year, liturgical

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church | 2000 | 700+ words | Copyright

year, liturgical. In the W. Church the Christian year is based on the week and on the festivals of Easter and Christmas. It begins with the period leading up to Christmas. The ASB reckoned nine Sundays before Christmas, but in most calendars the year starts with the First Sunday in Advent. Sundays have traditionally been numbered through Advent, after Christmas and after Epiphany, through Lent, after Easter, and after Whitsunday or Trinity Sunday. According to the calendar introduced into the RC Church in 1969, after Epiphany the ‘Sundays of the Year’ are numbered consecutively, excluding the period from the beginning of Lent to Whitsunday. In the E. Orthodox Church the liturgical year has much the same shape as in the W., except that it begins on 1 Sept. (the beginning of the tax year in the Byzantine Empire), and the Sundays outside the period of Lent-Eastertide are numbered ‘after Pentecost’. The period Lent-Eastertide embraces the ten weeks before Easter to the Sunday after Pentecost.

Cite this article
Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.

MLA
Chicago
APA

E. A. LIVINGSTONE. "year, liturgical." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 2000. Encyclopedia.com. 30 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

E. A. LIVINGSTONE. "year, liturgical." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 2000. Encyclopedia.com. (May 30, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O95-yearliturgical.html

E. A. LIVINGSTONE. "year, liturgical." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 2000. Retrieved May 30, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O95-yearliturgical.html

Learn more about citation styles