Liturgical Feasts

09 May

The Ascension is a liturgical Solemnity celebrated by all the Christian Churches. It falls on the fortieth day after Easter Sunday. Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Augustine make reference to it, but it was probably Saint Gregory of Nyssa who influenced the propagation of the feast. Since it falls on Thursday, in many countries, this Solemnity is transferred to the following Sunday. With his Ascension into heaven, the presence of the “historical Christ” comes to an end, and the presence of the Body of Christ, the Church, is inaugurated.

  

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19 May

The Solemnity of Pentecost is celebrated fifty days after Easter. It is the feast on which we remember the gift of the Holy Spirit that overturns the confusion of Babel (see Gn. 11:9). In Jesus, who died, rose and ascended into Heaven, the peoples once again understand each other through one sole language, the language of love.
During the first half of the 3rd century, Tertullian and Origen were already speaking of Pentecost as a Feast that followed the Ascension. As the pilgrim Egeria attests, Pentecost was a Feast that was already celebrated in Jerusalem in the 4th century. It proposed the theme of the renewal that the coming of the Spirit works in the hearts of men and women.
Pentecost has its roots in the Feast of Weeks celebrated by the Jewish people. This was an annual agricultural festival surrounding the first fruits of the spring harvest and celebrated the year’s harvest. Later, it was connected with the revelation of God to Moses, the Ten Commandments. Then, for Christians, it would become the moment in which Christ, having returned to the glory of the Father, would make himself present in the hearts of men and women through His Spirit, the law given by God written in their hearts: “The new and definitive Covenant is no longer founded on a law that is written on two stone tablets, but on the action of the Spirit of God which makes all things new and is etched on hearts of flesh” (Pope Francis, General Audience, 19 June 2019). With Pentecost, the Church was born and her evangelizing mission began.

  

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20 May

The Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, reminds us how Jesus Himself, through an act of entrusting, willed that the divine maternity be extended to all men and women, that is, to the Church herself. In 2018, Pope Francis established the Monday after the Solemnity of Pentecost, the day on which the Church was born, as the date for this memorial.
The title is not a new one. In 1980, Saint John Paul II, invited the faithful to venerate Mary as Mother of the Church. Even before that, on 21 November 1964, Saint Paul VI, on the conclusion of the third Session of the Second Vatican Council declared Mary as the “Mother of the Church”. And in 1975, the Holy See proposed a votive Mass in honour of the Mother of the Church, without it becoming a memorial on the liturgical calendar.
Besides these recent dates, we cannot forget how much the title of Mary, Mother of the Church, was already present in the thought of Saint Augustine and Saint Leo the Great, of Popes Benedict XV and Leo XIII, up until Pope Francis when, on 11 February 2018, the 160th anniversary of the first apparition of the Virgin at Lourdes, he made this an obligatory memorial.

  

