LITURGICAL YEAR IN ROMAN RITE

The liturgical year consists of the series of feasts and seasons celebrated by the Church. It begins at First Vespers of the first Sunday of Advent and ends on the Saturday before the First Vespers of that Sunday. It is inserted into the civil solar year without depending on it, for its principal date, that of Easter, is calculated according to the lunar calendar. Easter is the Sunday after the full moon of the Jewish month (Nisan) after the vernal equinox.

Theology

By means of her liturgical year the Church seeks to redeem time and make it serve humanity's quest for union with God. A feast day, the opposite of an ordinary day, was from the very beginning a holy, sanctified day, a special day intended to focus the attention of the faithful on Christ and the mystery of His salvation so that they can live in accordance with His spirit. The celebration of the liturgical year revolves about the person of Jesus Christ and the paschal mystery of his suffering, death and resurrection. The celebration of Marian feast days and the memorial of the saints and martyrs do not detract from this principal focus of the Church's liturgical year in Christ and the mystery of salvation.

Vatican II's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy explains the relationship of the liturgical cult of Mary and the Saints to Christ in the liturgical year in the following manner: "In celebrating this annual cycle of Christ's mysteries, holy Church honors with special love the Blessed Mary, Mother of God … in whom the Church holds up and admires the most excellent fruit of redemption, and joyfully contemplates, as in a faultless image, what she herself desires and hopes wholly to be. The Church has also included in the annual cycle the memory of the martyrs and other saints…. By celebrating theheavenly birthdays of these saints the Church proclaims the paschal mystery achieved in the saints who have suffered and been glorified with Christ. She proposes them to the faithful as examples drawing all to the Father through Christ, and through their merits she pleads for God's favors" (ibid. 103, 104).

General Development

In the concrete unfolding of its annual commemorations the liturgical year is identified with the calendar containing the feasts of our Lord (temporal cycle) and of the saints (sanctoral cycle).

Origin of the Calendar. In the beginning the calendar of saints had a strictly local character; it was a catalogue of anniversaries celebrated in a given church or diocese. By means of mutual borrowings of one calendar from another, general calendars arose, thus preparing the way for the 1568 universal calendar of Pius V. Over the centuries saints' feasts were unduly multiplied. Pius V had purged many feasts of saints, retaining only 87 in the Tridentine liturgical calendar, but beginning with Clement VIII (d. 1605) there was an uninterrupted increase of saints' feasts. Despite the recommendations of Vatican Council I, the universal calendar at the beginning of the 20th century listed 266 feasts. In his bull Divino afflatu of 1911, Pius X, without touching the content of the calendar, gave precedence to the temporal cycle. Nonetheless, new feasts were added so that in 1955 there were 338. The decree of March 23, 1955, resulted in somewhat of a reduction: 39 semidoubles became simples, while all simples became commemorations, and the number of octaves were cut. The 1969 reform of the Roman Calendar under the mandate of Vatican II pruned the number of feasts from 338 to a more manageable 191.

Classification of Feasts. A whole hierarchy of feasts was gradually elaborated as their number increased. In the first place a distinction is made between feasts of Our Lord and those of the saints (the Blessed Virgin included, see marian feasts). The dedication of a church is classified as a feast of the Lord; several saints' feasts, however, were introduced on the occasion of the dedication of a church (e.g., St. Michael, Our Lady of the Snows, and SS. John and Paul) and were subsequently regarded as belonging to the category of saints' feasts.

Normally, feasts celebrate the anniversary of an event: an historical mystery of Our Lord or Lady, the dedication of a church, and the earthly birth of only three persons, Christ, Mary, and John the Baptist. For other saints the Church commemorates the anniversary of their death, called "birthday" into heaven, sometimes their "exaltation," or the official recognition of their title to veneration, and even occasionally the finding and transfer of their relics.

In the course of centuries idea-feasts have also been introduced. Although once very numerous, only a few remain in the universal calendar: Holy Trinity, Sacred Heart, Corpus et Sanguinis Christi, and Christ the King.

Some feasts are observed on the same day each year; other feasts are movable, as a result of their computation based on the lunar cycle. Among the latter are Easter and feasts that are related to its cycle. Current canonical provisions permit local bishops' conferences, with the approval of the Holy See, to transfer certain solemnities and days of obligations to a Sunday.

