Cardinal Donald Wuerl - The Feasts: How the Church Year Forms Us as Catholics

Copyright 2014 by Donald Wuerl and Michael Aquilina
All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Image, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House Company.
www.crownpublishing.com
IMAGE is a registered trademark and the I colophon is a trademark of Random House LLC.

All photos are provided courtesy of the Catholic Standard, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. Photographers are Michael Hoyt, Rafael Crisostomo, and Leslie Kossoff.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-8041-3992-2
eBook ISBN 978-0-8041-3993-9

Cover design by Jessie Sayward Bright
Cover photograph by Alamy Images

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Praise for
THE FEASTS

Cardinal Wuerl and Aquilina show us the transformative spiritual power in the Churchs original and most ancient feasts. This is a book to be prayed with and meditated on. Because when we understand the meaning of the Churchs liturgical feasts, we know better the great dignity and destiny we have as children of God.

Most Reverend Jos Gomez, archbishop of Los Angeles

In this highly approachable volume, coauthors Cardinal Donald Wuerl and Mike Aquilina have combined sound research with pastoral sensitivity to take readers on a journey of discovery and inspiration through the Churchs liturgical year. Beginning with the fundamental question of why the Church has always celebrated the Eucharist on Sundays, all the way to the origins of feasts of more recent vintage, such as Divine Mercy Sunday, this fine work reminds us that the feasts and seasons we celebrate are not just arbitrary events. Rather, we discover how the Church year is the Churchs time-honored way of inviting present-day Christians to learn about, be challenged by, and find hope for the future through the unfolding of the Paschal Mystery in time and the witness of all the saints, upon whom we rely for unfailing help (quotation from Eucharistic Prayer III).

Archbishop of Louisville Joseph E. Kurtz, president, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

This gracefully written book will serve not only as a splendid explanation of the Churchs feasts and solemnities but also as an illuminating introduction to the faith itself. Mike Aquilina and Cardinal Wuerl have once again shown their prowess as champions of the new evangelization.

Robert Barron, author ofCatholicism

We have to weigh every opportunity and know the times, says the early martyr Saint Ignatius of Antioch. He encouraged the Christian communities to meet more regularly for the Eucharist. The book The Feasts: How the Church Year Forms Us as Catholics is a thorough and very readable guide through the Churchs feast days, beginning with Sunday, the Lords Day! The book invites us to be formed in a genuine Catholic identity and ethos through these beautiful and significant celebrations of our liturgical calendar. Cardinal Wuerl and Mike Aquilina help us to weigh every opportunity for witness to Jesus. The authors show us how the feast days become a connatural way to learn the faith so that we will be intelligent and credible witnesses for the faith.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, archbishop of Galveston-Houston

Catholics are a people of celebration. More than anything elsewe celebrate! The Feasts is a fabulous book that will teach you the what, when, where, how, and why of the celebrations that are at the center of our incredible faith. The genius of Catholicism is all around, but often it goes unnoticed. The Church year is full of celebrationsfeastsand they seek to remind us of what matters most. Enjoy this book. It will help you to celebrate in new and profound ways.

Matthew Kelly, founder of DynamicCatholic.com and author ofRediscover Catholicism

This book delighted my heart! In a style that is simple and gracious, Cardinal Donald Wuerl and Mike Aquilina have brought the extraordinary from the ordinary in The Feasts. They bring through the ordinary things of time, calendars, and feast days the timeless things of God through the Incarnation of the Word into our needy world in Jesus Christ. They remind us of the stunning divine realities behind the human calendars and feast days we often take for granted. This sense of bringing the sacred through the secular is a most timely message we often take for granted.

John Michael Talbot, author ofThe Ancient Path

All photos are provided courtesy of the Catholic Standard, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. Photographers are Michael Hoyt, Rafael Crisostomo, and Leslie Kossoff.

Most Reverend Jos Gomez Archbishop of Los Angeles
Lex orandi, lex credendi.

In the Churchs ancient formula, we pray what we believe. And what we pray changes us into what we believe.

We are made in the image of God and given the vocation to be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. This beautiful promise of our faith shapes the direction of our Christian lives.

Little by little and day by day, we are being changed into his likeness, Saint Paul said. What we will become is not yet clear, Saint John added. But we know that one day we shall be like Jesus.

This transformation is taking place quietly through our participation in the divine liturgy as it unfolds in the rhythms and cycles of the Churchs liturgical yearespecially in the great feasts that remember the mysteries of Christs incarnation, Passover, resurrection, ascension, and the sending of his Holy Spirit.

In celebrating this yearly cycle of feasts, we enter into those sacred mysteries, joining our lives to his life.

The Churchs liturgy sanctifies time. In the liturgy, Gods kingdom comes and enters into our time and place. Each of our livesand the history of nationsbecomes a part of the salvation history that God has been working out since before the foundation of the world.

Thats what this fine book is all about. Cardinal Donald Wuerl and Mike Aquilina have recovered this ancient truththat our Christian worship is meant to be both formative and transformative.

This is an important recovery in this era of globalization and the increasing secularization of society.

Over the centuries and still today, the Churchs eucharistic liturgy and her great liturgical feasts have created cultures and shaped identities. The liturgy has inspired some of historys most exalted achievements in art, architecture, music, drama, and literature.

Through the liturgy, the seeds of Gospel have been sown in every culture. And from every cultural soil these seeds have borne rich fruitin songs and customs, patron saints, pious devotions, and feast days.

Where I live, in Los Angeles, our Catholic culture is expressed in more than forty languages and in popular piety that is drawn from peoples of every continent and more than sixty nations. Our Native American brothers and sisters honor Saint Kateri Tekakwitha. Our Peruvian neighbors celebrate El Seor de los Milagros, Our Lord of the Miracles. Filipino Catholics pray Simbng Gabi, a series of nine Masses dedicated to the Blessed Mother on December 1624. Our Hispanics venerate Our Lady of Guadalupe and celebrate Christmas Eve with the beautiful Posadas processions.