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26 May

With the Solemnity of Pentecost last Sunday, the Easter Season came to an end. On Monday, we began Ordinary Time, that is, the period when priests wear the colour green, a time during which we are called to live the Gospel in the ordinariness of everyday life, witnessing the joy of being disciples of the crucified and risen Jesus. If we were to pause and look back a moment, we would be able to visualize a unique image. From a balcony in the heavens, God the Father, aware of how humanity after Adam and Eve’s sin (see Gn. 3) had gone astray and was unable of finding the way back to heaven, sent the prophets to help them find that way. But humanity not only failed to heed them, they also killed them (see Mt. 23:29ff.).
In the end, moved with compassion, the Father sent His only Son: “And the Word was made flesh and made his dwelling among us” (Jn. 1:14). Jesus, the Son of God, shared everything about our human condition with us except sin, helping us to remember that we are created by God, that we are His children, and that God is our Father. Through His words and His life, He taught us with Truth regarding the Way to return to the Father, who is eternal Life. Thus, Jesus showed us the Father’s face: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn. 14:9). He reminded us that the way to heaven is open to everyone, that there is no need to be afraid, and that we do not need to be ashamed because God the Father is love, He is faithfulness, He is mercy. Obedient to the Father, Jesus died on the cross for our salvation. On the third day He rose, defeating sin and death, thus opening the way to return to His Father and our Father (this is what we celebrated on Easter Sunday).
We can confidently choose this Way because Jesus, having ascended into heaven, gave us the Holy Spirit on Pentecost (the Solemnity celebrated last Sunday), the first gift given to believers – the Person of Love poured out into our beings so we might live as children of God. This is how we can understand why the liturgy invites us to celebrate the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This Solemnity is a sort of synthesis and, above all, directs us toward the goal of our journey.
This God, who presents Himself as One and Triune, is not all that distant as it seems, but is so very close that He becomes Bread broken for us, Corpus Christi (which will be celebrated next Sunday). This Bread, the Bread of angels, nourishes us on our journey toward heaven. This gift then reveals the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, celebrated the Friday following Corpus Christi.
These three liturgical feasts are a synthesis of the mystery of our faith which we have lived in these last months: from Christmas to the death and resurrection of Jesus, from His Ascension to Pentecost. The Arian heresy, which disputed Jesus’s divinity and His bond with the Holy Trinity, was condemned by the Council of Nicea in 325 and Constantinople in 381. These two Councils were providential in spreading the doctrine regarding the Trinity both through preaching and through devotion. As early as the 8th century, liturgical prefaces appeared containing references to the doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity. A votive Mass emerged toward the year 800 in honour of the Trinity, which could be celebrated on any Sunday. This decision was opposed because the Trinity is honoured every Sunday. In the end, it was Pope John XXII who established the feast throughout the universal Church in 1334.

  

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30 May

Faith in God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Trinity), is not a distant and unattainable experience. Instead, it is as near since it is perennially “broken” for us: This is my Body… This is my blood.”
In 1207, a Belgian Augustinian nun, Giuliana di Cornillon, who had just turned fifteen, had a vision of a full moon with a dark spot sullying it. Contemporary experts interpreted it thus: the full moon symbolized the Church, the dark spot was the absence of a specific feast in honour of the Body of the Eucharistic Jesus. The following year, the same religious had an even clearer vision, but had to fight hard to get the feast instituted. She succeeded only at the diocesan level, when Robert de Thourette became bishop of Liège in 1247. In 1261, the former archdeacon of Liège, Jacques Panteléon, became Pope Urban IV. In 1264, impressed by a Eucharistic miracle that had taken place in Bolsena, near Orvieto in Italy where he was residing, he promulgated the bull Transiturus through which he instituted a new solemnity to be celebrated the Thursday after the Octave of Pentecost in honour of the Blessed Sacrament. Thomas Aquinas was given the task of composing the liturgical office. The last strophe of the hymns very famous hymn he wrote, Sacris Solemniis, which begins with the words Panis angelicus (Bread of angels), has often been set to different musical scores, apart from the rest of the hymn. Since Pope Urban IV died two months after having instituted the feast, the bull was never implemented, but Pope Clement V, the first Avignon Pope (1312), confirmed it later.

The now traditional procession of Corpus Christi was introduced by Pope John XXII in 1316. During his pastoral visit to Orvieto, Saint John Paul II said: “Even though the construction of this cathedral was not directly connected with the Solemnity of ‘Corpus Christi’, instituted by Pope Urban IV with the bull Transiturus, in 1264, nor with the miracle that took place in Bolsena the previous year, there is no doubt that the Eucharistic miracle is powerfully evidenced here due to the corporal of Bolsena for which the chapel was specifically built and which it now jealously guards. Since then, the city of Orvieto became known throughout the world due to that miraculous sign that reminds all of us of the merciful love of God who becomes the food and drink of salvation for humanity on its early pilgrimage. Because of the cult rendered to such a great mystery, your city preserves and nourishes the inextinguishable flame” (17 June 1990).

  

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31 May

This feast was established by Pope Urban VI in 1389 in order to bring the Great Schism to an end through the intercession of Mary. It originated in Byzantium when, on 2 July, the Gospel of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth was read on the Feast of the “Deposition in the Basilica of the Holy Garment of the Theotokos”.  The Franciscans adopted this Marian feast day in 1263, calling it the Visitation of Mary. After the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council, the date for the feast was fixed on 31 May, at the end of the month dedicated to Mary.

  

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