Until 1960 feasts were classified as doubles of the first class, doubles of the second class, major and minor doubles, semidoubles, simples, and commemorations. The 1960 reform of liturgical rubrics simplified this system considerably to categories of first, second, third, and fourth class, and commemoration. The 1969 reforms of the Roman Calendar further simplified the system to categories of solemnities, feasts, obligatory memorials and optional memorials.

In a reform promulgated in 1955 the number of octaves—festal celebrations prolonged for eight days—was reduced to three: Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas. Formerly there were 18 in the universal calendar—without counting those in particular calendars—and they were classified in a very complicated fashion. The 1969 reform of the Roman Calendar further reduced the number of octaves to two: Easter and Christmas, the two principal solemnities of our Lord.

Temporal Cycle

The liturgical year actually comprises two principal parts or cycles, the temporal and the sanctoral. Although these two cycles are parallel and intertwined, the temporal, because of its Christological foundations and focus, always takes precedence over the sanctoral.

Over and above the feasts honoring the historical events of redemption and other feasts of Our Lord, this cycle comprises all the Sundays of the year and certain weekday observances.

The Week. Among Christians sunday is nothing else but a weekly celebration of the paschal mystery, that central event of salvation history that marked off for good the first day of the week. Eight days after Christ's Resurrection the apostles assembled to recall the event, and the Jerusalem community remained faithful to this weekly observance. In the beginning Christians participated in the Jewish Sabbath service and had their Eucharistic assembly on Sunday. But toward the end of the 1st century they made the Jewish element a part of the one Sunday observance.

Following the Hebrew idea of sanctifying weeks, the Church designated the days of the week simply by numbers, Sunday being the first day. In reaction to the pagan practice, Christians called them feriae. But it is only in the liturgy that this term was preserved; in everyday life names of pagan origin held sway.

Two weekdays stood out in Christian observance,i.e., Wednesday and Friday. At the end of the 1st century the Didache reported them as fast days; in the following century they were also days of prayer. It was thus that Christian antiquity universally observed them. Friday is just as venerable a Christian institution as Sunday; from the very beginning it bore a penitential character recalling the Savior's death. In the West, however, fasting on these two days began to give way between the 6th and 10th centuries. The fasts on Wednesday and Friday of Ember weeks alone remained, but even in this case the fast was mitigated. (see ember days; fast and abstinence.) They were also days of prayer; at first the prayer was private, but soon it was held in common and enjoyed a variety of forms according to time and place. In most places these liturgical stations (see stational church) were held without the celebration of Mass; Mass was allowed on these two days in the West beginning only with the 6th century.

The attitudes of the churches toward Saturday were quite divergent. Some areas, out of aversion for Jewish practices, allowed no religious observance at all; others—at least in the West—from the 3d century on made it a fast day in commemoration of the Holy Saturday fast. Beginning with the 10th century there spread in the West the custom of honoring the Mother of God in a special way on Saturday. The votive Mass of the Blessed Virgin for Saturdays was inserted in the Carolingian Sacramentaries. In the 12th century it was to be found in the Missal of the Lateran, and the devotion was definitively approved by Pius V.

Paschal Cycle. The most important celebration of the Liturgical Year is that of Easter. (see easter and its cycle.) In the beginning, Christians commemorated the death and Resurrection of Christ every Sunday, but in the 2d century they began to celebrate this central mystery of redemption on its anniversary. Since the 3d century its celebration has lasted for 50 days, the final day of which, Pentecost, enjoys a solemnity on a par with Easter. Very soon a fast went before and coincided with the observance of Christ's Passion and death. The duration of the fast was lengthened, and thus arose the period of preparation.

Triduum. Originally Thursday of holy week was not regarded as part of the Sacred Triduum (three-day observance); only Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were included in this term. The term "Pasch" also has changed meaning; it was not restricted to Easter Sunday. In the first three centuries Pascha designated the annual commemoration of the Passion and death of Christ, in the 4th century the easter vigil too, and in the 5th century, only Easter Sunday. According to A. Baumstark there were two primitive conceptions of Easter: the Pasch of the cross and the Pasch of the Resurrection (Comparative Liturgy, tr. F. L. Cross [London 1958] 168–174; see B. Botte's critique of this in "Pascha," L'Orient syrien 8[1963] 213–226). As O. Casel has shown ("Art und Sinn der ältesten christlichen Osterfeier," Jahrbuch für Liturgiewissenschaft 14 [1938] 1–78), Easter was an indivisible feast of the events of salvation; it celebrated the Redemption achieved by both the Passion and the Resurrection. In the course of the centuries the ceremonies of the Easter Vigil were removed from the night of Holy Saturday, and it was then that Thursday came to be regarded as part of the Triduum. This led people to see only the death of Christ in the Triduum and thus to dissociate His death and Resurrection, two aspects of the unique salvific mystery.

