A MESSAGE FOR SHROVETIDE
In a
world of limits and borders, we are accustomed to well-established lines
defining the beginning and end of most things in it. The liturgical cycle is full of such lines,
and we know very well, for example, that Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and ends
with the Easter Vigil. It is therefore a
little unsettling to realize that the transition from the Christmas Cycle to
the Easter Cycle is a good deal more fluid than we might imagine.
Consider,
for example, that our Sunday vestments have changed from the white of
Christmastide to the green of Epiphanytide, and now today to the violet of
Shrovetide. When did Christmas
officially end? Are there really only
twelve days of Christmas? Surely not,
and it would be inappropriate to take down our nativity scene, with its wise
men and their camels, on Twelfth Night, which is the very Feast of the Epiphany
and the start of an Octave that extends Christmas at least another eight
days. And what about those Sundays after
Epiphany, are they part of the Christmas Cycle too? In fact, yes, they are. Like Lent and Eastertide, Christmas extends
forty days and forty nights, ending with Candlemas, the Feast of the
Presentation of the Christ Child in the Temple. Candlemas, then, on February 2nd,
is the official end of the Christmas Cycle.
And because today is only January 28th, Christmas isn’t quite
over yet.
But wait
a minute! Our vestments have changed to the
violet of penance, the Gloria in Excelsis
isn’t said at Mass, the whole purpose of Shrovetide is to prepare us for Lent,
which in turn prepares us for Easter.
Doesn’t today, then, herald in the Easter Cycle? Indeed, we currently find ourselves in a kind
of liturgical confusion, with one foot in Christmas and the other already
stepping forward with our seventy-day countdown (Septuagesima = 70) to Easter. It doesn’t happen this way every year of
course, as Septuagesima Sunday often falls after
February 2nd. In those years,
there is a period where our feet are planted in a no-man’s land belonging to neither season, which can be equally
unsettling.
So what
lesson should we draw from this strange liturgical anomaly? Simply that liturgy reflects life, where are no
firm ines of demarcation separating our childhood from adulthood, youth from
middle age, the prime of our lives from our senior years. We gradually progress from one to the other,
and so it is with our spiritual and liturgical life. Our tendency is to set limits, but in reality
there are overlapping periods of part-joy and part-sorrow, part-health and part-sickness,
feast and famine, and so on. The Church
reminds us of this specifically in our marriage vows, and we would do well to
apply them to our Shrovetide these next few weeks. First confess your sins and do penance, then
enjoy your Mardi Gras in childlike innocency.
Joyful mysteries, sorrowful mysteries, they’re all mingled together in
our lives, and the only real dividing line is that which separates us from the
glorious mysteries. That line is
death. Let’s start preparing for it.
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