Advent

Time: The four Sundays before Christmas

Purpose: Advent, meaning “coming,” is a time of preparation for and anticipation of the birth of Jesus. We focus on the first and final coming of Christ.

Liturgical color: Purple

 Christmastide

Time: December 25-January 5

Purpose: Christmastide, the twelve days of Christmas, celebrates Christ’s birth. The theological reflection is on the Incarnation of the Son of God. For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, Christ became fully human and fully divine.

Liturgical color: White

The Epiphany

Time: January 6

Purpose: Epiphany celebrates the revelation of the Son of God as a human being in Jesus. Western Christians usually commemorate the Magi’s visit to Jesus, the epiphany, or “revelation,” of Christ to the non-Jewish world.

Liturgical color: White

The Baptism of our Lord

Time: The Sunday after the Epiphany

Purpose: This is the day we celebrate John the Baptist’s baptism of Christ in the Jordan River. The heavens are open, the Holy Spirit descends to anoint for his mission, and the Father speaks, “You are beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” The Eastern Church calls this event Theophany, for the Holy Trinity is revealed.

As Christ steps out of the waters, we see a paradigm of our water baptism, as the heavens are opened to those born of water and the Spirit, baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection, to walk in newness of life.

Liturgical colors: White for the day of Epiphany and the Baptism
of our Lord. In the days leading up to Lent, Epiphanytide, the color is green, a brief season of Ordinary Time.

Lent

Time: From Ash Wednesday to Maundy Thursday

Lent is a period of 40 days (not including Sundays and non-fasting days). The word “lent” is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word for springtime, which literally translates in modern English to “the lengthening of the days.” In the early church, the Lenten period was used as a time for preparing new converts for Baptism on Easter Sunday. Today it is a time for preparation, reflection, growth, and change. In Lent, we prepare for Holy Week, to participate in the death and resurrection of Christ. 

Liturgical Color: Purple

Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday begins the season of Lent, the 40 days (minus Sundays) that lead up to Maundy Thursday. This first day of Lent and the following liturgical season are marked with a somberness as Christians reflect on their mortality, their sinfulness, and the taking up of one’s cross: the dying of self that comes with new life in Christ.

While there is no mention of Ash Wednesday in the Bible, the Old Testament records acts of repentance or mourning accompanied by symbolic ash and sackcloth. Recall stories of David, Esther, Job, Isaiah, Joel, Jeremiah, and Daniel.

Holy Week

If you have never gone through Holy Week, you may be wondering: “Why is this week different from all other weeks?” During Holy Week, the church journeys with Jesus through the final moments of his life, his death on the cross, and his resurrection of from the grave.

Holy Week invites each one of us to go on pilgrimage: to journey with Jesus through the gates of Jerusalem, to eat with him and hear his commandment to love one another, to stay and watch with him in the garden, to accompany him on the way to Calvary, to be present at his death, and to dance for joy at his resurrection.

Holy Week comprises five major services that have been celebrated since the early days of the church. To journey with Jesus, to be present with him during Holy Week, is a pilgrimage that will change us. 

Palm Sunday

Time: Sunday morning, the beginning of Holy Week

On Palm Sunday we join the crowds waving palm branches and singing “hosanna” to Jesus as an earthly king, perceiving his glory in worldly terms based on our own human experiences and expectations.  

Liturgical Color: Red

Maundy Thursday (Holy Thursday)

Time: Thursday before Easter

By the time Maundy Thursday arrives, we begin, with the disciples, to see Jesus with different eyes. He is the Christ revealed to us in humility as the embodiment of God’s love. We enter the upper room with his disciples and are shocked that the Creator of the universe stoops down to wash our feet, signifying the washing of our sin-sick lives. This is the night when Christ instituted the first Eucharist, known as the Lord’s Supper.

Liturgical Color: Red

Good Friday

Time: Friday before Easter

To be present at the cross on Good Friday, as Mary and John were, is to finally see Jesus’ glory on God’s term. He has won for us the victory over sin and death. His sacrifice on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins has made the saving power of his blood eternally present to us.

Liturgical Color: Black

Holy Saturday

Time: Saturday morning before Easter

On Holy Saturday, we remember that Christ descended into the realm of the dead, as St. Paul describes, leading captivity captive (Ephesians 4:9-10). On this day, Christ has descended to lead a train of captives, once to death, into the risen life of his heavenly Kingdom.

