How the Liturgical Calendar Guides Our Prayer and Shapes Our Lives
Humanity abides by seasons. Throughout life, we enter one season after another—from infancy to childhood, adolescence to adulthood, and middle age to old age. We also experience the natural seasons of winter, spring, summer, and autumn through our celebrations, food choices, in what we wear, and how we decorate our homes. More importantly, the liturgical seasons offer wisdom and insight as we face our most difficult realities, such as spiritual dryness, waiting and longing, disappointment, sorrow, weariness, and illness. Likewise, they help us properly celebrate our victories, consolations, joys, and answered prayers.
The liturgical and natural seasons have a lot to say about the moments—difficult and easy—that form the seasons of our lives. The liturgical seasons especially lend inspiration and encouragement, as we move through the winters and springs, summers and falls of life. And when we stop and notice their “divine cycle,” we recognize the cyclical progress that we live by, too.1
And so, each year, our waiting and longing take on new meaning in light of the season of Advent. Our sorrow becomes redemptive when we enter into Christ’s suffering during Lent. Our joys ring even truer during the celebration of His resurrection on Easter. And the mundane, our work and leisure in everyday life, is elevated during the Time After Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit invites us to root ourselves in the Catholic Faith and to allow Christ to shape every aspect of our lives.
Abiding by the Divine Cycle
Father Patrick Troadec, SSPX, echoes this reality in From Advent to Epiphany. “Over the course of the liturgical cycle, the Church alternates the periods of penance and the periods of rejoicing, the ascetic periods and the festive periods. Sometimes she stirs up in man sentiments of sadness; sometimes she invites him to joy.”2
When we are attentive to our present moment, to the season of life we are in, and when we enter into the natural and liturgical seasons that God gives us, we embrace our joys and struggles more deeply. We no longer have to be ashamed of our suffering or embarrassed by our weariness. We no longer need to run away from the difficulty or hide from the pain. We can be present to it all, because we find the Lord in it all. And He will walk with us through the harshest of realities into the newest springtimes.
Thus, the placement of the liturgical seasons within the natural seasons offers a deep meaning to the important lessons of life:
...the Church has wisely regulated her liturgical cycle on the cycle of nature in the northern hemisphere. Thus, the cold of winter reminds us of the coldness of the human heart which Jesus came to chase away by coming down to earth. Yes, Christ came in order to warm our hearts chilled by sin, as implied by the time of His birth on the edge of winter. He is the Sun of justice, He is the Light of the world, come to scatter darkness of sin.3
Likewise, we approach Septuagesima and Lent when nature is still barren, which aids in recognizing the desert landscape of our own hearts. These two liturgical seasons are intentionally hard, and we see the parallels between the efforts we must make in our lives and those nature must endure to spring forth and produce those first fruits. This leads us to the Cross and then to the Resurrection, which is reflected in the flourishing of springtime.
The way in which the natural and liturgical seasons coincide continues throughout the entire year.
An Annual Commemoration
What is even more profound is that each year, as we enter into the natural and liturgical seasons, we also follow an “annual commemoration of the wondrous works of our God,”4 namely the mysteries of the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Yes, “the Cycle of the Liturgy, with its rays of light and grace for the soul, is not a phenomenon that occurs only once…it returns each year.”5 Year after year, the anniversary of each mystery in the life of Christ “is kept in the liturgy, and its impression is thus reiterated every year in the minds of the faithful, with a freshness, as though God were then doing for the first time what He did so many ages past.”6
What a merciful design of God! For every year, He puts within our reach the most powerful of all means for leading us to Himself.
But in a world that is ever more chaotic, and in life that seems increasingly busy, how do we abide in Jesus, as He invites us to in John 15? How do we live a life according to the liturgical seasons rather than a life that follows the signs of the times?
Two practical suggestions include liturgical prayer and liturgical living.
Liturgical Prayer
There is a Latin phrase central to the identity of Catholic Christians: lex orandi, lex credendi. Essentially, this translates to mean “the law of praying is the law of believing.” In other words, how we worship reflects how we live.
