Liturgical Year
The Church's calendar of seasons and feasts — Advent, Christmas, Lent, the Triduum, Easter and Ordinary Time — that unfolds the whole mystery of Christ each year.
Beginning on the First Sunday of Advent, the liturgical year moves through Christmas, Ordinary Time, Lent, the Easter Triduum, the fifty days of Easter and a second stretch of Ordinary Time, ending with the feast of Christ the King. The Catechism explains that in the course of a year the Church unfolds the whole mystery of Christ, from the Incarnation to Pentecost and the expectation of his return, so that the faithful may lay hold of it and be filled with grace. Sunday, the day of the Resurrection, is its foundation.
Councils
Where the Church settled or debated this. Follow a council to read our article on it, or the decrees themselves.
- 1962–1965Second Vatican Councilthe decrees
Sources
Church teaching
- Universal Norms on the Liturgical Year and the General Roman CalendarUniversal Norms on the Liturgical Year and the General Roman Calendar (1969), nn. 1–47, as printed in the Roman Missal, third typical edition.
Sources checked 29 September 2026