The worship of the Catholic Church follows a calendar that is based on a cycle of liturgical seasons plus saints’ days celebrated throughout the year.
Just as we mark our lives by anniversaries, the Church celebrates the mysteries of Christ’s life in a recurrent pattern. Within the cycle of a year the Church remembers and celebrates Christ’s conception, birth, death, resurrection and sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
During the course of the year we bring to mind past events and people to keep the mystery of faith alive today and we look forward to Christ’s return in glory at the end of time. As pilgrim people, we are constantly nourished by the story of Jesus and guided by the saints, our ancestors in the faith, living witness of God’s unchanging love.
In some respects the church’s way of keeping time conflicts with the secular calendar. The new liturgical year begins on the first Sunday of Advent at the end of November, just as many other things like the academic year are coming to an end.
The seasons of the liturgical year are:
Advent marks the beginning of the liturgical calendar. It consists of the four Sundays leading up to Christmas.
Today's Liturgy
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Saturday of the Twenty-ninth week in Ordinary Time
Letter to the Ephesians 4,7-16.
Therefore, it says: "He ascended on high and took prisoners captive; he gave gifts to men."
What does "he ascended" mean except that he also descended into the lower (regions) of the earth?
The one who descended is also the one who ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.
And he gave some as apostles, others as prophets, others as evangelists, others as pastors and teachers,
to equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,
until we all attain to the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the extent of the full stature of Christ,
so that we may no longer be infants, tossed by waves and swept along by every wind of teaching arising from human trickery, from their cunning in the interests of deceitful scheming.
Rather, living the truth in love, we should grow in every way into him who is the head, Christ,
from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, with the proper functioning of each part, brings about the body's growth and builds itself up in love.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 13,1-9.
He said to them in reply, "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were greater sinners than all other Galileans?
By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!
Or those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them –do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem?
By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!"
And he told them this parable: "There once was a person who had a fig tree planted in his orchard, and when he came in search of fruit on it but found none,
he said to the gardener, 'For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree but have found none. (So) cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil?'
He said to him in reply, 'Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it;
it may bear fruit in the future. If not you can cut it down.'"
Copyright © Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, USCCB
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