The Church gives us liturgical prayer—including the highest form of worship, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass—as a way to abide within the cadence of the liturgical seasons. The sacred Liturgy has a “sweet and healthy influence” on our souls, when we enter into her rhythm of prayer.7 Scripture readings within the context of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass reinforce the theme, or message, of each liturgical season. Many centuries ago, these readings were divinely placed on particular days of the liturgical year in order to draw us into the lessons of the liturgical season and as a way to recount a particular aspect of the life of Christ. And yet, so often when we read them, we marvel at how perfect the readings are for what we are going through so many years later.
Yes, “each new beginning of the cycle of mystic seasons seems to be our first year.”8
This is because God works through His Church, and so He provides special graces each year through the following of the liturgical cycle made by the Church, with the readings she has selected. Thus, when we come once more to a reading that we have seen so many times before, we often find that God communicates some new grace to us through it.
Divine Reading
We experience the profound purpose of the liturgical calendar, and the deep meaning of the daily Mass readings attached to the seasons, whenever we assist at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. We can also pray with the daily Mass readings through the practice of lectio divina, or divine reading. Lectio divina involves four steps:
Lectio divina invites us to slowly and prayerfully read Sacred Scripture, meditating on how it applies to life. It encourages talking with God about the passage and listening to how He wants to use His Holy Scriptures to speak to the heart.
While any Bible verse or spiritual book can be used in the practice of lectio divina, praying with the daily Mass readings allows us to enter into the life of Christ and the life lessons given to us through the liturgical seasons on a very regular basis.
On a personal note, I will never forget one morning when I received some very disappointing news. I was hoping for a new job, but instead I received a rejection letter. At the moment, I felt hopeless and helpless. I did not know what to do, what to think, where to go, or how to process this disheartening news.
And then I remembered my scheduled Holy Hour in the Adoration chapel.
As I drove to church, I did not feel like praying. But I had made a commitment to be in the chapel from 9-10 a.m. every Tuesday morning, and I knew I needed to keep it.
As I knelt down, I gazed at Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, and I immediately began to cry. I didn’t have to whisper a word, because He knew it all.
After a long while of simply sitting with Our Lord, I turned to the readings of the day. Still hurting from the disappointment, I opened my Missal to read:
“But God is faithful…For all the promises of God are in him, it is; therefore also by him, amen to God, unto our glory.”9
A wave of peace washed over me. And suddenly, I was able to surrender my disappointment to the Lord and entrust my hurt to Him, because as the Scripture passage proclaimed, He is faithful. And even in the midst of my devastating news, I knew He was with me, and through Him God’s promises would be glorified.
While I knew Saint Paul was specifically speaking to the Church in Corinth in this passage, I was also astounded by how meaningful these verses were to me. Moreso, this Epistle, part of the liturgical prayer of the Church, was chosen for this exact day so long ago. And yet, I read it when I needed it the most.
Liturgical Prayer Roots Us in Christ
This experience with the readings of the liturgical calendar expanded my heart and increased my desire to choose His will and His timing above my own plans.
It also demonstrated how deeply important praying with the Church’s liturgy is, because it grounds us in His Word on divinely appointed days. These words of His are living messages He has for us that will root our life in Christ. They are stable even when the world is uncertain. Because “Jesus Christ, yesterday, and today; and the same for ever.”10
Thus, when our prayer follows the liturgical calendar, through the daily Mass readings, we unite ourselves with “the prayer of the Church [which] is…the most pleasing to the ear and heart of God, and therefore the most efficacious of all prayers. Happy, then, is he who prays with the Church, and unites his own petitions with those of this bride, who is so dear to her Lord that He gives her all she asks.”11
Liturgical Living
Not only do we experience the profound richness of the liturgical seasons in the readings of the Sacred Liturgy and in our prayer through lectio divina, we also experience it in how we choose to spend our time—what we do as Catholics to draw closer to the Lord, His Blessed Mother, the Saints, and His Church. In other words, we consider how we can live more liturgically.
