Excerpt from
Between Memory and Hope
Readings on the Liturgical Year
by Maxwell E. Johnson, Editor
© The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., Collegeville, Minnesota. All rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced by any means, without the written permission of The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321.

CONTENTS
The Contributors
Introduction

I. INTRODUCTORY ESSAYS
Robert F. Taft, S.J.

1. The Liturgical Year: Studies, Prospects, Reflections
Thomas J. Talley
2. Liturgical Time in the Ancient Church: The State of Research

II. FROM SABBATH TO SUNDAY
H. Boone Porter

3. Day of the Lord: Day of Mystery
Mark Searle
4. Sunday: The Heart of the Liturgical Year
Robert F. Taft, S.J.
5. The Frequency of the Celebration of the Eucharist Throughout History

III. FROM PASSOVER TO PASCHA
Thomas J. Talley

6. History and Eschatology in the Primitive Pascha
Paul F. Bradshaw
7. The Origins of Easter
Patrick Regan, O.S.B.
8. The Three Days and the Forty Days
Patrick Regan, O.S.B.
9. The Veneration of the Cross
Robert F. Taft, S.J.
10. Holy Week in the Byzantine Tradition
Thomas J. Talley
11. The Origin of Lent at Alexandria
Maxwell E. Johnson
12. Preparation for Pascha? Lent in Christian Antiquity
Patrick Regan, O.S.B.
13. The Fifty Days and the Fiftieth Day
Catherine Mowry LaCugna
14. Making the Most of Trinity Sunday

IV. FROM PASCHA TO PAROUSIA
Thomas J. Talley

15. Constantine and Christmas
Susan K. Roll
16. The Origins of Christmas: The State of the Question
Gabriele Winkler
17. The Appearance of the Light at the Baptism of Jesus and the Origins of the Feast of Epiphany
Martin J. Connell
18. The Origins and Evolution of Advent

V. FROM PASCHA TO PERSONS
John F. Baldovin, S.J.

19. On Feasting the Saints
Kilian McDonnell, O.S.B.
20. The Marian Liturgical Tradition
James F. White
21. Forgetting and Remembering the Saints
Maxwell E. Johnson
22. The One Mediator, the Saints, and Mary: A Lutheran Reflection
John F. Baldovin, S.J.
23. The Liturgical Year: Calendar for a Just Community

Acknowledgments
Subject Index

Introduction
At the conclusion of his 1982 essay "History and Eschatology in the Primitive Pascha" Thomas Talley writes: "We always live between marana tha, that prayer for the coming of the Lord which is somehow already a shout of greeting, and maran atha, the confession that the Lord has come, a focus on the ephapax of Gods' ultimate act in history. We always live, this is to say, between memory and hope, between his coming and his coming; and the present which is the threshold between these, between memory and hope, between past and future, this present is the locus of the presence of him who is at once Lord of history and its consummation. The remembrance of his passion and the recognition of his glory are integral to one another, and have been from the beginning."

Between memory and hope, between past and future. If all liturgy occurs precisely at the intersection of these two poles, the liturgical year belongs especially here as by means of its feasts and seasons the Church recalls and remembers God's "once for all" salvific act in the historical and contigent past and proleptically begins to taste now, even as it anticipates in hope, the fullness of God's salvation in the eschatological future. That is, contrary to popular belief, the liturgical year is neither a kind of Hellenistic mystery religions reenactment of the life of Jesus nor an annual recurring cyclic meditation on and devotion to the historical life of Jesus. Rather, through feast and fast, through festival and preparation, the liturgical year celebrates the Presence of the already crucified and risen Christ among us "today (hodie!)" as we remember (anamnesis) what he did "once for all" in history (Heb 10:10), as we encounter his Presence among us now, and as we await his coming again in glory. But it's always one and the same Christ we remember and expect as we celebrate his abiding Presence in the Spirit and as we behold what that Presence means for us here and now through the multifaceted prism of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and through the lives of his saints throughout the ages.

