HEORTOLOGY
PART I
THE CHURCH’S FESTIVALS IN GENERAL
1. Introduction
The external worship of God, if it is not to remain vague and indefinite, finds expression on the one hand through certain elements belonging to the senses, such as signs and words, and on the other it is connected with places and times. By the changes of day and night, of seasons and years, Creation calls upon man to raise his mind to God at stated times and to enter into communion with Him. The day with its brightness is suited for work, night with its stillness invites man to turn his thoughts in upon himself. The change of day and night calls upon us to begin the day’s work with God, and to commend ourselves to His keeping in the darkness of the night. The course of the seasons, too, matures the fruits of the earth necessary for our support, and the succession of years reminds us of the fleeting nature of everything earthly, for our whole life is composed of successive years. Consequently the civilised peoples already in remote antiquity have found a call to the worship of God in the changing seasons and times, and so have introduced sacred seasons. Sacred times and places are common to all religions in general. The change of times, bringing with them corresponding changes in nature, made a religious impression upon mankind. In turn, man sanctified certain times and dedicated them to God, and these days thus consecrated to God became festivals.
The worship of God takes precedence over the daily affairs of common life, and accordingly displaces such of them as are not necessary for the support of natural life or the wellbeing of society. Thus it came to pass that the ordinary affairs of life gave place to the worship of God, and rest from labour became an essential part of the worship paid to Him. Man abstained from his wonted tasks on certain days, which received in consequence a higher consecration. And so among the ancient Romans, the idea of a day of rest and a holy day were intimately connected and received the name of feria. But it was among the Hebrews that the days set apart for the worship of God received the most distinctive character as days of rest.[1]
The Christian Church on her part, in wishing that the day set apart for the worship of God should be observed as far as possible as a day of rest from labour, acts in accordance with ideas and customs which nature itself has planted in the human race, and which need no other justification. The term sabbatismus (Sabbath rest) soon entered into the theological language of Christendom, and in public life the Christian holy days, at first only Sundays, gradually, even in secular legislation, became recognised as days of rest, sometimes in a larger and sometimes in a smaller number.
The entire number of ecclesiastical holy days and seasons is actually codified for us in the different Church Calendars. Their contents fall into two essentially different divisions, each possessing an entirely different origin and history. The first division consists of festivals of our Lord, distributed over the year, regulated and co-ordinated in accordance with certain laws. The second division consists of commemorations of the saints in no wise connected with the festivals of our Lord or with one another. Occupying to some extent an intermediate position between these two chief divisions come the festivals of our Blessed Lady, which have this in common with the festivals of the saints, that they fall on fixed days, but, on the other hand, they are to a certain extent connected with each other, and with some feasts of our Lord. This is carried out in such a way that they are distributed throughout the entire Church’s year, and are included in each of the festal seasons.
The former of these two divisions is the most important, and its chief feasts are also the oldest. The festivals of our Lord, Easter and Pentecost especially, compose what is called the Church’s year in the stricter sense, and, if they coincide with a saint’s day, they take precedence. The Church’s year is built upon a single basis and according to one plan, which did not originate in the mind of any one person, but developed out of the historical conditions resulting from the connection of Christianity with Judaism.
In the course of the ecclesiastical year, the Church brings before us the chief events in our Lord’s life and the most striking instances of His work of redemption. The central point of the whole is the commemoration of His death and resurrection—i.e. Easter—to which all other events are related, whether those which reach backward to Christmas, or those which reach onwards to the completion of His redemptive work at Whitsuntide. In addition, there is, on the one hand, Advent, as a time of preparation for our Lord’s coming, reminding us of the four or five thousand years which intervened between the Creation and that event, and, on the other, the Sundays after Pentecost, representing the period after the foundation of the Church, and devoted to the consideration of the redemption won for us, along with its doctrines and blessings. The weeks of the year form the links of the chain, each Sunday marking the character of the week which follows it.