liturgical time: walking the seasons: Why Do They Do That?

Showing posts with label Why Do They Do That?. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

The Colors in the Church Keep Changing - Why Do They Do That?

By Laurits Tuxen (1853-1927) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

So, the pastor's stole matches the hangings in the church, and seems to stay the same for weeks at a time. Doesn't he do his laundry?What's with that?

Traditional churches follow a cycle of seasons called the liturgical year, or church year. The church year has two major celebrations: Jesus birth (Christmas), and his resurrection (Easter). In between, are a series of seasons which celebrate key aspects of the life of our Savior. In effect, Christians walk with Christ through the full cycle of his earthly life, each year.

By LooiNL[GFDL http://www.gnu.org/
copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

Humans are cyclical creatures of habit. We seem to order our lives around annual cycles. People have been doing it for ages upon ages. The Church either co-opted, or harmonized with, (depending upon how one looks at it), this human tendency with the establishment of the liturgical year.

The seasons in the liturgical year: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Epiphanytide/Ordinary Time, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Pentecost, and then Time of Pentecost/Ordinary Time, are represented by colors. Each of the various seasons has a different tone and focus, and color changes set the stage and represent this well.

The colors vary somewhat according to the neighborhood of Christianity in which one resides, but, generally, in Western churches, they are:

Advent (Waiting & Preparation for the Coming of Jesus), (sometimes blue) - beginning of Advent to Dec. 24

Christmas(Rejoicing at the Birth of Jesus) -(sometimes gold)- Dec. 25-Jan. 5

Epiphany -(sometimes gold) - Jan. 6

Epiphanytide/ Ordinary Time (Focus on the Early Childhood of Christ and his public ministry) - Jan. 7 - beginning of Lent

Lent (Penetential, Preparatory season in preparation for the resurrection) (or Lenten white in sarum use) - Beginning of Lent - the end of Holy Week

Easter (Celebration of the Resurrection)-(sometimes gold)-Movable Feast, Varies by Year

Pentecost (Celebration of the Coming of the Holy Spirit and the establishment of the Church)-Seventh Sunday after Easter

Time after Pentecost/ Ordinary Time (Focus on Christ's reign as King of Kings, period between time of the apostles and the second coming) - Day after Pentecost until Day before Advent.

Advent and Lent are shades of purple, but purple doesn't show up on my gold background very well!

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Thursday, April 5, 2012

Could Ye Not Watch With Me One Hour?: The Altar of Repose

The Maundy Thursday service is over. The altar has been stripped. The crosses are now draped in black cloth. The church is dark.

Things aren't looking good for our Lord.

After celebrating the Passover with his disciples and instituting the Eucharist, he went to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray. He took Peter, James, and John with him and asked them to keep watch with him and pray.

Gethsemane, Old Tree in the Garden 1898-PD

They didn't do well. Three times, he found them sleeping.

If you haven't figured it out yet, liturgical Christians, (Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutherans, and others), don't just read and study about the life of Christ, we immerse ourselves, with all our senses in the sequence of the occurrences and teachings of his life. The night of Maundy Thursday is no different.

During the Maundy Thursday mass, the consecrated host (bread and wine) which has not been consumed is reserved for Holy Communion on Good Friday, when mass is not celebrated. Rather than being kept in the tabernacle, which stands empty at this time, it is carried in procession and placed upon the altar in a separate, specially adorned chapel.

At the end of this service, all of the altars, except the one which holds the reserved Sacrament, are stripped of their adornments, and left bare.

You may have heard of the tradition of parishes inviting parishioners to sign up to keep watch, in one hour increments, at the altar of repose through the night on Holy Thursday. Why do they do that?

Mantegna Andrea, PD-OLD

Jesus, at the Lord's Supper told the disciples...told us..."take eat, this is my body......take, drink, this is my blood". We take the consecrated host seriously.

He also told his disciples in the garden to keep watch with him, and pray. So...we do.

As soon as the altar of repose is established, someone (sometimes several people) will take the post of watchman. Someone will be in that chapel every minute of every hour until the service begins at noon the next day, Good Friday...until...it is time for him to die. Someone will be there keeping watch and praying, ...because he asked us to.

What would I have done? What would you have done, there in the garden that night? Would we have stayed awake? Would we have watched and prayed? Greater followers of Christ did not.
What would I do now? In hindsight, knowing what I know now, knowing all that he has asked of me? What will I do when he dies before my eyes, when the Paschal candle is lit late Saturday night and we sing the first triumphant ode to the Resurrection? When he lives? Because he lives?