Easter Vigil. Until 1951 the rites of the Easter Vigil had been anticipated on Saturday morning. Returned to the night time, they regained their true significance. The two essential parts of the celebration are baptism, by which all peoples are initiated into Christ's Church and the mystery of Christ's dying and rising is realized in them, and the Eucharist, the living memorial of this death and Resurrection. The other ceremonies—the blessing of the new fire, paschal candle and Exsultet, the readings, blessing of baptismal water, the Christian initiation of catechumens and the profession of faith—revolve about these two pivotal points.

Good Friday. The Passion is more specifically stressed in the good friday celebration. To the elements peculiar to the ancient aliturgical synaxis (the readings and prayer of the faithful) are added the Veneration of the Cross and the Communion service.

Holy Thursday. Holy Thursday was the last day of the 40-day fast, later the first day of the Easter Triduum. The restored rite of 1955, combining elements of both the ancient papal liturgy and the Roman parish liturgy of the 7th-8th centuries, comprises a Mass for the consecration of holy oils and an evening Mass with the Mandatum, or washing of feet, and a Eucharistic procession.

Palm Sunday. Eight days before Easter the Church begins Holy Week with a celebration of palm sunday. In 1955 the special ceremonies of this day too were simplified in order to bring out more pointedly the Messianic theme of Christ bringing victory and life out of defeat and death and to thus set the stage for the dramatic unfolding of the events of Redemption.

Preparation for Easter. In order to take part in the Easter celebration more worthily, the early Christians observed an especially rigorous fast during the Sacred Triduum. Later this fast was gradually extended to three weeks, to the 40 days of lent (at the end of the 4th century), and to seven weeks beginning with Quinquagesima Sunday (at the start of the 6th century). Toward the end of the 6th century Sexagesima week appeared, and at the beginning of the 7th century Septuagesima week. In addition to the Sundays, the weekdays of Lent were gradually fitted out with liturgical celebrations, first the Wednesdays and Fridays, then (in the 5th century) the Mondays, Tuesdays, and Saturdays. From the 6th century on these synaxes included the Eucharistic celebration, but the Thursdays remained aliturgical until the 8th century. From the very beginning this period had a double aspect: baptismal and penitential. The 1969 reforms removed the Sexagesima and Septuagesima weeks, returning the observance of Lent to its ancient pattern beginning with Ash Wednesday.

Paschal Time. The Easter octave existed already in the 4th century; the formularies of this week center around Christ's Resurrection and the faithful's share in it through baptism. Originally paschaltide was a continuous 50-day celebration of the Resurrection (the word "Pentecost" means 50 days). Formularies of this season pursue the general theme of the divine life coming to the human race through Christ. The jubilation of Easter is manifest in the constantly repeated alleluias, the use of white vestments even on ferias, and—in ancient times— the prohibition against kneeling and fasting. This joyful season is brought to a glorious conclusion in celebrations of Christ's ascension and His sending the Holy Spirit on His Church.

Christmas Cycle. The series of feasts whose object is a special commemoration of Christ's infancy and childhood made its appearance rather late under a variety of influences. (see christmas and its cycle.)

Christmas and Epiphany. These are the two Christian feasts of the winter solstice. The celebration of Christmas is of Roman origin and dates from around 330. It had been customary for Roman pagans to gather at Vatican hill to worship deities of the East; the choice of December 25 (Natalis Invicti ) and St. Peter's Basilica for the celebration of the feast shows that the Church's aim was to oppose a Christian feast to that of the Sol invictus (unconquered sun), the symbol of paganism's resistance. The Feast of epiphany, although arising in similar circumstances, was of Eastern origin. It appeared in the West first in Gaul (c. 361), then at Rome. By the middle of the 5th century both feasts had been accepted practically everywhere, for they complemented each other, their themes changing slightly in the process. In both East and West the Christmas season came to a close with the Feast of candlemas.

