The Liturgical Calendar: Orienting Yourself to Life in the Kingdom
Have you ever had the experience of looking around at your life and wondering, “How did I get here? Where even is ‘here’?”
Perhaps the unexpected or the unthinkable has happened.
Perhaps God has gifted you with so much more than you asked or imagined.
Perhaps you find that walking with Jesus has required a weirder and wilder obedience than you could have ever anticipated.
Or perhaps you find that your life is so very… normal.
Regardless, the disorientation is real, and locating ourselves can prove to be a challenging task. Luckily, God has called us out of slavery to self and being the hero of our own story. He has graciously released us from the burden of main-character angst and invited us instead to place Christ at the center. This is especially helpful when we find ourselves asking “Where am I?” because we are free to answer that question by orienting our lives to Jesus and to our calling within his Kingdom!
As Christians (literally, “Christ’s”), Jesus’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension fundamentally alter our identity: reshaping our past, informing our present, and pointing us to our future. Yet navigating how these historic events are to impact the day-to-day realities of our life—understanding how they answer the wheres?—can sometimes be mystifying.
“Jesus’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension fundamentally alter our identity: reshaping our past, informing our present, and pointing us to our future”
The Liturgical Calendar
In the early centuries of the Church, the discipline of observing the liturgical year was developed to teach God’s people how to locate themselves in proximity to Christ and his Kingdom. The Church calendar runs in two cycles of preparation (Advent/Lent), celebration (Christmas/Easter), and proclamation (Epiphany/Ordinary Time). Each offers us an opportunity to meditate upon various themes in Scripture and practice different disciplines to help us draw near to the Lord.
Each year, observing the liturgical calendar allows us to enter the beautiful narrative of God’s work in and through his people, Jesus’s earthly life, and the Holy Spirit’s past and current work through the Church. This annual excursion through God’s big story is designed to teach us how to make Christ the central figure in our own stories.
Remembering God
Indeed, one of the wonderful things about this discipline is that by its very nature the liturgical calendar calls participants to make a habit of remembering God’s character and his work in the world.
The biblical idea of remembrance goes beyond what most of us consider to be “remembering.” It’s about not only calling an event to mind, but calling it into being, experiencing it again, and making the past work of God present in our very own time and place, in our very own where?
Through this practice, we are also invited to remember—or make present—God’s future: Jesus will return to make all things new, and we will dwell with him in the new heavens and the new earth. God’s past and future collide in us, combining to create mini manifestations of the Kingdom: new creations reconciled to God.
“Observing the liturgical calendar allows us to enter the beautiful narrative of God’s work in and through his people”
But How?
Like any spiritual habit, the liturgical year is not magical. It requires intentionality along with the work of the Holy Spirit to bear fruit. But if we’re willing to genuinely engage the rhythms of this discipline, we can learn how to better orient ourselves within the Kingdom of God using Christ as our brilliant north star.
It’s not so much that each year during Lent I find myself living in a personal desert season or each Christmastide I find myself actively experiencing overwhelming joy akin to that which was produced by angel choirs. But rather, in having habituated myself to meditate upon the various seasonal themes of the Church year and the work of God that each season reflects, when I’m not sure where I am, I can fall back on a sort of muscle memory to locate myself within the story.
I know from leaning into Advent that when the waiting seasons feel interminable and the longing hurts, I can take up the oft-prayed lamentation of God’s people, “How long, O Lord?” (Ps. 13:1). Blessedly, the themes of Advent also remind me that God is at work in the waiting.
I know from Holy Saturday that God makes space for grief and blesses our need for rest. We were not designed to jump from the lowest valley to the highest mountain top.
I know from celebrating the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38) that the obedient response to unexpected, life-altering news is, “I am the servant of the Lord, let it be unto me according to your word.” And I can say those words with my lips until my heart catches up.
And I know from the meandering of life through Ordinary Time that growth can often be imperceptible and on occasion, daily faithfulness feels like a slog, but I can trust the process. God is in the business of being at work in his people.
Finding Ourselves in the Story
These are just a bare handful of the places one may find herself in life or themes one might meditate upon when making the journey through the Church calendar each year. It is a story which reflects the highs and lows and middles of our everyday lived experience.
Living in a fallen world and an already-not-yet Kingdom means that sometimes—maybe even often—we will find ourselves wondering where we are. Let’s not forget, however, that we have at our disposal a beautifully textured map and a readily visible north star to navigate life in the Kingdom.
So as we enter into this year, in our joys and sorrows and even in our moments of disorientation, may we be reminded to fix our eyes on Christ and run with endurance the race that is set before us.
Danielle Hitchen longs for people to see and understand God’s big story in the everyday world around them. She is enthusiastic about church history and tradition, mental and emotional health, and living the good life. By day Danielle is a reluctant homeschool mom, acceptable homemaker, and long-time Associate Producer of the Hugh Hewitt Show. In her spare time, she is also the author of Sacred Seasons: A Family Guide to Center Your Year Around Jesus and the Baby Believer book series, founder of Catechesis Books, and occasional writer of other things. Danielle loves good stories, big ideas, and beautiful design. She and her husband live near Washington, D.C. where they can be found enjoying Smithsonians and playgrounds alike with their three children, good conversations with their friends, and Virginia vineyards with each other. You can find more from Danielle on her website and on Instagram.
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