Will I obey? Will I do as he has asked of me? Will I take him into my very self and be Christ to the world, with his help? Will I?

That is why we keep watch and pray. Because there are questions.

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Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Why Do They Do That?: The Veiling of Crosses and Images in Lent

Jonathunder, GFDL-1.2

According to the Roman and Sarum rites, crosses, images, and statues are veiled during Lent.

Why do we do this?

Liturgical Christians are a sensual bunch; we meet God, and worship him, in sights, sounds, smells, and touches.
They don't call it "smells and bells" for nothing.

The accouterments of traditional worship hold deep spiritual significance for worshipers. This is not because the objects themselves hold any solitary value, power, or significance, but, because they serve as earthly representations of spiritual realities.

As such, crosses and images in churches have deeply moving and comforting significance.

Bene16, GFDL-1.2

The Church has, in her wisdom, found that people appreciate things more when we have been without them for awhile.

Feasts are more meaningful after a period of fasting. The "A" word has more punch after it has been missing from the liturgy for awhile.

Crosses and holy images are like that. They tend to become invisible after awhile don't they? After all, the crosses are there week after week. They have a tendency to they become so familiar that blend in to their surroundings.

But, the cross is something extraordinary! What our Lord has done for us is beyond words. (That, is, by the way, one of the reasons that images can carry such meaning. Some things are beyond words.) So...a "fast of the eyes" to accompany the Lenten season of fasting is not such a bad idea.

The veiling of crosses and images is a wonderfully effective way of facilitating a dramatic effect when the Resurrection is reenacted at the Easter vigil.

The unveiling of crosses and images is one of the liturgical elements that marks the transition from Lent to the glories of Easter. In our liturgical drama, the unveiling of crosses accompanies the moment of the unveiling of the greatest truth of all time: that our Lord has conquered death.

~~~~~

In the Roman rite, veiling beings on the fifth Sunday of Lent (Passion Sunday in traditional "old rite" practice). In Anglican use, crosses and images are veiled, (generally these days in purple in the U.S.), beginning Ash Wednesday. In the Sarum (Old English) rite, crosses, images, and the entire altar are veiled in "Lenten white" which is the color of unbleached natural linen.

Some lovely pictures of Sarum rite Lenten array are here at Once I Was a Clever Boy. If you are so inclined, you will find the accompanying discussion immensely informative, as well.

A lovely photo of, and reflection upon, Lenten veiling is here at Fr. Ray Blake's Blog.

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Sunday, February 19, 2012

Why do They Do That?: Burying the Alleluia

My daughter has been watching a television show called The Colony. It follows an experiment during which several people play out what life would be like as survivors in an abandoned city, after a devastating viral outbreak.

In a recently viewed episode, the participants had been eating only canned foods for weeks, affording them only inadequate nutrition. Things were getting a bit dismal and the diet was quite tedious, and lackluster, at that point.

The participants went on a scouting trip in hopes of finding supplies, and discovered a small orange grove. They jubilantly stripped the trees and went home for a feast. How lush those oranges were! These people, who only weeks before the initiation of the experiment, had been living comfortable lives of plenty...would not have thought twice about an orange. But, their time of scarcity gave them a new-found deep appreciation for the magnanimous gift of an orange. Such joy!

The alleluia is like those oranges. We are inundated with it in Judeo-Christian worship. It has been with us for centuries. It is the quintessential praise word. Across time and cultures, Christians have sung it. In the West, it has come to be particularly associated with Easter. It is the primary praise word associated with the greatest wonder that mankind has received: the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ....

..."Alleluia! Christ is Risen!"

But do we think twice about it? Do we sing it with flourish? Do we give it, and him by it, the grandeur that is deserved?

So...that's why we bury the alleluia. During the entire season of Lent, Alleluia is not said or sung in Western liturgical churches, or in the homes of the faithful. It is hidden away like those oranges, in wait for its resurrection during the Easter vigil, where it is sung with a glorious flourish, at the announcement of the resurrection.

A multi-week fast from the alleluia makes you long for it....and makes singing it with a swell of exultation, at the resurrection of our precious Lord, all the more sweet, at the first light of Easter.

~~~~~~~~

So, at sundown (PST), on Mardi Gras/ Shrove Tuesday, the Alleluia will disappear from this blog...on the sidebar and in song...to be buried away while we make a Holy Lent.

Here are some ways to bury the Alleluia in homes, especially with little ones, making it a meaningful family tradition: