During the Season of Advent we join the thousand-year expectation for the Messiah on the part of God’s people of the Old Covenant, and look forward to His coming at Christmas. The Messianic hope was kept alive by the Prophets like Micah, who prophesied that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Our prayer should be filled with the hope of Israel and its thousand-year expectation in order to prepare us to hear the tidings of great joy announced by the Angels at Christmas.
We are encouraged by the Church to pray with the three greatest figures who originally prepared for Christ’s coming in the flesh: the prophet Isaiah, John the Baptist, and Mary the Mother of God. By concentrating on them, we can benefit from His coming to us in Mystery at Christmas and in Majesty at the end of the world.
Each of these three can show us the virtues we should have in preparing for Christmas and bringing Christ into our lives and to the world. Among these virtues are listening to God’s Word without preconception, understanding it without pretense, and responding to it without reserve. The most important virtue is to put God first in our lives, to carry out His will, and to lead others to Christ.
By preparing for the Lord’s coming time and again at Christmas, we prepare for His final coming when He will establish the Kingdom of God, His Father, and be glorified in all those who have believed in Him.
During the Season of Christmas, we rejoice and celebrate the birth of our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became man to save the world. We offer God the Father thanks and praise for sending this great gift of His Son to us.
In the glorious Feast of Christmas, we reflect on the threefold coming of Christ in history, in mystery, and in majesty. We commemorate Christ’s coming in history when the Son of God humbled Himself to take on human flesh and, born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem, became man to bring salvation to the world. We celebrate Christ’s coming in mystery at every Mass, when He becomes present in the Eucharist to apply that salvation to each individual. We look forward to Christ’s coming in majesty at the end of time, when He will complete this salvation for each of us.
In Christ, we encounter the Father who is gracious to us, comforts and consoles us, and accepts us as His adopted children. By praying and participating fully in the Christmas Mystery we honor it, not as an isolated event that happened some two thousand years ago, but rather as a mystical event whose effects are constantly present to us. Christ is present in the Mystery of Christmas, always interceding for us and communicating Himself to us through the holy symbols of the Christmas season.
During the Season of Lent, we pray for new life to appear in us and for old negative attitudes to disappear. It is the period for us to prepare to celebrate the Paschal Mystery of Christ. Our prayer life should be centered on three dominant themes: Cross, Repentance, and Baptism.
The Cross recalls the supreme law of Christian life: death in order to live. It also brings with it a positive aspect of conquest and salvation. Through His Cross, Christ gave impetus to all the positive works of humankind. It is the Cross that enables us to build the world as God’s coworkers, while eschewing all forms of evil.
Repentance is ultimately total change of self, an intimate renewal of one’s person, a reappraisal of one’s understanding, one’s judging, and one’s living. It is a turning from self to God.
Our prayers should lead us to such things as working for social or individual justice, performing spiritual and corporal works of mercy, and a renewed interest in the Mysteries by which we are reborn as children of God.
We should also pray to deepen the sense of our condition as baptized people. We do this primarily by clinging to Christ, by choosing to follow Him more closely, by becoming in some sense “other Christs.” To do so, we must be open to instruction in the Faith through hearing, reading, study, and any type of positive communication (film, art, music, etc.). We must be people who listen – to others, to our consciences, to the world, and most of all to the living Word of God in the Bible.
We can also pray by doing. After truly listening, we must respond and put into practice what we have learned. In this way we will bring about the inner conversion to God that is the most fitting preparation for Easter.
Easter is the Highlight of all Christian celebrations. With Ascension and Pentecost at its completion, it lasts fifty days. Its lesson is that in Christ, who rose from the dead and ascended into glory, all will be made to live. Through our baptism, we now share in Christ’s glorious Resurrection, but we will share it fully by partaking in His ascension into heaven. The feast of Pentecost completes the outpouring of the pledge of our inheritance made to us at our Confirmation.
During the Season of Easter, we rejoice in Christ’s saving act and His glorification through His Resurrection in which we share. By His Passion and Resurrection, Jesus has transformed the world. He has overcome evil, sin, and death in such an absolute way that all who come into the world are assured of life – eternal life – if they cooperate with Him.
We should recall at this time of the year that we are an Easter people; hence we should also be a joyous people. Death, both spiritual and physical, has lost its sting. There is no longer any reason for prolonged sadness at life’s defeats or at the end of our earthly existence. United with Christ, we will live forever.
Ordinary Time is the name given to that part of the Liturgical Year that does not fall within one of the major seasons – Advent, Christmas, Lent, or Easter. It numbers thirty-three or thirty-four Sundays, depending on the date of Easter. Ordinary Time is assigned to two periods of the year, the first one extending from the Epiphany of the Lord until the beginning of Lent, and the second one covering the time from Pentecost Sunday until the beginning of Advent.
In contrast to the major seasons of the Church Year, which celebrate the various moments of the History of Salvation and take on their coloration, Ordinary Time unfolds Sunday by Sunday without any particular celebration, except for a few Feasts of Devotion or of Saints. Our prayer should revolve around two main themes: that of the Sunday and that of the Church.
Sunday is the day on which we celebrate the victory of Jesus through His Cross. But it is not a question merely of recalling a past event. With great joy and faith we celebrate the deed of the Resurrection and at the same time Jesus gathers us around Him, present among His own, who have come together to listen to His Word and celebrate His Eucharist. We become filled with the desire for Jesus’ final coming in glory as we await the day on which He will come with His elect to celebrate the eternal Passover. Each Sunday is thus a “feast” that is still incomplete. It is a joyous glimpse and timid anticipation of the life that will be ours when, united with God, we will be together in heaven.
The season of Ordinary Time also introduces us in a special way into the Mystery of the Church, which was born on the day of Pentecost and is laboriously built up in our history.
Thus, Ordinary Time is a period of growth for all who follow the Liturgical Year. It is a time for accentuating all the Christian virtues. But it has nothing of the extraordinary about it. We are called to live fully the “todays”, without complaint and without looking for instant “pick-me-ups.” We must dare to live every day in all its monotony and ordinariness, for it is by our fidelity to ordinary things that the majority of us are called to be saved. Fortunately, we do not have to do this alone. We are aided in this silent and gradual spiritual growth by the Holy Spirit, who helps us to live each day to the full, and who inspires our prayers and makes our seemingly ordinary lives into an eternal offering to the glory of God.