The liturgical year is one important means by which we are allowed, invited, and privileged to celebrate the reality that the Gospel of Jesus Christ, mediated to us by Word, Sacrament, and community declares us, forms us, and calls us to be Easter people, Lenten people, Christmas people, Advent people, and members of the communion of saints, who live in hope and expectation for the Day of His Coming. The liturgical year thus celebrates precisely our baptismal identity in Christ as his people, his Body in the world. Christmas is not about Baby Jesus in the Manger "back there and then" but about our baptismal birth in the adult Christ today as He is born anew in us ("Hodie Christus natus est!") through the Spirit who brings the "glad tidings" of salvation—the One salvation—to us now. Easter and Pentecost are about our death and resurrection in Christ today, our passover from death to life in his passover, through water and the Holy Spirit in baptism. Lent is about our annual retreat, our annual re-entry into the catechumenate and order of penitents in order to reflect on, affirm, remember, and re-claim that baptism. Advent is about our hope for fulfillment in Christ when "he will come to judge the living and the dead," a hope solidly grounded in the baptismal Spirit-gift who is the very downpayment and seal of our redemption. The feasts and commemorations of the saints provide us with models, concrete embodiments of God's grace incarnate in human history, so that "moved by their witness and supported by their fellowship, we may run with perserverance the race that is set before us and with them receive the unfading crown of glory."

Similarly, the one Mystery of Christ, crucified, risen, and present in the power and gift of the Holy Spirit, which is celebrated by means of this multi-faceted prism of the liturgical year, is well summarized in the following statement by patristics scholar Jean Cardinal Daniélou: "The Christian faith has only one object, the mystery of Christ dead and risen. But this unique mystery subsists under different modes: it is prefigured in the Old Testament, it is accomplished historically in the earthly life of Christ, it is contained in mystery in the sacraments, it is lived mystically in souls, it is accomplished socially in the Church, it is consummated eschatologically in the heavenly kingdom. Thus the Christian has at his disposition several registers, a multi-dimensional symbolism, to express this unique reality. The whole of Christian culture consists in grasping the links that exist between Bible and liturgy, Gospel and eschatology, mysticism and liturgy. The application of this method to scripture is called exegesis; applied to liturgy it is called mystagogy. This consists in reading in the rites the mystery of Christ, and in contemplating beneath the symbols the invisible reality."3 The feasts and seasons of the liturgical year, then, may certainly be viewed as one of the various sacramental modes of Christ's continued presence among us. Indeed, Augustine himself had no hesitation in referring to Easter itself as a "sacrament,"4 and Leo I could refer to Christmas as the great "sacrament of Incarnation."

This ecumenical anthology of essays is intended, primarily, as a supplementary text book for seminary and graduate-level courses on the evolution and theological interpretation of the liturgical year to accompany those books which become standard works in the field (e.g., Thomas Talley's The Origins of the Liturgical Year and Adolf Adam's The Liturgical Year: Its History & Its Meaning After the Reform of the Liturgy). With some new contributions appearing here for the first time, as well as the inclusion of a few other more recently published essays, the bulk of this collection consists of several articles that have long been used as required reading in those courses. All are arranged herein in an order corresponding to how they may be read in conjunction with such courses, not, it should be noted, in the order of the liturgical year as it is currently celebrated, but in the order of its historical development. That is, beginning with the original Christian feast day of Sunday, this collection moves next to Pascha/Easter and the Paschal Triduum and Holy Week, followed by the development of Lent, and, finally, the season and feast of Pentecost, including the rather late appearing "idea" feast of the Trinity. Essays dealing with the origins of Christmas and Epiphany and the later development of Advent appear next. And, although, strictly speaking, the origins of the sanctoral cycle, especially the cult and feasts of martyrs, antedate historically many of the other more central feasts and seasons in the calendar, essays on feasts of Mary and the saints form the concluding unit of this collection