The Church does not merely remember the life of Christ; she lives it, year by year, through the turning of her calendar. The liturgical year takes ordinary time and makes it preach — so that in Advent we wait with the prophets, at Christmas we kneel at the manger, in Lent we go into the desert, in Holy Week we walk to Calvary, and at Easter we stand at the empty tomb. The whole mystery of salvation is not studied but inhabited.
The year runs on two interwoven cycles: the temporal cycle of the seasons, which follows the life of Christ, and the sanctoral cycle of the saints’ feasts. It begins on the First Sunday of Advent and reaches its last Sunday on the Solemnity of Christ the King, and between the great festal seasons lies Ordinary Time, kept in green, the long season of ordinary Christian growth.
This very site keeps the calendar with you: its colours shift quietly with the season — violet in Advent and Lent, gold at Christmas and Easter, ash on Good Friday — so that the whole sanctuary turns with the Church’s year.
Last reviewed for accuracy on , against the Douay-Rheims Bible and the Church's own documents.