The practice of the church year, which has developed over centuries in the Roman Catholic tradition, underwent major revision as a result of the Second Vatican Council. The changes were designed to recover the primacy of the “paschal mystery” of Christ’s death and resurrection in both of the major cycles, the Christological and the sanctoral.
Christ’s saving work is celebrated in sacred memory by the church on fixed days throughout the year. Each week on the day called the Lord’s Day the church commemorates the Lord’s resurrection. Once a year at Easter the church honors this resurrection and passion with the utmost solemnity. In fact, through the yearly cycle, the Church unfolds the entire mystery of Christ and keeps the anniversaries of the saints.
This statement from the opening of the General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar, which became effective in 1970 under Pope Paul VI, reveals the two primary cycles of the liturgical year in the Roman Catholic tradition: the cycle of feasts and commemorations, which remember the life and actions of Jesus Christ, and the cycle of anniversaries commemorating holy people or those Christians whose lives and actions best exemplify what it is to follow Christ. Both of the cycles, Christological and sanctoral, have their foundation in the building block of Sunday, the weekly celebration of the Resurrection.
Christological and Sanctoral Cycles
Observance of Sunday, the first feast, underlay the development of the annual feast of Easter. And it is Easter, that annual commemoration of Jesus’ passing over from death to life, which gives rise to the structure of the liturgical year, first in the extension of Easter for fifty days (the Pentecost), then in the time of preparation for Easter, known as Lent. This first part of the Christological cycle, known as the Paschal cycle, extends from Ash Wednesday to the Sunday of Pentecost in the current calendar.
The other part of the Christological cycle is the Incarnation cycle, centered on the celebration of God become human and the consequent sanctification of humanity. Christmas is at the center of the cycle, surrounded by that feast’s extension of twelve days until January 6, and the period of preparation, known in the contemporary church as Advent. This cycle, from the first Sunday of Advent until Epiphany, and including the Baptism of the Lord beyond that, makes up the other anchor of the liturgical year.
The sanctoral cycle that commemorates the saints also has its theological basis in the weekly celebration of the Resurrection. It is in and through Christ that the martyrs suffered and died, filled with hope and confidence of the Resurrection, and it is in and through Christ that the saints lived and died, modeling a life lived in close communion with Christ. The structure of commemorations in the contemporary church follows the ancient tradition of commemorating a martyr (or a saint) on their death date, which was their birthday into eternal life.
The New Calendar and the Centrality of Easter
The new calendar promulgated in 1970 retained as its basis the Christological and sanctoral cycles form the historic Roman Catholic liturgical calendar, but also instituted major revisions. The changes that the Second Vatican Council set in motion and which took shape in the 1970 calendar were based first of all on a concern that the primacy of the life and death of Jesus Christ was becoming obscured behind the avalanche of preparatory celebrations and saints’ feasts. The primary focus of the liturgical year is the “paschal mystery,” the dying and rising and Christ and its implications for each Christian life. Thus, new emphasis was placed on the centrality of Easter. Measures taken toward that end included restorations to the liturgy, particularly the three holy days from Holy Thursday evening to Easter Sunday evening, and the returning of Lent to its earlier focus as a time of preparation for Easter, especially for those preparing to be baptized at Easter. Moreover, other commemorations, especially those of saints and particular parish celebrations, were moved out of the time of Lent and Easter so as not to distract from the primary focus. The Incarnation cycle was likewise restored so that Advent moves towards Christmas, and Christmas celebrated in all its fullness in the time between December 25 and January 6.
The new calendar also implemented changes in the sanctoral cycle. Vatican II clearly ranked the two cycles by explaining that the “Proper of Seasons,” or the Christological cycle, took precedence over the “Proper of Saints” or sanctoral cycle. Because of that, many saints were removed from the calendar, particularly those for whom no historical foundation could be found. In some cases, even saints with historical precedence were deleted from the universal calendar in an effort to “clean house” and relieve the clutter of nineteen hundred years of accumulation. Conversely, the 1970 calendar also added saints, primarily from geographical areas which had been previously underrepresented in the calendar, specifically those countries to which Christianity had come in recent times.
Coping with Change
Twenty-two years after the promulgation of the new calendar, some Roman Catholic communities are still wrestling with the changes, some have forgotten what it was like before Vatican II, and many have moved forward, prophetically revealing what future directions may look like.
One of the most difficult changes for many Catholics to cope with was the “loss” of their favorite saint, a classic example being St. Christopher. Also, many perceive an imbalance among honored saints in the sanctoral cycle. They believe a calendar of celibate Italian men does not represent the diversity that has always characterized the church.
Within the Christological calendar, an issue still being dealt with is the difficulty of ritualizing the alternation of preparation and fulfillment. The season of Lent, the period of preparation for Easter, is given far more emphasis than the period of fulfillment, namely the fifty days of Easter. To overemphasize one and de-emphasize the other is to lose the balance in and the truth of the death and resurrection of Christ. Many Catholic communities seem still to prefer penance to the celebration, reflection on sin over hope in salvation.
Conflicting Calendars
Another contemporary issue with which many churches grapple is the interaction of the church calendar and the many other calendars to which people owe allegiance. The liturgical year is but one sequence of fast and feast to which most people are called. Many families live their lives based on the academic calendar. The calendar of the civil religion can conflict with the liturgical calendar. The Feast of Pentecost, for example, lands on Mother’s Day in May.
Probably the most prominent and the most frustrating clash is between the Incarnation cycle and the retail industry calendar. The Catholic church tries to honor the season of Advent as a season of preparation for Christmas, and Christmas as a twelve-day celebration beginning December 25. The retail industry, on the other hand, insists that Christmas begins in mid-October and ends on the evening of December 24. All of these conflicts pull Christians in two different directions, either towards an integration of the calendars marking their lives or towards a countercultural movement that makes a choice against the prevailing norms of society.
The influence of individual churches and groups of churches on the future of the calendar is also a factor in the living of the church year. Many communities see two liturgical calendars as a just solution: the universal calendar, in which the primary feasts are celebrated in conjunction with the whole church, and the local calendar, in which the “saints” of a parish, the anniversary of the church’s dedication, and the commemoration of special events may be celebrated. Some see the solution to a lack of diversity in the representative saints in this two-tiered system. Each community would have its own sanctoral cycle in addition to the universal calendar.
Another profound influence on the marking of the liturgical year has been the adoption of the R.C.I.A. (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults). In parishes where this restored process of initiation has been followed for several years, parishioners report a renewed (or new) understanding of what Lent really is, how the year unfolds, and most particularly, the centrality of Easter, with its celebration of baptism at the core. More than any treatise on the importance of the church calendar, the experience of accompanying new Christians through the richness of the liturgical year has restored Easter as “the culmination of the entire liturgical year: dying he destroyed our death and rising he restored our life” (General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar, 18).