Celebration

The Holy Mother Church firmly believes that the people of God should celebrate the Paschal Mystery of our Lord Jesus Christ in a sacred commemoration on certain days throughout the liturgical year. Through the tradition handed down by the apostles, we celebrate once each week the Paschal Mystery of Christ in which its origin was taken from the very day of Christ’s resurrection—the seventh day or Sunday. The constitution of the Liturgy urges us to gather together on Sunday so that through the word of God and the Eucharist, we may call to mind the passion, the resurrection, and the glorification of our Lord Jesus Christ. However, in some developed countries, Sunday has been characterized by tourism and recreation. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in his Sacramentum Caritatis advises us that we should not be enslaved by our works and leisure in which we may come to a point of finding the ultimate and definitive meaning of life in it.

In the concept of the liturgical year, we can observe a distinction between feasts and ordinary days, and the degree of solemnity proper to the feasts. The term “liturgical year” was coined by Abbot Prosper Guéranger in 1848 where it entered in the active vocabulary of the Roman Church. The liturgical year is an economy of our salvation in which its center is the celebration of the Easter. This celebration of Easter is not just a mere feast among others but the “Feast of feasts” and “Solemnity of solemnities”. Furthermore, we can also see the various aspects of the one Paschal Mystery unfold, Annunciation, Christmas, and Epiphany to name a few. They commemorate the beginning of our salvation which communicates to us the first fruits of the Paschal Mystery.

Throughout the course of the liturgical year, the Holy Mother Church also honors the Blessed Virgin and the saints. We celebrate the Blessed Virgin’s role in our salvation. Pope Paul VI states in his Marianis Cultis: “This is a celebration that offers the church and all humankind an exemplar and a consoling message, teaching us the fulfillment of our highest hopes: our glorification is happily in store for us when Christ has made us his brothers and sisters.” With regards to the saints, we also celebrate them because they help us to grow in the love of God and neighbor whether they are martyrs or non-martyrs.

In the liturgy of the Hours, the mystery of Christ permeates and transfigures in its celebration. In this prayer, we exercise our royal priesthood. The liturgy of the Hours is intended to become a prayer of the whole people of God. In it Christ himself does his priestly office through the Church. With regards to the priests, the breviary—as the liturgy of the Hours is often called—is well-known as the priest’s wife. It should be his companion day and night. However, it does not easily figure in on the priest’s daily routine. That is why there was an attempt before to make the liturgy of the Hours private, but it was later neglected since the liturgy of the Hours is shaped for public prayer.

In every celebration of the liturgy, a suitable place should be used just like the church building since it represents an image of a community that God gathers together. However, other places were used to celebrate the liturgy. Just like the first Christians, the original place of their celebration was just a simple room. It is good to point out that a place is holy not because it has blessed walls, not because it has a sanctuary and an altar, not because it has a cross and sacred images, but because Christ dwells in there. In a word, the presence of Christ in liturgical celebrations explains why there is no space that cannot be considered suitable for worship.