“Liturgy is the ‘work of the people’. It is the words, actions, and participation of the Christian community in response to God’s presence in the world. The calendar is our pilgrimage and entryway into spiritual practice. A pilgrimage neither tame nor predictable because it is always expanding our understanding.”
~ The Season of the Nativity: Confessions and Practices of an Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany Extremist. Sybil MacBeth
I am a huge proponent that in order to make sense of where we are going, we need to know where we have been. This means looking toward our origin story which began at the time of creation. The moment God set the light above the darkness, the sun, moon and stars into alignment and proclaimed day and night, our understanding of time began. Existence on earth would follow this elemental cycle of waking, sleeping, and living by darkness being divided from light.
The Beginnings of Liturgical Rhythms
As effortless as God made night and day, he established Sabbath; a required Shalom. Sabbath serves as an abrupt stopping point within the creation cycle of seven days that forms the working week as we know it. God, the orchestrator of time, set a rhythm of work and rest within a each day, week, alongside pausing points over the course of a the year in order to be in connection with Him. Sabbath centers us in our created-ness with our Creator. As people of God, these moments of rest set us apart, define who we are, and allow us to live our life’s purpose as we connect to the vine of life (John 15).
In Sabbath we reflect God’s image by modeling this rhythm of rest and co-creation. But most of all, God created us to take pleasure in being with Him, wholly united. The word rest in Hebrew means to settle, to dwell and that is precisely why God established Sabbath, so that we can settle down with our Creator and enjoy all creation. Sabbath means completeness and fullness. The act of Sabbath reflects not only the fullness of time, but the completeness of our created-ness as the image bearers of God. Sabbath is a celebration of God’s goodness and the wholeness that we enjoy as his beloved within all creation. This rhythm ought to shape the way we live our lives and be the time we keep–it is our grafted into our blueprints.
A Glitch in the Rhythm: The Birth of the Liturgical Calendar
This rhythm did not crumble with the fall, but rather got twisted up by human ambition, striving, and pride. Nevertheless God encouraged Israel to keep in step with this rhythm of time. As their story unfolded, God added to their time seasons of feast, fast, and observances that would define them as God’s beloved children, reflect his Glory, and cultivate an openness for a loving relationship with the Lord.
“It is in this spirit that Judaism was able to bring together in a unique way a variety of ‘kinds’ of time: cosmic, historical, liturgical, personal. And Christianity was able to add some others: the time of Christ, and the time of Christian invitation and growth.”
Ross Thompson, Spirituality in Season: Growing through the Christian Year
It is our natural inclination to follow rhythms of life and our culture sets one for us, you can notice it by the seasons candy and food being marketed in the grocery story.
As followers of Christ, we are to live a different way, by a different standard of time, and our historical Christian calendar guides us into the ebb and flow of Christ’s life and death through varying seasons of fast, feast and remembrances for the formation of our souls toward being God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven.
The liturgical calendar is our pilgrim path as we live in this world toward spiritual maturity and union with God. It reminds us of where we have been and where we are going while fueling our hope and keeping us rooted in Christ. It forms us into the likeness of Christ by teaching us how to surrender to love and die to self. (Philippians 3: 10-11) This rhythm still follows the pattern of rest and co-creation, with modes of discipline and worship in order to correct the glitch by re-aligning us with Christ in all things. It is our corporate heart beat that unites us as a chosen people—the Church. It is our “incarnate rhythm of life” and it follows the same cyclical pattern of Sabbath, but now with the remembrance of our death and resurrection that restores us from the fall.
Liturgical Rhythms and Seasons will include articles on how to engage with the Christian Calendar for the formation of souls. There are four main seasons: Advent/Christmastide, Epiphany-tide, Lent/Eastertide, Trinity-tide or commonly known as Ordinary Time. If there are specific seasons you’d like to engage with more intentionally, please reach out to me @ the bottom of the website or @elizabeth.m.forshee on Instagram.
