What is the purpose of the Church calendar?

First : In the midst of a life full of trials and tribulations, the message of the Church calendar is for the believer to experience the words spoken by Jeremiah the prophet in the midst of his lamentations: “Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning … ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘Therefore I hope in Him!’” (Lam. 3:22–24). Every morning, the believer feels that the Holy Spirit of God is our guide and teacher (John 14:26), bearing us up on wings of love and tenderness, and bringing us to our Christ who is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6), that we may experience renewed life in Him (2 Cor. 4:16). Every Church celebration, the Church is absorbed with the task of filling our depths with inner joy, whether it is the celebration of a Feast of the Lord that celebrates God’s work with humanity; or the commemoration of a heavenly being or the heavenly hosts or a saint; or a particular fast. The Church invites us to experience God’s work and to taste the heavenly life so that we may sing with the apostle, “[He] made us sit together in the heavenly places” (Eph. 2:6).

Second: In essence, each Church celebration is an encounter with the Holy Trinity in which we fulfil our role as children of the heavenly Father (Rom. 8:15), our potential as members of the body of Christ (1 Cor. 6:15), and our sanctification as a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16). From the start of every new year through to its end, the Church calendar invites us never to cease enjoying a constantly renewed experience of communion with the Holy Trinity, the Lover of all humanity.

Third: On every occasion in the Church calendar, St. Jacob of Sarug focuses, in the midst of his daily hardships, on hill of Golgotha (Calvary) whence is the “Wedding Feast of Golgotha,” where he is crucified with the heavenly Groom, and rises with Him every day. Thus, he experiences the Lord as the wellspring of inner peace and heavenly joy. This is the role of the Church calendar.

Thus are we called to stand every morning to receive the good things of heaven from the hand of the Lord himself; following the pattern of the practical experience lived by the holy Fathers of the early Church, even those who were thrown into the fiery furnace. Even now, the authentically faithful live this life, and the Church will continue to live it until the day of the Lord’s second coming at the end of all things.