Advent. The term was one of profane origin, but for the early Christians (as in the Vulgate) it meant the coming of Christ into the human world: His coming in the flesh to inaugurate the Messianic era and His coming in glory to initiate the eschatological age. Advent designated also the same reality as natalis (birthday) and epiphania (manifestation). Little by little, however, the term came to be applied to the liturgical period preceding Christmas. During the 5th century there evolved in Spain and Gaul an ascetical preparation for the feast. At Rome Advent made its appearance in the second half of the 6th century as a liturgical institution from the first, and went from six to four weeks. Although it was intended from the start as preparation for Christmas, Advent did not appear as the beginning of the year in liturgical books until the 8th-9th centuries. Today, although it is intended as a joyous preparation for the feast of the Lord's birth, Advent naturally turns the thoughts of Christians toward His glorious return at the end of the world.

Ordinary Time. The term tempus per annum (literally, "time through the year," generally translated as "Ordinary Time," or sometimes as "Ordinal Time") is officially used by the Church to designate the days from the day after the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord (usually January 13) to Ash Wednesday and from Monday after Trinity Sunday to the Saturday before the First Sunday of Advent. Thematically, however, the Sundays after Epiphany really belong to the Christmas cycle. The same cannot be said of the Sundays after Pentecost; the history of the liturgy sufficiently proves that they have no direct link with Pentecost. The system for numbering these Sundays varied from church to church; it was the Carolingian liturgical books of the 9th and 10th centuries that started numbering them as Sundays after Pentecost. Furthermore, the very structure of these Sundays reveals a system of continuous reading of at least the Epistles (see pericopes). Historically, the ancient processional chants of the Mass are divided into two blocks: those from the 1st to the 17th Sunday are taken from the Psalms according to the order of the Psalter; those from the 18th to the last Sunday are antiphons habitually composed from other books of the Bible. On the other hand, the ancient orations for the 5th to 20th Sundays are borrowings from the older stratum for Sunday Masses in the gelasian sacramentary. Hence one cannot even claim that there is an internal unity that exists the cycle of the post-Pentecost Sundays in Ordinary Time.

Sanctoral Cycle

Alongside the temporal cycle run the feasts of the saints; the series of their anniversaries is called the sanctoral cycle.

Martyrs. The origin of the cult of martyrs is not to be found in the hero-honor paid heroes and gods in pagan antiquity. Already SS. Jerome (Contra Vigilantium; Patrologia Latina, 23:342–343) and Augustine (Civ. 22.10; Corpus Christianorum. Series latina 48:828) raised their voices against such an interpretation. Early reports show that uppermost in the minds of Christians was the desire to provide a decent burial for the victims of persecution. At least at first the funerals of Christian heroes were not essentially different from those of other deceased Christians; the same is true of the observance of their anniversaries. But after the peace of Constantine, Christian worship underwent a great development, manifested, among other ways, in the celebration of martyrs' feasts. Their names were inscribed on the diptychs, and the dates of their anniversaries were carefully noted in local calendars.

In the 4th and 5th centuries the veneration of martyrs began to shed its local character as Christian communities began to admire the heroes of other churches. Many factors contributed to this evolution: the diffusion of relics, the panegyrics of great orators of the 4th and 5th centuries, the Passionaria of martyrs, the books of their miracles, and pilgrimages. Furthermore, the churches of Gaul, under the influence of Charlemagne, copied the Roman liturgical books and the calendar of saints contained in them.

Confessors and Ascetics. The ancient Church paid a martyr's honors also to those who, even though they had not shed their blood for Christ, had nonetheless suffered torture, imprisonment, or exile for Him; they were called confessors. This broadening of the concept of "martyr" marked the first step in the extension of the cult of saints. From honoring such confessors as martyrs the Church soon went to honoring as confessors first ascetics and then bishops.

When the persecutions were over, generous souls still sought ways and means of attaining to the perfection of charity even though it was no longer possible to shed their blood for the Lord. The Desert Fathers looked upon their isolated and penitential life as a substitute for martyrdom. It is not to be wondered at that upon their death such heroes of asceticism received the same veneration as martyrs.

