The Lutheran liturgical calendar is a listing which details the primary annual festivals and events that are celebrated liturgically by various Lutheran churches. The calendars of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) are from the 1978 Lutheran Book of Worship and the calendar of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) and the Lutheran Church–Canada (LCC) use the Lutheran Book of Worship and the 1982 Lutheran Worship. Elements unique to the ELCA have been updated from the Lutheran Book of Worship to reflect changes resulting from the publication of Evangelical Lutheran Worship in 2006. The elements of the calendar unique to the LCMS have also been updated from Lutheran Worship and the Lutheran Book of Worship to reflect the 2006 publication of the Lutheran Service Book.
The basic element to the calendar is the Lord's Day (Sunday), which is a festival of Jesus' resurrection. However, Christian denominations have historically observed other festivals which commemorate events in the life of Jesus or of significant individuals in the history of the Church.
Structure
The Lutheran calendar operates on two different cycles: the Temporal Cycle and the Sanctoral Cycle. The Temporal Cycle pivots on the festivals of Christmas and Easter. All Sundays, Seasons, and Festivals are related to these festivals.Phillip Pfatteicher, Festivals and Commemorations, p. 11. Because Easter varies in date each year based on the vernal equinox and the phases of the moon, it is called a moveable feast (see: Computus). Dates affected by placement of Easter include Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent, the start of Easter itself, Pentecost, and Holy Trinity.Phillip Pfatteicher, Lutheran Book of Worship: Manual on the Liturgy, p. 22. Advent, the other pivotal season on the calendar, comes exactly four Sundays before the start of Christmas (if Christmas falls on a Sunday, that day does not count), or the Sunday closest to St. Andrew's Day (November 30). Like the other Western Church calendars, the first Sunday of Advent is also the first day of the liturgical year.Pfatteicher, Lutheran Book of Worship: Manual on the Liturgy, p. 22. The Sanctoral Cycle is the fixed daily commemorations of individuals and events not related to the Temporal Cycle of Sundays, Festivals, and Seasons.Pfatteicher, Festivals and Commemorations, p. 11.
Festivals The Festivals are Nativity, Epiphany, the Baptism of our Lord, the Transfiguration, the Annunciation, Palm Sunday, Easter, the Ascension, Pentecost, Holy Trinity, All Saints, and Christ the King.Evangelical Lutheran Worship, p. 3 and Lutheran Service Book, p. xi Most of these festivals are tied to the moveable feast of Easter. Festivals take precedence over all other days, including Sundays, have their own collects and Eucharistic proper prefaces. Of the festivals, Christmas is considered to be twelve days in length (from December 25 until January 5) and Easter is fifty days in length (from Easter Sunday up to and inclusive of Pentecost).Phillip Pfatteicher, Commentary on the Lutheran Book of Worship, p. 498. For Easter, Sundays are considered to be another part of the festival. For the Ascension which, falling on fortieth day of Easter, will always be on a Thursday, the festival is sometimes transferred to the Seventh Sunday of Easter in addition to or in place of the normal part of the Easter festival for that day.Evangelical Lutheran Worship, p. 23.
There is another type of day which, while not a festival, is considered to be equal with a festival. These days, called Days of Special Devotion, are Ash Wednesday and all the days of Holy Week, especially Good Friday.Pfatteicher, Commentary on the Lutheran Book of Worship, p. 498. These particular days, like other festivals, automatically take precedence over any event on the calendar and sometimes even over other festivals. A good example of this would be in 2005 when Good Friday and the Annunciation fell on the same day (March 25). The Annunciation was transferred to March 28, or the second day of Easter, to make room for Good Friday.Philip Pfatteicher, Festivals and Commemorations, 132. The principle of the Church of Sweden is that the Annunciation is celebrated on the Sunday between 21 and 27 March; although, should Good Friday or any other day of Holy Week, or Easter Sunday or Monday respectively, fall on 25 March, Annunciation is moved to the Sunday before Palm Sunday. (For instance, in 2003 Annunciation was celebrated on 13 March; 2008 (when Easter Sunday was 23 March) it was celebrated on 9 March.) One unique feature of the ELCA calendar is that it has given congregations the options of two dates for the Transfiguration.
Lesser Festivals
These are days which are associated with the life of Christ or the Apostles and deserve attention in their own right. Lesser Festivals do not have priority over festivals and technically do not have precedence over ordinary Sundays. However, the Lutheran Book of Worship does permit the celebration of a Lesser Festival on Sundays where the normal color of the day would be green (that is, seasons after Epiphany or after Pentecost) or on the Sundays in Christmas.Pffatteicher, Lutheran Book of Worship: Minister’s Desk Edition, 21. This is abrogated for patronal festivals (that is, the day commemorating the saint or event for which a congregation is named) provided that they do not take place in Lent, Advent, or Easter, in which case they must also be transferred to the next convenient weekday.
