Source: A SEASON OF FRESH HOPE by Alice Camille (2022)
March 25 – THE ANNUNCIATION OF THE LORD
We Need a Little Christmas
Each Lent, we break from the drama leading up to Holy Week and take what feels like a quick Advent vacation. Why not? The church calendar doesn’t create make-believe seasons of enforced joy or sorrow. We never slip back into a past hour when Jesus is a baby again or hanging on the cross at Golgotha. For believers, the news is always good and we live in everlasting Easter. Jesus remains risen from the dead even on Christmas morning. To pretend that away for a moment or a season is absurd.
Liturgical time is simply a calendar on which we write all the significant dates we want to hold on to. Birthdays, anniversaries, and deaths are all central to the story of our love. We don’t want to risk forgetting them or their significance. Liturgy is memory: a special kind of memory that makes the past present again. Liturgy reminds us how, in the heart of God, all of time comprises an eternal now. Nothing is lost. No one falls away.