Overview
year, liturgical
Quick Reference
In the W. Church the Christian year is based on the week and on the festivals of Easter and Christmas. It begins with the first Sunday in Advent. Sundays have traditionally been numbered through Advent, after Christmas and after Epiphany, through Lent, after Easter, and after Whitsunday or Trinity Sunday. According to the calendar introduced into the RC Church in 1969, after Epiphany the ‘Sundays of the Year’ are numbered consecutively, excluding the period from the beginning of Lent to Whitsunday. This pattern has now been adopted in many Anglican Churches. In the E. Orthodox Church the liturgical year has much the same shape as in the W., except that it begins on 1 Sept. (the beginning of the tax year in the Byzantine Empire), and the Sundays outside the period of Lent–Eastertide are numbered ‘after Pentecost’. The period Lent–Eastertide embraces the ten weeks before Easter to the Sunday after Pentecost.