Virgins and Holy Women. Consecrated virginity is a superior form of asceticism. Hence very early the faithful venerated a number of holy nuns. Widowhood, when spent in the service of the Church, is also a form of asceticism that merits to be honored as martyrdom. For a long time, however, virgins and holy women received the Church's official honors only because they were martyrs,e.g., the two Felicitys, Perpetua, Agnes, Agatha, and Lucy. Others were inserted in the calendar with the title of martyr thanks to legend; still others, as foundresses of Roman titular churches, came to be thought in time as having suffered martyrdom, e.g., Pudentiana, Praxedes, Sabina, and Cecilia.

Bishops. The great bishops of the first centuries often crowned their episcopal administration by means of martyrdom. Others were ranked among the confessors of the faith because they either suffered torture, undertook their grave responsibilities in time of full persecution, or engaged in heavy, demanding missionary endeavors. St. Gregory the Wonder Worker (d. 270) was the first bishop not a martyr to receive the honors of cult. Other bishops, e.g., SS. Basil, Martin, and Paulinus, attracted the veneration of the crowds mainly because of their monastic activity. Alongside the calendar containing the anniversaries of martyrs, each church kept a distinct list of bishops' anniversaries for celebration. Practically speaking, the difference between these two types of anniversary must have been rather vague, since the title of saint had not yet been clearly determined, and the liturgical formularies were still improvised.

Marian Feasts. Although devotion to Mary began very early, there is no evidence of a feast in her honor until the middle of the 5th century. This is perhaps because liturgical veneration of the saints was always in connection with their tomb; Mary had none.

The octave day of Christmas seems to have been the first feast of Our Lady in the Roman rite, commemorating the Feast of Mary, Mother of God. Although suppressed in the Middle Ages, the feast was restored in the 1969 reform of the Roman Calendar. The emperor Maurice (d.602) made the Feast of the Assumption obligatory. Pope Sergius I (d. 701) made the Feast of Mary's Nativity one of the four calling for a stational procession.

Marian feasts became increasingly numerous in the course of the centuries. In fact, one even spoke of the "liturgical year of Mary." Idea-feasts became more numerous in honor of Mary than in honor of the Lord, especially in the last few centuries. Many of these feasts were reduced to optional memorials in the 1969 reform of the Roman Calendar.

Vatican II's Reform of the Roman Calendar. Mysterii paschalis, the title of the accompanying motu proprio of Paul VI, well described the general thrust of the revised Roman Calendar published by decree of the Congregation of Rites on March 21, 1969. In accordance with the terms of reference given in chapter 5 of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, the feasts of the Lord that commemorate the mysteries of salvation are given preference over the feasts of the saints. In order that the Proper of the time may truly take precedence, the number of saints' feast days for the universal Church has been sharply reduced. The Calendarium Romanum consists of General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar and the General Roman Calendar, both of which correspond to the revised Roman Missal in which they are reprinted and to the revised Liturgy of the Hours. An unofficial commentary prepared by the Consilium and two simplified forms for the Litany of the Saints are also included in the editio typica of the Roman Calendar.

Proper of the Time (Temporal Cycle). The weekly observance of the paschal mystery occurs every Sunday, the first day of the week, the Lord's day, "the original feast day" commemorating Christ's Resurrection. Because of its primordial significance, the celebration of Sunday is replaced only by solemnities and feasts of the Lord, and not even these during the seasons of Advent, Lent, and Easter. Although the liturgical day normally extends from midnight to midnight, the Church following biblical usage observes Sundays and solemnities beginning with the evening of the preceding day: an observance that explains the rationale behind First Vespers and the anticipated Sunday Mass on Saturday evening.

Paschal Cycle. What Sunday is to the week, the solemnity of Easter is to the liturgical year. So that the faithful may properly appreciate the Easter triduum not simply as a preparation for Easter Sunday, but as a unit commemorating in Augustine's words the sacratissimum triduum crucifixi, sepulti et suscitati —the total paschal mystery of Christ's Passion and Resurrection, the Easter triduum begins with the evening Mass of the Lord's Supper on Holy Thursday, reaches its high point in the Easter Vigil, and closes with Vespers on Easter Sunday.

The original meaning of the Easter season has been restored: 50 days between Easter Sunday and Pentecost celebrated as one feast day, sometimes called "the great Sunday." The Sundays of this season are reckoned as Sundays of Easter and following the Sunday of the Resurrection are appropriately called the Second, Third, Fourth, etc., Sundays of Easter. In order that Pentecost Sunday might recover its pristine importance as the culmination of the Spirit-filled Easter season, and not specifically the anniversary of the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, the Octave of Pentecost as well as the celebration of the Vigil of Pentecost on the preceding Saturday morning have been suppressed.

