COME, LORD JESUS!

 

COME, LORD JESUS!

The liturgical year developed in the early Christian churches as a way to celebrate the mysteries of the life of Christ and, in a spiritual way, to actually participate in them.  The grace released by the words and acts of Christ are made available to us today through the sacred liturgy.  They help us to take on the mind and attitude of the Savior and grow in our relationship with him.  In a spiritual way we accompany the Lord throughout his early life, uniting our lives to his, beginning at the moment of his conception in the womb of Mary.  We seek to join the disciples at the side of Jesus, witnessing his miracles and hearing his divine words.  We learn from their mistakes and their triumphs.  The Year of Our Lord, celebrated as liturgy, carries forward the Jewish custom of observing seasons and holy days.  It reminds us of the marvelous ways God has acted to save humanity. 

The center of the Liturgical Year is the Sunday celebration.  The norms which are given in the Roman Missal which provides instruction on how to worship God indicate that  “On the first day of the week, which is known as the Day of the Lord or the Lord’s Day, the Church, by an apostolic tradition that draws its origin from the very day of the Resurrection of Christ, celebrates the Paschal Mystery.  Hence, Sunday must be considered the primordial feast day.”  It is a holy day of obligation and takes priority over most other feast days on the calendar.  Sunday was always the communal day of worship for Christians, and each Sunday is a joyful celebration of the Paschal Mystery of our Savior – his Passion, Death, and Resurrection.

The Didache, or “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,” written in the second half of the first century, some thirty or forty years after the Lord’s Resurrection, provides instructions for the early Church so that it might not lose the traditions passed on from the apostles.  In regard to Sunday, it urges Christians to “Assemble on the Lord’s Day, break bread and give thanks, after you have first confessed your sins so that your sacrifice may be pure.”  The first few centuries of Christianity were violent for many of the followers of Christ, but they were insistent on coming together on Sunday to celebrate Christ’s Resurrection.  This is reflected in the confession of faith recorded by North African martyrs at the beginning of the fourth century.  They wrote: “We cannot live without the dominicum [Sunday Lord’s Supper].”

While every Sunday was a celebration of Christ’s Resurrection, very early in the history of the Church a special commemoration of the Lord’s Pasch, his Passover, grew up in the Christian churches.  They viewed the Jewish commemoration of Passover with new eyes, led in this direction by the writing of the apostle Paul: “For Christ, our Pascal Lamb, has been sacrificed.  Let us, therefore, celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Cor 5:7-8).  A new meaning was attributed to the Passover and gives evidence that the apostolic communities celebrated Passover with heightened intensity, in memory of the Passover of the Lord.  This became a favored time for the baptism of converts, and as the day of Pasch approached fasting and penance was intensified. 

In the late third or beginning of the fourth century the Eastern Rite Christians began to observe  what they called the Theophany (“manifestation”).  It was the first Christian feast celebrating the beginnings of Jesus’ life, specifically his Birth and his Manifestation to the Magi.  The West soon followed the lead of their eastern brethren and developed their own traditions for Christmas and the Epiphany.  We know for certain that a feast for Christmas was celebrated in Rome in 336.  As Lent grew as a preparation for Easter, so Advent became a preparation for Christmas.  However, it became a preparation for the two comings of Christ into the world; his first, as the Babe of Bethlehem, and his second, still to be realized, as Judge of the living and the dead.