Commemorations Commemorations are for individuals or events which have been noteworthy in the life of the Church and in the history of Lutheranism in particular.Pfatteicher, Commentary on the Lutheran Book of Worship, p. 22. These days do not take precedence over any other festival day, and if there is a conflict between a commemoration and a festival of any other rank, the commemoration is generally transferred to the next open weekday. If a commemoration falls on a Sunday where the color of the day is green, the collect for which that individual or event belong to could be said before the daily collect/prayer of the day or in place of it. For example, if September 13 fell on a Sunday and there was a desire to commemorate St. John Chrysostom, the pastor would recite the common of theologians and then the prayer of the day or the common of theologians on its own. The person may also be mentioned by name in the prayers of the faithful in addition to recitation of the applicable collect. Finally, their lives might be summarized or their teachings related to the day's lessons in some way.
In cases of conflict between commemorations (for example, November 11 with St. Martin of Tours and Søren Kierkegaard), there is no order of precedence, and individual worship planners need to choose which commemoration, if any, to highlight. In some cases, several individuals are listed together (June 14 with St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian, and St. Gregory of Nyssa) because of their close association with each other, and they are thus designed to be commemorated jointly, not as a choice between one or the other.Pfatteicher, Festivals and Commemorations, p. 20
The schedule of commemorations within the ELCA has been specifically designed so that there is at least one person on the calendar from each century so as to emphasize the continuity of Christian tradition.Pfatteicher, Festivals and Commemorations, 19. Clearly, some centuries have more commemorations than others, the largest number of persons commemorated being in the first four centuries of Christian history and immediately following the Reformation. This leaves the space from the 5th to the 15th centuries and the 16th to the 20th centuries rather sparse; nevertheless, it is an improvement over some calendars wherein only a very few persons, all from the patristic or Reformation periods, were commemorated.Phillip Pfatteicher, Commentary on the Lutheran Book of Worship, p. 22.
Liturgical colors
The service books of Lutheran Churches designate specific colors for events which are listed on the liturgical calendars and the seasons which are a part of the Temporal Cycle. This color is sometimes known as “the color of the day.” The Lutheran Church generally follows the color scheme which is used by other churches in Western Christianity since Lutheranism has historically been linked with the Roman Catholic Church. The color of the day dictates the color of the vestments for all ministers and the color of paraments. White is the color designated for Festivals of Christ, with gold sometimes offered as an alternative for the first days of Easter.
White is also used as the color for anyone commemorated on the calendar who was not martyred and is the color appointed for funerals regardless of whatever the color of the day might otherwise be. Purple is commonly used for the season of Lent. It is also optional for use during Advent, though blue is the preferred color for this season because of its hopeful connotations rather than the penitential character implied by purple and its association with Lent.
Historical development Liturgical calendars began to be developed in Christianity around the fourth century, with the church calendar as it is known today coming into full development in the period of the medieval sacramentaries.Frank C. Senn, Christian Worship, p. 188. While Sunday had long been established in the weekly calendar, festivals such as Easter and Christmas were also a fixed part of the calendar by this time. The ninth century also saw the inclusion of numerous saints in the calendar (a practice already begun by the second century), even to the point that normal Sunday propers were taking place over those normally appointed for Sunday.Senn, Christian Worship, p. 162-163, 188.
Reformation era All of the Reformers attempted to reduce the number of individual commemorations and “saint’s days”, though this reduction was sometimes more drastic than others. In the case of the Lutheran churches, most of the saints' days were removed (with the exception of some New Testament personages), though the basic temporal cycle of the calendar remained more or less intact.Pfatteicher, Festivals and Commemorations, 11. In some instances, a celebration of the Reformation was added to October 31, the first instance being the church order prepared by Johannes Bugenhagen, though other churches selected alternative dates, including June 25, the anniversary of the presentation of the Augsburg Confession.Senn, Christian Worship, p. 344. The commemoration of the Reformation quickly died out before the Thirty Years War.
In Germany The content of the liturgical calendar (like the content of the liturgy itself) was the responsibility of territory in which the church was found.Senn, Christian Worship, p. 342. Thus, there was a different order for Saxony, one for Prussia, one for Hesse, and one for Wittenberg, among others. Despite their differences, the calendars and liturgies maintained significant similarities between each other as well as the calendar of the Roman Catholic Church. The church year continued to begin with the First Sunday of Advent (which was still fixed based on the traditional formula), and many of the festivals surrounding Christmas (St. Stephen, St. John, the Holy Innocents) remained in place, even if they were often ignored. Epiphany also continued to be celebrated as the visit of the Magi, though Martin Luther preferred to commemorate the baptism of Christ.Senn, Christian Worship, p. 343.