The Rhythm of the Church
Stephen Watt writes about living the Liturgy of the Church. We also highlight two of Scotland's Saints for early January.
Grace does not abolish nature but merely perfects it. Equally the liturgical year does not abolish secular time but rather brings it to a perfection. There is, however, no simple recipe which translates the secular into the liturgical. Instead, time as perfected by the Church leads us deeper into the mystery of God: as so much of the Church’s life, it is offered to us as a treasure house which we can enter and use but which we can never totally exhaust. In the following I hope only to suggest various ways in which a fuller engagement with the liturgical year can deepen our relationship with God, without pretending to exhaust this treasury handed to us by the Church and which we should receive with gratitude and humility.
Human beings exist in time. But within this general truth there are many different rhythms and even types of time. In the secular world at its most basic there is simply the clockwatching march of linear time: minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day marching onward never to be recaptured. But that progression can be frozen or reversed by a sudden illness or accident. The linear nature of this time also meets alternative, circular rhythms as we celebrate a wedding anniversary or a birthday. The simple accumulation of day upon day is subsumed within the natural rhythm of the four seasons, and the life of the human individual from birth to death takes place within a cycle of generation replacing generation.
As described on the website of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the liturgical year can be broken down as follows:
Advent - four weeks of preparation before the celebration of Jesus' birth
Christmas - recalling the Nativity of Jesus Christ and his manifestation to the peoples of the world
Lent - a six-week period of penance before Easter
Sacred Paschal Triduum - the holiest "Three Days" of the Church's year, where the Christian people recall the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus
Easter - 50 days of joyful celebration of the Lord's resurrection from the dead and his sending forth of the Holy Spirit
Ordinary Time - divided into two sections (one span of 4-8 weeks after Christmas Time and another lasting about six months after Easter Time), wherein the faithful consider the fullness of Jesus' teachings and works among his people
In the Catechism’s (paragraphs 1163ff) discussion of the liturgical year, emphasis is given to the Easter Triduum:
Beginning with the Easter Triduum as its source of light, the new age of the Resurrection fills the whole liturgical year with its brilliance. Gradually, on either side of this source, the year is transfigured by the liturgy…The economy of salvation is at work within the framework of time, but since its fulfilment in the Passover of Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the culmination of history is anticipated "as a foretaste," and the kingdom of God enters into our time (1168).
This metaphor of emanation and permeation, particularly of light, starting from a centre is used continually in these sections. The Sunday Eucharist ‘permeates and transfigures the time of each day’ (1174). The feasts of the saints, especially those of Our Lady, draw our attention to images and examples which the Church admires and contemplates (1172-3).
Circularity enwraps linearity which in turn enwraps circularity and so on. Within the circular rhythm from Easter to Easter of the liturgical calendar, there is the linearity of the year’s journey from Advent, where the past of Christ’s coming into bodily life in Bethlehem culminates in the final day of the year where we celebrate Christ the Universal King. When a baptism is celebrated at the Sunday Mass, we are reminded that we all individually enter into a journey which progresses day by day towards an inevitable earthly death, but with the hope of an eternal destination. Within that linear journey there is the circularity of the weekly rhythm of the celebration of the Sunday Mass. Within those weeks there is the daily cycle of prayer reaching its most complete form in the Liturgy of the Hours. As the General Instruction states:
By ancient Christian tradition what distinguishes the liturgy of the hours from other liturgical services is that it consecrates to God the whole cycle of the day and the night. […] The purpose of the liturgy of the hours is to sanctify the day and the whole range of human activity [paragraphs 10-11].
Living the liturgical year is a little like a pilgrimage, but a pilgrimage where you remain stationary, and the landscape moves past you. As in a pilgrimage, there are places which are expected, but there are also the surprises on the way. The most complete advice is that of scripture: ‘Watch ye therefore, because ye know not what hour your Lord will come’ (Matthew 24:42). But some more concrete suggestions may prove useful.
It helps, I think, to start by thinking of the Church’s time both enriching and yet challenging secular time. Let’s start with enrichment. Modernity drags us out of a healthy relationship with nature. For example, it shuts us away in buildings which are sealed from the temperature and light changes that characterise the seasons. Particularly during this time of COVID, it becomes difficult to give time a character. The liturgical year brings form to this shapelessness. The Church’s year doesn’t map neatly onto the natural seasons, but then the natural seasons themselves lack clear boundaries. However, Advent and Christmastide in northern countries at least have become bound up with the season of winter, and Eastertide with its message of resurrection becomes associated with the rebirth of spring. Secularised Christmas and Easter still mark these key transitions of winter and spring (traditionally, the time when we might starve and the time when we discover that we have not), but only in the Church do these deeper meanings of life and death really survive in the commercial chaos of reindeer and bunnies and seasonal sales. Even though we live in post Christian and even more post Catholic Scotland, secularity relies on the bones of the old religious festivals to break the grey rhythms of modern time, and also to offer the possibility of a deeper engagement with these buried themes of life and death.
So, there is the element of raising up and of enriching the mundane. But there is also the element of challenge, a reminder of our journey to death and judgment, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears. Most of this challenge is provided through the medium of scripture: an essential element of the liturgical year are the lectionaries accompanying weekly and daily Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours, the bringing of revelation into contact with time. Sometimes, as already discussed, the readings add depth to a time. But at other times, particularly in the salvation history read in Ordinary Time, themes of exile and return, abandonment, death and recovery break into a time which to the world seems ordinary, but is in its depths extraordinary, a time when Christ is already with us, and yet when we also wait for his return in glory to judge the living and the dead.
Finally, what does all this entail for our lives as Catholics? How do we live the liturgical year? As I said at the beginning, I’d advise treating it as a treasure house rather than as a script with but one meaning: explore it and expect it to lead you in different directions at different times. Some reflection on the lectionary readings and on the seasonal prayers is an obvious way to deepen our lives in liturgical time, starting with the Sunday Mass readings and collects, but also becoming aware of the Liturgy of the Hours, particularly the Office of Readings, which brings the light from the Sunday Mass and permeates our entire daily lives with it. The main thing is to increase our consciousness of the liturgical year, and to reflect on it as we move through it, and return to relive it many times over the years of our lives.
Sources mentioned above and useful for further exploration:
Catechism of the Catholic Church. Online at:
General Instruction of the Liturgy of the Hours. Online at:
US Conference of Catholic Bishops. ‘Liturgical Year and Calendar’. Online at:
Stephen Watt has taught philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and The Open University for over twenty years. As well as a PhD in philosophy, he holds a postgraduate MA in theology.
In a bit of an update to this section I have created a page for each month of the year going into a bit more detail about whichever Scottish Saint is celebrated that month. This will be updated throughout the year so at the moment there is only these two Saints below in our January page.