We Journey on the Ascending Ladder of Faith!
A Reflection on the Liturgical Year of the Maronite Church
By Fr. Peter E. Raad
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Have you ever wondered why we have a cyclical liturgical calendar? The seasons and the readings repeat, year after year, and if we are not paying attention, we may begin to think that our Church has run out of ideas, or we may even start to get bored of the “same old, same old” repetition! The truth, however, is that you and I may live a thousand years and not even begin to exhaust the depth and breadth and beauty of our Church and what she has to relay to us and teach us, for the simple reason that our Church speaks of nothing, offers nothing, leads to nothing except Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior, Who is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very Being (Heb 1:3). After all, our Lord Jesus “is before all things, and in Him all things hold together” (Col 1:17). For “all things came to be through Him, and without Him nothing came to be. What came to be through Him was Life, and this life was the Light of the human race; the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (Jn 1:3-5). How could anyone then think that they can ever exhaust God’s revelation or gifts? Could we live without His Life? Could we walk without His Light? Would we even want to?
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For these reasons, the liturgical cycle of our Maronite Church follows Christ’s earthly journey, aiming at nothing less than shining the Light of Christ in our hearts and minds in order that we may know Him, and that knowing Him, we may love Him, and that loving Him, we may serve Him in this world, and then gain the happiness of being united to Him in heaven, as He promised.
To learn more about the liturgical calendar, we will briefly explore three questions: (I) what is it? (II) what does it represent? And (III) how should it affect my life?
(I) What is our liturgical cycle?
Our Maronite liturgical year is divided into “seasons” that trace the major events in Christ’s earthly life, including His Birth, Circumcision, Baptism, Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension, as well as key events related to His founding of the Church, which include the descent of the Holy Spirit, various feasts of the Church herself, and feast days of saints who are pillars of the Church and role models for us the faithful. The yearly calendar begins on the first Sunday in November, with two Sundays on which we celebrate the Consecration and Renewal of the Church. Then, we have six Sundays for the Season of Announcements, followed by the Glorious Birth of our Lord and His Finding in the Temple. Then, the calendar continues with two Sundays for the Season of the Glorious Epiphany, two Sundays for Commemorations, and six Sundays for the Season of Great Lent, followed by Hosanna Sunday and Passion Week. The liturgical calendar then marks the Season of the Glorious Resurrection with seven Sundays, the Season of the Glorious Pentecost with sixteen Sundays, and concludes with the Season of the Glorious Holy Cross over seven Sundays.
(II) What does the liturgical year represent?
We can think of the liturgical cycle as a spiral staircase that connects earth and heaven. It may cover the same earthly events, but its shape is intended to raise our spirits ever closer to God. As we move forward in our journey of faith, both individually and as a community, we retrace the steps of our Lord and Savior when He lived in the flesh among us, and then armed with His love, mercy, and graces, we rise higher and higher, every day, every year. Like with every journey, ours has a beginning, a path, and a desired end. But the longer the journey, the more difficult it becomes to remain on course, especially when the gate is narrow and the road that leads to life is constricted, as our Lord warned us (Mt 7:14). By retracing the stages of Christ’s earthly journey, the liturgical year helps us remain focused on the desired end, which ultimately is nothing short of becoming united with Him. We refocus our belief in this truth at every Celebration of the Divine Mysteries when we are reminded before Holy Communion of the divine exchange through which our Lord joined His divinity to our mortality and assumed what is ours in order to give us what is His!
(III) How should the liturgical year affect my life?
Let us turn to our Lord for illumination. He began His public ministry with the simplest of messages: “repent!” To repent is to turn around. Then, He invited His disciples to join Him on His journey, to belong to His fold. We, like them, have been grafted to Him by our Baptism and Chrismation. Then, He began to teach them what the Kingdom of God is about. We too have received His Word of Life as it has been preserved for us by the Church. And finally, came their graduation, as it were, with ordination and Holy Communion, yes, but also the most important lesson of all: that there is no resurrection that bypasses the Cross! To rise with Christ, we must die with Him. To die with Him, we must follow Him. And to follow Him is to imitate Him. Is this not what St. Paul would come to learn? He had heard the Lord, and repenting, he had attached himself to Him, learned from Him, and lived in imitation of Him, until finally Paul had come to see that he had been crucified with Christ, and in fact, it was no longer him who was living, but rather it was Christ who was living in him (Gal 2:19-20)! For Paul, his journey of ascent had led him to the simplest, and yet most freeing of conclusions, which is that “to live is Christ” (Phil 1:21)! What awaits us is nothing short of union with God! And so the aim of our journey of faith is our transformation. But you and I live in the head, and are stubbornly unyielding. Yes, we submit intellectually to the Lord, but we still only see what is before our eyes and do what is within the reach of our hands. And yet, the Lord wants much, much more for each of us, but this we cannot receive unless we each give Him our heart too. This is where our faith, hope, and charity come into play.
Our faith must mature, and as it does, we begin to live more and more in the intellect of God, which is when we start seeing the world and our life within it, not through our human eyes, but through the eyes of God. Our hope too, as it grows and becomes stronger, will draw us to live in the will of God. And likewise, for our charity, as we begin to love as He does and not as we naturally do. If we are to surrender our entire being to God, our faith, hope, and charity must grow, not only in quantity but in quality, so as to be elevated to God, by the power of the Holy Spirit. In our progress in steps along the liturgical staircase, the Lord elevates our knowledge, frees our hope from earthly moorings and elevates too. The results will be seen in the quality of our charity. It is not a coincidence that the last Gospel reading of our liturgical year is that of Jesus telling His followers that each of us will be judged by how we care for the least of His brethren (Mt 25:31-46)!
The Lord made it clear to us that “a disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master” (Mt 10:24-25). Let us learn and grow through each liturgical cycle, becoming more like our Teacher and Master. The Seasons and the readings may repeat, but the Word of God is living and active (Heb 4:12) and shall not return to Him empty (Is 55:11). Our Lord is a patient and loving teacher Who wants us to continue to grow and mature in our faith and hope, year after year, until eventually, after we have been nourished, illumined, and pruned, we may yield abundant fruit in charity. And those who persevere in their ascent along the steps of the ladder of faith shall hear the King say: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Mt 25:34).
We were created for glory! Everything else pales by comparison. May this coming Liturgical Year help you rise to new heights in your imitation of Christ!
Fr. Peter E. Raad, Ph.D., Dallas, TX, Eparchy of Our Lady of Lebanon of Los Angeles
To learn more about the liturgical calendar, we will briefly explore three questions: (I) what is it? (II) what does it represent? And (III) how should it affect my life?
(I) What is our liturgical cycle?
Our Maronite liturgical year is divided into “seasons” that trace the major events in Christ’s earthly life, including His Birth, Circumcision, Baptism, Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension, as well as key events related to His founding of the Church, which include the descent of the Holy Spirit, various feasts of the Church herself, and feast days of saints who are pillars of the Church and role models for us the faithful. The yearly calendar begins on the first Sunday in November, with two Sundays on which we celebrate the Consecration and Renewal of the Church. Then, we have six Sundays for the Season of Announcements, followed by the Glorious Birth of our Lord and His Finding in the Temple. Then, the calendar continues with two Sundays for the Season of the Glorious Epiphany, two Sundays for Commemorations, and six Sundays for the Season of Great Lent, followed by Hosanna Sunday and Passion Week. The liturgical calendar then marks the Season of the Glorious Resurrection with seven Sundays, the Season of the Glorious Pentecost with sixteen Sundays, and concludes with the Season of the Glorious Holy Cross over seven Sundays.
(II) What does the liturgical year represent?
