What is the Liturgical Year?
In a pastoral letter issued at the close of the Second Vatican Council (1965), our Bishops, together with Cardinal Joseph Slipyj, defined the Liturgical Year as: “A liturgical cycle of the universal or some particular Church, that consists of Sundays, weekdays, the feasts of our Lord, the Mother of God, the saints and the periods of fasting and forbidden times.” We call the Liturgical Year the Ecclesiastical or Church Year, because it contains the Church Calendar, which in some respects is similar to and in others differs from the civil calendar. In the Eastern Church the Church Year differs from…