Celebrating the Liturgical Season

Just like the yearly calendars that organize the rest of our lives, the church's calendar organizes our worship into seasons that provide us opportunities to observe, commemorate, and celebrate certain events or occasions each year. Each of these seasons comemorates the origins of important parts of our Faith, and you'll hear and see it in the Gospel readings, prayers, special church programs, and even in the colors of the priests' robes.

The powerful thing about the Christian church calendar and seasons, though, is the path they take us down each year. As one theologian puts it, "The sequence of festivals from Advent to Resurrection Sunday becomes an annual spiritual journey for worshippers as they kneel at the manger, listen on a hillside, walk the streets of Jerusalem, hear the roar of the mob, stand beneath the cross, and witness the resurrection."

Epiphany

We find ourselves in the Season after Epiphany, the season of time following The Feast of the Epiphany, which occurs on January 6th each year, and is also known as The Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. "Epiphany" means "showing forth," and the feast commemorates the first showing forth of Christ to the world, when His presence was revealed to the three Magi (popularly conceived as the "three wise men" or the "three kings").

It's a season about revelations. In Epiphany we remember the revelation of Christ to John the Baptist, to the disciples, and to all.

The predominant symbol of the season is Light -- the light from the Star of Bethlehem and the Light of Christ spreading throughout the world. The liturgical color for Epiphany Season is green, lasting through the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday when the season of Lent begins.

As we experience this time between Christmas and Lent at Grace-St. Luke's, we often find ourselves thinking about Jesus being revealed. How does Christ reveal himself to us in our lives? How do we as Christians move from telling others Christ is in our lives to "revealing" His presence?

In the photo to the right, Sunday morning light streams through the Grace-St. Luke's Tiffany window that Tiffany titled "Christ the Light of the World."