Spirituality of the Liturgical Year
(Fr. Maroun Moubarak, M.L.M.)
Spirituality of the Liturgical Year
by Fr. Maroun Moubarak m.l.m
http://www.ayletmarcharbel.org/content/rouhanyt-alsnt-alttqsyt-alab-maroun-mbark
Spiritual Retreat Talk – Annaya, October 30, 2004
When we gather around the Word, a desire is born in us to know the Lord in thought and experience and a desire to remain with Our Lord (“Remain with us, Lord”). The Lord remained with the disciples on the road to Emmaus but vanished after the Breaking of the Bread. Yet, he remained in their hearts and gave them the power to love and to go and proclaim the Good News. Gathering around the Word brings about in us this same desire by the disciples on the road to Emmaus.
Why talk about the liturgical year?
The following are two stories about the significance of time.
The first story: All human emotions gathered on an island to celebrate. After a while, they were all asked to evacuate because the island is drowning. All emotions fled, except for Love, who did not have the heart to let the island drown all alone. When the island was almost completely submerged, Love called on Pride to help him, but Pride refused to let him on his boat. So did Wealth, Sadness, and Pleasure. At that moment an honorable old man came and rescued love. Love wanted to know the identity of the one who saved him, so he asked Wisdom who told him: “It is Time,” because only time knows the value of love and the importance of its existence.
The second story is about a young boy who had to undergo heart surgery. After the doctor explained to him how the surgical procedure will go, the boy said to him: “Tomorrow, when you go in to open my heart, you will see Jesus inside it.” The next day, during the surgery, the doctor saw that the boy’s heart was in too bad a shape to be saved, so he went back to his office, crying and blaming God for this situation. The Lord said to him: “I created this child and I, now, will take him back so he can live happily in the Kingdom.” The doctor replied: “What about his parents? They will be sad, and their heart will be broken!” God said: “It will only be a few years before they reunite with him. This is my will.” The doctor felt reassured. When he went to see the child the next day, the child said to him: “Did you find Jesus when you opened my heart?” the doctor replied: “Yes, I have found the Lord Jesus.”
The liturgical year is the regular time in which we live. We live in a time-space dimension we cannot escape. By entering our history, the Lord, who is not limited by time or space, willed to show us the greatness of his love and to fill our hearts with love.
The liturgical year, then, is the time where the Lord intervenes to show us his love and teach us how to return this love. Therefore, we sometime need stations and stops where we experience God’s love in order to return this love.
The Lord sanctified time by entering it. He did not enter it only at the Incarnation but much earlier. He entered it at Creation, when he called: “Adam, where are you? What have you done with the love with which I showered you?” Adam was not at the level of that love.
God’s intervention makes us ponder how to live this time in a way that sanctifies us and elevates us to him. His presence in time sanctified time because he is the Holy One who sanctifies wherever he is present. We draw our holiness from the presence of the Holy one near us (“Holy gifts for the Holy”), and our relationship with time, based on the Lord’s presence in it, sanctifies us. Our gathering in loving fellowship during the Divine Sacrifice is considered sacred time, and so is every moment we live in the presence of the Lord. In sum, holiness is to live every moment of our lives under the Lord’s eye, or else we lose our holiness.
The regular year is one complete revolution of the Earth around the Sun. The Sun of our liturgical year is Jesus Christ, and the faithful revolve for a whole year around him, around his warmth and light, meditate on and get nourished from his life. There are four seasons in the regular year, but, in the liturgical year, the Church revolves around Christ in seven seasons or sacred periods: The Birth of our Lord, Epiphany, Lent, Passion, Resurrection, Pentecost, and the Cross. During this liturgical year we gravitate towards the person of Jesus Christ, and we do so repeatedly in order to deepen our experience and ascend towards Christ by living the different seasons of his life.
Season of the Birth of our Lord: we meditate on the mystery of our Lord’s incarnation and all events surrounding it concerning Jesus’ childhood as related in the Gospels, from the announcement to Zechariah and the Virgin Mary to Mary’s visitation to Elizabeth…to the Lord’s birth and his presence in the Temple at age twelve.
Season of Epiphany: The Lord’s baptism, in which the Lord drew a spiritual path for us when he put in us his Spirit, through whom we have known life in the Spirit. We are submerged with him in water and put on Christ in a new life as children of God made in Jesus’ image.
Season of Lent: This is a trip at sea where winds toss about the ship resisting and striving to reach the harbor of safety. Austerity and mortification remain firm guides until we reach the harbor of safety, which is Passion Week.
Passion Week: The death and resurrection of Jesus. We commence Passion Week with the Rite of Arrival to the Harbor. During this week, we participate in the death of Christ and reach the glory of resurrection with him.
Season of Resurrection: The Feast of Resurrection is the essence and heart from which the liturgical year proceeds. It is the essence of our whole faith. Without the resurrection of Jesus, everything would be in vain.
