325/365 Liturgical Year

I'm presenting the liturgical year at RCIA this Sunday. I learned about it at atrium training and, with the symbols of the magi and the meaning behind epiphany, it was my favorite part.

After Christ's resurrection and the beginnings of the Church, his follower kept the Sabbath but also Sunday--the Sabbath because they were, for the most part, faithful Jews, and Sunday to commemorate the resurrection. As time went by, though, they started naming Easter as a great feast--yearly they remembered the resurrection in a special way.

So many new people were joining the church that there started to be an organized way to catechize them--and they started baptizing people at Easter specifically. So a preparation time grew up before Easter, and a celebratory time after Easter in order to properly welcome these new people into the church. These evolved into the seasons of Lent and Easter. We set the date of Easter originally as the Sunday after the 14th of Nisan, since that was the date of Passover. We had eye-witness accounts to assist in this, with Gospel authors tying the crucifixion to Passover.

Long after these eye-witnesses would have died, the church started to combat alternative theories about Christ, including the idea that perhaps he wasn't a person at all. Because of these sorts of heresies, it became important to set down a day each year to remember the birth, as well as the death and resurrection. But before the birth, church leaders set down the date of his conception.

There is a Jewish belief, or was, that holy people and prophets are conceived and die on the same day, usually in the month of Nisan as well. In the year 200, it was calculated that the date of Passover the year Jesus died would have been about March 25, and so the Annunciation was set as that date--the day that Mary conceived.

More later...