We can think of the liturgical cycle as a spiral staircase that connects earth and heaven. It may cover the same earthly events, but its shape is intended to raise our spirits ever closer to God. As we move forward in our journey of faith, both individually and as a community, we retrace the steps of our Lord and Savior when He lived in the flesh among us, and then armed with His love, mercy, and graces, we rise higher and higher, every day, every year. Like with every journey, ours has a beginning, a path, and a desired end. But the longer the journey, the more difficult it becomes to remain on course, especially when the gate is narrow and the road that leads to life is constricted, as our Lord warned us (Mt 7:14). By retracing the stages of Christ’s earthly journey, the liturgical year helps us remain focused on the desired end, which ultimately is nothing short of becoming united with Him. We refocus our belief in this truth at every Celebration of the Divine Mysteries when we are reminded before Holy Communion of the divine exchange through which our Lord joined His divinity to our mortality and assumed what is ours in order to give us what is His!
(III) How should the liturgical year affect my life?
Let us turn to our Lord for illumination. He began His public ministry with the simplest of messages: “repent!” To repent is to turn around. Then, He invited His disciples to join Him on His journey, to belong to His fold. We, like them, have been grafted to Him by our Baptism and Chrismation. Then, He began to teach them what the Kingdom of God is about. We too have received His Word of Life as it has been preserved for us by the Church. And finally, came their graduation, as it were, with ordination and Holy Communion, yes, but also the most important lesson of all: that there is no resurrection that bypasses the Cross! To rise with Christ, we must die with Him. To die with Him, we must follow Him. And to follow Him is to imitate Him. Is this not what St. Paul would come to learn? He had heard the Lord, and repenting, he had attached himself to Him, learned from Him, and lived in imitation of Him, until finally Paul had come to see that he had been crucified with Christ, and in fact, it was no longer him who was living, but rather it was Christ who was living in him (Gal 2:19-20)! For Paul, his journey of ascent had led him to the simplest, and yet most freeing of conclusions, which is that “to live is Christ” (Phil 1:21)! What awaits us is nothing short of union with God! And so the aim of our journey of faith is our transformation. But you and I live in the head, and are stubbornly unyielding. Yes, we submit intellectually to the Lord, but we still only see what is before our eyes and do what is within the reach of our hands. And yet, the Lord wants much, much more for each of us, but this we cannot receive unless we each give Him our heart too. This is where our faith, hope, and charity come into play.
Our faith must mature, and as it does, we begin to live more and more in the intellect of God, which is when we start seeing the world and our life within it, not through our human eyes, but through the eyes of God. Our hope too, as it grows and becomes stronger, will draw us to live in the will of God. And likewise, for our charity, as we begin to love as He does and not as we naturally do. If we are to surrender our entire being to God, our faith, hope, and charity must grow, not only in quantity but in quality, so as to be elevated to God, by the power of the Holy Spirit. In our progress in steps along the liturgical staircase, the Lord elevates our knowledge, frees our hope from earthly moorings and elevates too. The results will be seen in the quality of our charity. It is not a coincidence that the last Gospel reading of our liturgical year is that of Jesus telling His followers that each of us will be judged by how we care for the least of His brethren (Mt 25:31-46)!
The Lord made it clear to us that “a disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master” (Mt 10:24-25). Let us learn and grow through each liturgical cycle, becoming more like our Teacher and Master. The Seasons and the readings may repeat, but the Word of God is living and active (Heb 4:12) and shall not return to Him empty (Is 55:11). Our Lord is a patient and loving teacher Who wants us to continue to grow and mature in our faith and hope, year after year, until eventually, after we have been nourished, illumined, and pruned, we may yield abundant fruit in charity. And those who persevere in their ascent along the steps of the ladder of faith shall hear the King say: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Mt 25:34).
We were created for glory! Everything else pales by comparison. May this coming Liturgical Year help you rise to new heights in your imitation of Christ!
Fr. Peter E. Raad, Ph.D., Dallas, TX, Eparchy of Our Lady of Lebanon of Los Angeles
