Calendar of Holy Days

Keeping Holy Time

Dear allies,

CChristians have always kept time differently. Long before empires and markets set the calendar, the church marked its year by the story of Jesus’ life and the work of the Church. To keep this calendar in our liturgical lives and shared devotional practice is to let that story, rather than the powers of the age, mark our time.

We offer it in that spirit, and in our own. We are a people gathered from many traditions. Much here will feel familiar, including the great holy days of Christmas and Easter, celebrations of the apostles and evangelists, and several of the ancient saints. You will also meet people the church has too often left off its calendars. They include prophets of civil rights and queer liberation, witnesses who stood against the violence of the state, and the unnamed faithful whose holiness no institution ever certified. Beside them we keep days the wider world has set apart for justice. We do this because the gospel calls us to stand in solidarity with the exploited and marginalized of our world.

Four kinds of days mark the year. Solemnities are its high holy days. Contrary to its term, they aren’t necessarily solemn, just the most important. Feasts celebrate the mysteries and saints that shape us. Memorials remember particular lives of faithfulness. Commemorations join our prayer to the world’s longing for justice and peace.

Like everything in the Alliance, this calendar is an offering, not a rule. Affiliated ministries and those holding Holy Orders are free to keep all of it, part of it, or keep it alongside the calendars of their own traditions. Our hope is simply that, day by day and season by season, it helps us to seek justice and to live in peace, to care for the earth and to share the commonwealth of God’s goodness, in the company of all the faithful past, present, and yet to come.

Yours, in the bonds of peace,

Rev. Dr. Christopher Montgomery, OSL

Denominational Minister of Worship and Theology