throughout the fifty days of Easter and the lighting of Advent wreaths during that season.
The celebration of the Christian year, and the changes made recently in that celebration, do not seem to have caused any marked reaction throughout the church. Many of these changes in emphasis accompanied the introduction of the new prayer book and hymnal and were not themselves matters of note or controversy. The restoration of the Great Vigil of Easter, however, involving as it does a change in the popular celebration of a major festival, has been accepted more slowly than the other changes.
This emphasis on the church year is by no means new to Anglicanism. However, though many examples of calendar-based piety and devotion survive from the nineteenth century, this mode of worship has not become more central to the life of the whole church, not simply to a liturgically-minded elite. In sum, contemporary Anglican worship is based upon the liturgical celebration of the Christian year and the Feast of Feasts which is its center.