Season of Pentecost: God sent us the Spirit to remain with us, so Jesus can ascend and sit on the right hand of the Father. During this season we meditate on the action of the Holy Spirit in us and with us.
Season of the Cross: we meditate on Jesus’ Cross with hope. We take pride in the Cross, the symbol of life through which the Lord saved us. Gospel readings during this season focus on vigilance and wakefulness in the expectation of the Lord’s Second Coming.
Each Sunday of this liturgical year focuses on an event in the life of Jesus, the center of our spiritual life. We revolve around him and deepen our experience with him year after year until the day we exit the cycle of time and enter with the Lord into eternal life beyond time.
The liturgical year starts, according to the Maronite Church, on the first Sunday of November, with the Sunday of the Renewal of the Church. This is followed by the Sunday of the Consecration of the Church (Sometimes these two Sundays are combined in one Sunday, depending on when the Feast of All Saints occurs). On these two Sundays we commemorate the Church’s renewal and the renewal of our relationship with Jesus for another whole year. We focus on how we ought to live with Christ throughout the coming year.
The primary center of the liturgical year is the Lord Jesus Christ.
Early Christians only celebrated the Feast of the Resurrection, but in the fourth century (arabic text wrongly says 14th century) Christians started celebrating the Lord Jesus’ birthday based on the pagan practice of celebrating the King’s birthday. They chose December 25th, the date of the pagan Feast of the Sun, because Jesus is our Sun, our God, and our Life-giver. From celebrating the resurrection came the feast of Christmas, followed by Epiphany and the Cross. This large category of feasts is known as Dominical Feasts. The second category consists of the feasts of saints and Marian feasts. Mary carried the Lord Jesus in her heart before she carried him in her womb (Pope John Paul II). This union with the Lord deserves to be commemorated, as do the saints who lived a life of union with Christ. Thus started the feasts commemorating the birth, death, or martyrdom of saints, whose virtues and closeness to God we hold as examples for us.
The concept of sacred time, during which we get closer to the Lord, return his love and be present to him, is very important. During the liturgical year, the Church puts before us particular readings and prayers, depending on the occasion, in order to enlighten our minds with the Word of God. This also allows us to recognize the Lord’s special presence in every liturgical season and creates in us the desire for the Lord to stay with us.
In the Year of the Eucharist, announced by His Holiness the Pope, Jesus accompanies us as he accompanied the disciples on the road to Emmaus. We direct our gaze towards the One present in the Eucharist and contemplate him so that he may stay with us and animate us with a new life.
In sum, the liturgical year is, in the heart of the Church, Jesus’ school. Let us be its best students.
by Fr. Maroun Moubarak m.l.m
http://www.ayletmarcharbel.org/content/rouhanyt-alsnt-alttqsyt-alab-maroun-mbark
Spiritual Retreat Talk – Annaya, October 30, 2004
When we gather around the Word, a desire is born in us to know the Lord in thought and experience and a desire to remain with Our Lord (“Remain with us, Lord”). The Lord remained with the disciples on the road to Emmaus but vanished after the Breaking of the Bread. Yet, he remained in their hearts and gave them the power to love and to go and proclaim the Good News. Gathering around the Word brings about in us this same desire by the disciples on the road to Emmaus.
Why talk about the liturgical year?
The following are two stories about the significance of time.
The first story: All human emotions gathered on an island to celebrate. After a while, they were all asked to evacuate because the island is drowning. All emotions fled, except for Love, who did not have the heart to let the island drown all alone. When the island was almost completely submerged, Love called on Pride to help him, but Pride refused to let him on his boat. So did Wealth, Sadness, and Pleasure. At that moment an honorable old man came and rescued love. Love wanted to know the identity of the one who saved him, so he asked Wisdom who told him: “It is Time,” because only time knows the value of love and the importance of its existence.
The second story is about a young boy who had to undergo heart surgery. After the doctor explained to him how the surgical procedure will go, the boy said to him: “Tomorrow, when you go in to open my heart, you will see Jesus inside it.” The next day, during the surgery, the doctor saw that the boy’s heart was in too bad a shape to be saved, so he went back to his office, crying and blaming God for this situation. The Lord said to him: “I created this child and I, now, will take him back so he can live happily in the Kingdom.” The doctor replied: “What about his parents? They will be sad, and their heart will be broken!” God said: “It will only be a few years before they reunite with him. This is my will.” The doctor felt reassured. When he went to see the child the next day, the child said to him: “Did you find Jesus when you opened my heart?” the doctor replied: “Yes, I have found the Lord Jesus.”
The liturgical year is the regular time in which we live. We live in a time-space dimension we cannot escape. By entering our history, the Lord, who is not limited by time or space, willed to show us the greatness of his love and to fill our hearts with love.
The liturgical year, then, is the time where the Lord intervenes to show us his love and teach us how to return this love. Therefore, we sometime need stations and stops where we experience God’s love in order to return this love.
