(1:43) - Advent and Christmas
(3:47) - Lent, Holy Week, and Easter
The rhythms of the day and week gradually forge a prayerful life. The year repeats this cycle, with greater breadth and depth. Every year nature is reborn in the spring and reaches maturity in summer, but, like fallen nature, declines in autumn and dies in the winter. These are also the stages of human life on earth: birth and youth, maturity, old age, and death.
Every liturgical cycle contains these same steps. The birth to new life is announced by Advent and Christmas; the weight of sin and death by Lent. The liturgical cycle breaks the chains of evil in the Paschal Triduum, which celebrates the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus, who breaks the chains of sin and death and introduces us to a new life. Between these two intense periods of celebration are the two moments of Ordinary Time. The liturgical year concludes with the Solemnity of Christ the King, which announces the definitive coming of Christ and his final victory over evil, sin, and death. When he comes, God will be all in all (cf. 1 Cor 15:25-28).
The living of the liturgical year allows us to mature in our encounter with the living Christ who walked among us. With him, year after year, we rediscover and relive Salvation history once again, step by step.