Church Year

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The church year (or liturgical year or master year) has been referred to since the end of the 16th century. In the 19th century in Christianity, an annually recurring sequence of Christian feasts and feasts, according to which especially the worship practice and liturgy are guided. According to Catholic and evangelical tradition, the church year begins with the 1st Sunday of Advent, the Orthodox churches begin it on September 1, in preparation for the feast of the birth of Mary on September 8.

The church year consists above all of the festival circles formed first around Easter, then also around Christmas, which in the history of Christianity were gradually completed into a year cycle. Their sequence and size are similar in Eastern and Western churches, but the most important dates of the Orthodox tradition differ from those of the Catholic and Protestant traditions. Certain liturgical colors are assigned to the feasts.

Definition
The German term “Church Year” was first used in 1585 by the Lutheran pastor Johannes Pomarius. It marks the separation of Christian-sacral and profane time division and calendar order beginning after the Reformation. In addition, since the formation of the term, there have always been various confessional variants of the church year.

In French this was called année chrétienne in the 17th century, in the late 18th century. century année spiritual, in the 19th century année liturgique; In English it has been called Christian year since about 1790, today it is mostly spoken of the liturgical year. Various German theologians in the 19th century preferred the terms Year of Salvation or Year of the Lord.

Origin

Specifications
The fixed solar year, the moving moon phases and the vegetative annual cycles dependent on both time meters led to different calendar divisions in the Old Orient. These were partly superimposed in Judaism, partly broken through by cult festivals, which reminded both of recurring events in nature and of special inner-time events. Thus the main Jewish feast of Passover begins on the spring full moon, but celebrates not primarily the beginning of spring, but the exodus of the Hebrews from the slavery of Egypt into the Promised Land as God’s chosen people Israel.

The basic structuring data of the church year – Sundays, Easter and Christmas – are based on the seven-day week, the Jewish feast calendar and some solar fixed dates in the context of the equinox. They receive a new meaning as stations of a revealed history of salvation.

Sunday

The early church celebrated the Lord’s Supper weekly. The central reference point for Christians in early Christian times was the memory of the Paschal Mystery, the redemptive work of Christ, i.e. his suffering and dying for the salvation of the world and his resurrection on the third day, which was celebrated in anticipation of his return as “breaking bread” (Eucharist)