The season of Lent, the 40 days beginning with Ash Wednesday, has been underscored as a time of preparation for Easter with its ancient twin motif of baptismal preparation/recommitment and penitential conversion. To this end the superfluous Septuagesima season and misleading period of Passiontide have been deleted.

Christmas Cycle. Second only to the annual celebration of the Easter mystery is the Christmas season, which celebrates the birth of the Lord and his early manifestations and extends from First Vespers of Christmas until Sunday after the Epiphany or after January 6 inclusive. The Feast of the Holy Family is now celebrated on the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas. The most ancient of Roman Marian feasts, the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, has been restored as the content of the celebration on January 1, the octave day of Christmas. The Epiphany, January 6, where not a holy day of obligation, is assigned to the Sunday between January 2 and 8. Sunday after January 6 is the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. The Feast of the Most Holy Name of Jesus, of comparatively recent origin, has been dropped.

The season of Advent is no longer so much a penitential season as one of expectation: a reminder of Christ's second coming at the end of time (from the First Sunday of Advent to December 16) and more immediately a preparation for the memorial of the first coming at Christmas (December 17 to 24).

Season of the Year. In addition to the seasons of Easter, Lent, Christmas, and Advent, the other 33 or 34 weeks of the year celebrate no particular aspect of the mystery of Christ, but rather this mystery in its fullness, especially on Sundays. These Sundays and weeks numbered consecutively constitute the season of the year and thus replace the earlier clumsy arrangement of time after Epiphany and time after Pentecost. The Feast of Christ the King has been assigned to the last Sunday of the Church year. The Rogation and Ember Days have been left to local custom to be determined by the conferences of bishops.

Proper of the Saints (Sanctoral Cycle). Because of the priority given to the temporal cycle and to the feasts of the Lord, there is a considerable reduction in saints' feast days and a simplification of their categories. In addition to the movable solemnities (Trinity Sunday, Corpus Christi, Sacred Heart, Christ the King), there are only 10 "solemnities" corresponding to the earlier feasts of class1. There are 23 "feasts" corresponding to the earlier feasts of class 2, and 63 "obligatory memorials" or feasts of class 3. The category of "optimal memorials," some 95 in number, round out the reclassification.

Five principles were involved in revising the sanctoral cycle: the curtailment of feasts of devotion or "ideafeasts" that celebrate no particular mystery of salvation; a critical examination of the historicity of the saints; the selection of saints of greater importance; the recognition, wherever possible, of the anniversary day of death or martyrdom; and a more universal or catholic approach to the calendar so as to include saints from all peoples and ages.

National episcopal conferences are to draw up particular calendars that may include local celebrations and "memorials" of local saints, as has been done in this country since 1972 with the inclusion of memorials of Bl. Elizabeth Ann Seton (January 4), Bl. John Neumann (January 5), St. Isidore (May 15), St. Peter Claver (September 9), St. Isaac Jogues and companions (October 19), St. Frances Xavier Cabrini (November 13), and Our Lady of Guadalupe (December 12).

There are also votive masses provided for the civic observances of Independence Day (July 4) and Thanksgiving Day.

Bibliography: Calendarium Romanum (Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis 1969). j. dubois, "Les saints du nouveau calendrier: Tradition et critique historique," Maison-Dieu 100 (1969) 157–178. p. jounel, "L'organisation de l'année liturgique," Maison-Dieu 100 (1969) 139–156. t. j. talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year (Collegeville, Minn. 1991). a. g. martimort, ed. The Church at Prayer IV: The Liturgy and Time (Collegeville, Minn. 1986). a. nocent, The Liturgical Year, 4 v. (Collegeville, Minn. 1977) j. m. pierce, "Holy Week and Easter in the Middle Ages," in Passover and Easter: Origin and History to Modern Times, eds. p. f. bradshaw and l. a. hoffman (Notre Dame, Ind. 1999) 161–185. a. adam, The Liturgical Year: Its History & Its Meaning after the Reform of the Liturgy (New York 1981).

[r. van doren/

c. w. gusmer/eds.]