Redeeming the Time
In Saint Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, he encourages us to be wise in how we live. He instructs us to redeem the time, “speaking to yourselves in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual canticles, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord; giving thanks always for all things, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to God and the Father.”12
We can practice this idea of “redeeming the time” by being present to the liturgical season and the sacred readings, holy days, and holidays within it. For as Catholic Christians, we are not meant to conform “to this world; but be reformed in the newness of your mind, that you may prove what is the good, and the acceptable, and the perfect will of God.”13
Dom Prosper Guéranger echoes this sentiment of redeeming, or sanctifying, time in his masterpiece, The Liturgical Year. “This renovative power of the liturgical year … is a mystery of the Holy Ghost, who unceasingly animates the work which He has inspired the Church to establish among men; that thus they might sanctify that time which has been given to them for the worship of their Creator.”14
And so, when we live according to the liturgical seasons, in our prayer and in how we live, year after year, we grow closer to the Lord, and we grow in holiness. “Mysteries continue to be mysteries; but their brightness becomes so vivid, that the mind and heart are enchanted, and we begin to imagine what a joy the eternal sight of these divine beauties will produce in us, when the glimpse of them through the clouds is such a charm to us.”15
Monthly Dedications
One specific way to live more liturgically is through the dedications the Church recommends each month. These dedications invite us to meditate on the life of Christ and enter into the specific themes of each liturgical season more easily.
Having the theme of the monthly dedications at the forefront of our minds allows us to focus our prayer, thoughts, conversations, and celebrations.
For example, in our homes, we can set up a Saint Joseph altar in March and a special space devoted to Our Lady in May and August. We can ponder the many names attributed to Our Lord in January, such as Savior, Messiah, Redeemer, Lord of Lords, Mighty God, and Prince of Peace. And we can visit a cemetery in November, praying specifically for the Holy Souls in Purgatory.
Holy Days: Fasting and Feasting
Another way to live more liturgically is by recognizing the intention behind feast days and other Catholic customs, which provide stability and structure to life. These days, meant to shape our lives, give great meaning and purpose to how we live.
These holy days allow us to more easily “dispose our days in Thy peace,” as the Canon of the Mass proclaims.16
For example, we can commemorate the feast days of the saints after whom each of our family members is named. We can add them to the calendar, just like we add birthdays and anniversaries. In addition, we can bring back traditional customs such as maintaining our Christmas celebrations up through the Presentation of Our Lord (February 2) and maintaining a regular practice of fasting during the Ember Days.
“The calendar of the Church renews before our spiritual and intellectual vision—it may almost be said before our eyes of sense—the supreme worship of the ever blessed Trinity, in the communion of the saints.”17 What a gift the Church gives us in the seasons of life, nature, and liturgy! And how incredible is the profound way they move together throughout each year. Let us respond generously to the invitation to remain in “the divine cycle,” moving from one season to the other, receiving all the grace and wisdom the liturgical and natural seasons offer in each season of life.
Endnotes
1 Dom Prosper Guéranger,The Liturgical Year, (http://www.liturgialatina.org/lityear/), General Preface.
2 Patrick Troadec, SSPX, From Advent to Epiphany, (St. Mary’s, KS: Angelus Press, 2018), p. 8.
3 Troadec, From Advent to Epiphany, p. 8.
4 Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, General Preface.
5 Ibid., Practice for the Time After Pentecost.
6 Ibid., General Preface.
7 Ibid., Practice for the Time After Pentecost.
8 Ibid., General Preface.
9 II Cor. 1:18, 20.
10 Heb. 13:8.
11 Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, General Preface.
12 Eph. 5:15-20.
13 Rom. 12:2.
14 Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, General Preface.
15 Ibid., General Preface.
16 Roman Catholic Daily Missal (1962), (St. Mary’s, KS: Angelus Press, 2004), p. 891.
17 Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, General Preface.
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