Understanding The Christian Calendar
Understanding the Church (Liturgical) Calendar
To understand the Church Year one must understand a concept that is foreign to many Protestant/Evangelical/Pentecostal Christians.
Liturgy–customary public and communal participation and response of the people in a sacred service of worship. In ancient (Greek: λειτουργία), leitourgia, which comes from a compound “litos ergos” or “public service” word literally means “work for the people”
No matter what style of the church you attend the worship that comes from the heart in the corporate or public setting must be a collaboration of all the people to be effective.
Liturgy existed before the Church
In Judaism, Liturgy was in the prayer recitation of Rabbinic Judaism. Like the Anglican book of Common Prayer, the Jews had a book called the “siddur”.From this book, they were obligated to pray three times a day. (This is seen in the life of Daniel).
There were the (Morning prayers) Schacant Shaharit (שַחֲרִת), from the Hebrew shachar or shahar (שַחָר) “morning light”,
The (Mid-day prayers) Mincha or Minha (מִנְחָה), the afternoon prayers named for the flour offering that accompanied sacrifices at the Temple in Jerusalem,
And at dusk, (The evening vespers} Arvit (עַרְבִית) or Maariv (מַעֲרִיב), from “nightfall”
Liturgy is found in the Buddhist faith, as well as in Islam where again precited supplications or Salāt (“prayer”, in Arabic: صلاة ṣalāh or gen: ṣalāt; pl. صلوات ṣalawāt) are the practices of both physical and compulsory prayer in Islam as opposed to dua, which is the Arabic word for supplication. Its importance for Muslims is because it is one of the Five Pillars of Islam.
Next- Liturgy and Prayer Books