The Lord sanctified time by entering it. He did not enter it only at the Incarnation but much earlier. He entered it at Creation, when he called: “Adam, where are you? What have you done with the love with which I showered you?” Adam was not at the level of that love.
God’s intervention makes us ponder how to live this time in a way that sanctifies us and elevates us to him. His presence in time sanctified time because he is the Holy One who sanctifies wherever he is present. We draw our holiness from the presence of the Holy one near us (“Holy gifts for the Holy”), and our relationship with time, based on the Lord’s presence in it, sanctifies us. Our gathering in loving fellowship during the Divine Sacrifice is considered sacred time, and so is every moment we live in the presence of the Lord. In sum, holiness is to live every moment of our lives under the Lord’s eye, or else we lose our holiness.
The regular year is one complete revolution of the Earth around the Sun. The Sun of our liturgical year is Jesus Christ, and the faithful revolve for a whole year around him, around his warmth and light, meditate on and get nourished from his life. There are four seasons in the regular year, but, in the liturgical year, the Church revolves around Christ in seven seasons or sacred periods: The Birth of our Lord, Epiphany, Lent, Passion, Resurrection, Pentecost, and the Cross. During this liturgical year we gravitate towards the person of Jesus Christ, and we do so repeatedly in order to deepen our experience and ascend towards Christ by living the different seasons of his life.
Season of the Birth of our Lord: we meditate on the mystery of our Lord’s incarnation and all events surrounding it concerning Jesus’ childhood as related in the Gospels, from the announcement to Zechariah and the Virgin Mary to Mary’s visitation to Elizabeth…to the Lord’s birth and his presence in the Temple at age twelve.
Season of Epiphany: The Lord’s baptism, in which the Lord drew a spiritual path for us when he put in us his Spirit, through whom we have known life in the Spirit. We are submerged with him in water and put on Christ in a new life as children of God made in Jesus’ image.
Season of Lent: This is a trip at sea where winds toss about the ship resisting and striving to reach the harbor of safety. Austerity and mortification remain firm guides until we reach the harbor of safety, which is Passion Week.
Passion Week: The death and resurrection of Jesus. We commence Passion Week with the Rite of Arrival to the Harbor. During this week, we participate in the death of Christ and reach the glory of resurrection with him.
Season of Resurrection: The Feast of Resurrection is the essence and heart from which the liturgical year proceeds. It is the essence of our whole faith. Without the resurrection of Jesus, everything would be in vain.
Season of Pentecost: God sent us the Spirit to remain with us, so Jesus can ascend and sit on the right hand of the Father. During this season we meditate on the action of the Holy Spirit in us and with us.
Season of the Cross: we meditate on Jesus’ Cross with hope. We take pride in the Cross, the symbol of life through which the Lord saved us. Gospel readings during this season focus on vigilance and wakefulness in the expectation of the Lord’s Second Coming.
Each Sunday of this liturgical year focuses on an event in the life of Jesus, the center of our spiritual life. We revolve around him and deepen our experience with him year after year until the day we exit the cycle of time and enter with the Lord into eternal life beyond time.
The liturgical year starts, according to the Maronite Church, on the first Sunday of November, with the Sunday of the Renewal of the Church. This is followed by the Sunday of the Consecration of the Church (Sometimes these two Sundays are combined in one Sunday, depending on when the Feast of All Saints occurs). On these two Sundays we commemorate the Church’s renewal and the renewal of our relationship with Jesus for another whole year. We focus on how we ought to live with Christ throughout the coming year.
The primary center of the liturgical year is the Lord Jesus Christ.
Early Christians only celebrated the Feast of the Resurrection, but in the fourth century (arabic text wrongly says 14th century) Christians started celebrating the Lord Jesus’ birthday based on the pagan practice of celebrating the King’s birthday. They chose December 25th, the date of the pagan Feast of the Sun, because Jesus is our Sun, our God, and our Life-giver. From celebrating the resurrection came the feast of Christmas, followed by Epiphany and the Cross. This large category of feasts is known as Dominical Feasts. The second category consists of the feasts of saints and Marian feasts. Mary carried the Lord Jesus in her heart before she carried him in her womb (Pope John Paul II). This union with the Lord deserves to be commemorated, as do the saints who lived a life of union with Christ. Thus started the feasts commemorating the birth, death, or martyrdom of saints, whose virtues and closeness to God we hold as examples for us.
The concept of sacred time, during which we get closer to the Lord, return his love and be present to him, is very important. During the liturgical year, the Church puts before us particular readings and prayers, depending on the occasion, in order to enlighten our minds with the Word of God. This also allows us to recognize the Lord’s special presence in every liturgical season and creates in us the desire for the Lord to stay with us.
In the Year of the Eucharist, announced by His Holiness the Pope, Jesus accompanies us as he accompanied the disciples on the road to Emmaus. We direct our gaze towards the One present in the Eucharist and contemplate him so that he may stay with us and animate us with a new life.
In sum, the liturgical year is, in the heart of the Church, Jesus’ school. Let us be its best students.
