Here is some background on our current liturgical season.
Our Liturgical Year begins with the First Sunday of Advent. It is the beginning of what we call the Incarnation Season of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, and Baptism of the Lord. The Paschal Season of Lent, Triduum, and Eastertide is the other great season of the year in which we concentrate on the death and resurrection of Jesus and our baptismal commitment to discipleship. The rest of the year is labeled Ordinary Time, which means we use ordinal numbers to count the Sundays of the year, such as the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Incarnation means the taking on of human form from the Latin carnis meaning flesh. We use the word when we recite the Nicene Creed: [Jesus] “came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man,” that is, human. It is the season to celebrate our belief that God became flesh in the person of Jesus Christ.
We begin the season with Advent, a time of preparation. We are preparing for Christmas, a time to praise God for taking on human flesh. It is a season of joy and thanksgiving as we are filled with gratitude for the birth of Jesus. It is also time for preparing for the Second Coming of Christ at the end of the world. Will we be ready when Christ comes again? It a season of waiting, expectation, and hope.
Advent begins four Sundays before Christmas so Advent can be a different number of days depending on what day of the week December 25 falls.
The Christmas Season begins sundown December 24 and ends with the Baptism of the Lord. It is a time for celebrating the birth of Christ – the Word became flesh and dwelt among us – and the earliest signs of Christ’s mission on earth. The season used to be 12 days from December 25 to January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany. The US Bishops moved Epiphany to the first Sunday after January 1 in 1969 which means that the date can fluctuate from Jan 2 - 8. Baptism of the Lord is celebrated on the Sunday after that, or if that date is after January 6, the Monday after the Epiphany. Note from VK: Calendar rationale can be confusing.
N.B. 1969 is also when the US Bishops moved Corpus Christi to a Sunday.
Reflection: How is your Advent going in this, the Second Weel of Advent? Have you found some time to sit and think and pray? What is top of the list on your Spiritual Life quest?
