Catholic
Almanac:
|
Friday, April 18 |
|
Liturgical Color: Red |
|
|
|
|
Why does the liturgy repeat itself every year?
Just as we celebrate a birthday or a wedding anniversary each year, so too the liturgy celebrates over the course of the year the most important events in Christian salvation history. With one important difference, however: All time is God's time. "Memories" of Jesus' life and teaching are simultaneously encounters with the living God.
The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once said, "Either we are contemporaries of Jesus, or we can have nothing at all to do with it." Following the Church year in faith makes us indeed contemporaries of Jesus. Not because we can imagine ourselves so precisely as part of his time and his life, but rather because he comes into my time and my life, if I make room for him in this way, with his healing and forgiving presence, with the explosive force of his Resurrection. (YOUCAT question 185)
Dig Deeper: CCC section (1163-1165) and other references here.