Liturgical color: Black

The Great Vigil of Easter

Time: Saturday evening before Easter

Saturday evening we gather for the Great Vigil of Easter, conceived in the fourth century to ring in the dawn of Easter, keeping vigil through the night. St. Aidan’s gathers at 8 p.m., beginning outside with the service of light, processing into the candlelit sanctuary to hear the Scriptures proclaim the movements of salvation history. We hear the great proclamation, “Christ is risen!” Lights brighten and "alleluias” and bells ring loudly to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, accompanied with baptisms and the holy Eucharist. 

Liturgical color: White

Easter Sunday

On Easter Sunday we participate in the glory of God’s victory over sin and death as we “hasten to see the stone rolled back, and even the angels perhaps, and Jesus himself.” Christ is risen —and we are raised with him into the newness of eternal life.

Liturgical color: White

Eastertide

Time: 50 days from Easter Sunday to Pentecost

Eastertide is a period of fifty days, between Easter and Pentecost (meaning fifty), fulfilling the promise to send the Holy Spirit to his Church. From Easter to his ascension, Christ spent forty days with his disciples, teaching about the Kingdom of God; therefore, the Ascension is about the enthronement of Christ, his coronation as King of kings, and Lord of lords. Before ascending, he tells his disciples to wait for the promise of the Father, the Holy Spirit, whom he will send. Ten days after the Ascension, the promise was given, poured out on all flesh, fulfilling the prophecy of Joel 2, during a feast called Pentecost.

Liturgical Color: White

Pentecost

Time: Fifty days after Easter.

Pentecost, meaning “50,” is an ancient Jewish feast fulfilled by Christ sending the Holy Spirit to unite heaven and earth. Under the Old Covenant, the Holy Spirit was given to kings and prophets as an external anointing. Under the New Covenant in Christ’s blood, the promise of the Father, the Holy Spirit, is poured out upon all who call upon the name of the Lord (Joel 2, Acts 2). The crucified, risen and ascended Christ has sent the Holy Spirit to unite his Church to commune in the Holy Trinity: God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Pentecost provides the finishing touches to God’s restoration project to unite heaven and earth and constitute New Creation.

Liturgical Color: Red

Trinity Sunday

Time: The first Sunday after Pentecost Sunday

Trinity Sunday is a celebration of restored union with God, the Holy Trinity: God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Humanity is restored, through the completed mission of the Trinity as the Father sends the Son to become fully human and remain fully divine to redeem the world from sin and death by dying and rising and ascending back to the realm of the Spirit, the heavens. As a result, the Son, the King of the Universe, sends the Holy Spirit to unite heaven and earth in restored communion with God, the Holy Trinity. God as in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting our sins against us. This whole mission of redemption is enacted by the Holy Trinity.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

Liturgical Color: White

Ordinary Time

Time: The time between Pentecost and Advent

Ordinary time is the season between Pentecost and Advent (June through November). The liturgical color is green. Ordinary time is often misunderstood as a period of time described as being ordinary, less festive than the period between Christmastide and Eastertide. The word, ordinary, comes from the word, ordinal. A cardinal number is a number that says how many of something there are, such as one, two, three, four, five. An ordinal number is a number that tells the position of something in a list, such as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc. Thus, Ordinary time is marked by the position of Sundays from Pentecost to Advent.

The position, however, begins the first Sunday after Trinity Sunday sometimes referred to as Proper 1, 2, and so forth (e.g., 2019 BCP, p725). In this case, the proper refers to the proper readings on the given Sunday. So, Proper 1 may also be referred to as the first Sunday after Pentecost or Trinity Sunday (both are used and are the same set of readings).

What time is it?
…The season of the Church, alive and embodied by God’s Spirit! It depicts the time between the first and final coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. This in-between time is set for the mission of Jesus passed on to his Church, his body on earth. It’s the season to call others into a restored relationship with Christ.  

Ordinary Time includes many feast days that are set apart from the Christ event, Christmastide through Eastertide. The last great feast day signaling the conclusion of Ordinary Time is Christ the King, the Sunday before Advent. Christ the King comes last to signify, in royal processional fashion, the King positioned at the end of the procession. This feast proclaims the Lordship of Jesus over the entire created order, the universal kingship of Christ. Every knee will bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Amen.

Liturgical Color: Green