The Feasts: How the Church Year Forms Us as Catholics

by Donald Wuerl, Mike Aquilina

Every day is a holiday in the Catholic Church. In their latest collaboration, Cardinal Wuerl and Mike Aquilina examine the history and traditions behind both favorite and forgotten holidays, from Christmas to Easter, from the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity to the Feast of the Holy Angels

Catholic faith is festive, and the Catholic faithful count their days by celebrating the mysteries of Jesus’ life. There is a message to be found in the passing of days, weeks, and seasons. Through the feasts, ordinary Christians learn the life of Christ, share it, and come to imitate it.
 
This book continues the work the authors began in their books The Mass and The Church , exploring the meaning and purpose of the most basic and beloved aspects of Catholic life. Each chapter uncovers the biblical origins and development of one of the great feasts or fasts — Advent, Epiphany, the Holy Angels, all the Marian feasts, and even this very day. The calendar can be a catechism for Catholics who know how to live it.

“The feasts form us,” write the authors, “They help to make us and remake us according to the pattern of the life of Jesus Christ. We number our days as we walk in his footsteps, from his birth to his baptism, from his passion to his resurrection, from his Ascension to his sending of the Spirit to make us saints. We do this faithfully every year, and it defines us as who we are.”
 

Genres: Catholic, Nonfiction

189 pages, Hardcover

First published September 16, 2014

About the author

Donald William Wuerl (born November 12, 1940) is an American cardinal of the Catholic Church. He is the sixth Archbishop of Washington, serving since 2006. He previously served as Auxiliary Bishop of Seattle (1986–87) and Bishop of Pittsburgh (1988–2006). He was elevated to the cardinalate by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010.

Reviews

[kesseljunkie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The info is fine. But a book like this, I expect to excite the believer and intrigue the doubter. I don’t think it does either. Some good history contained therein but the book really does fall flat.

[Julie Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Church's calendar is an intricate, complex, and beautiful technology. It is the work of many human hands and human minds trained to deal with holy things. The seasons turn and the feasts interplay like the gears in a priceless clock. They regulate our religious life and enrich our spiritual life.

They seem to happen automatically, but only because the Church oversees the apparatus, averts temporal collisions, and finely tunes all the components to make the year as festive as it can be.

I am not sure exactly why but one of the things I have always loved about the Church is the liturgical year. The idea that there are a steady series of seasons and feast days linked with our calendar year enhances the richness of my life. Perhaps it is because my mother taught us to love nature and the turn of seasons simply because she herself loves them so much. Perhaps it is because, long before I was a Christian, I read and reread Rumer Godden's masterpiece In This House of Brede where the liturgical year is a continual background to the story.

“Don’t you see, it’s like a pageant. Our Cardinal has said the liturgy entertains as well as feeds us ... Yes, we’re not angels but humans," said Dame Clare, "and human nature is made so that it needs variety. The Church is like a wise mother and has given us this great cycle of the liturgical year with its different words and colours. You’ll see how you will learn to welcome the feast days and the saints’ days as they come round, each with a different story and, as it were, a different aspect; they grow very dear, though still exacting.”

Having unknowingly absorbed all that I suppose it is only fitting that I really enjoyed The Feasts. It covers the background and reasons for feast days, the liturgical calendar (and our calendar in general), and how these enrich our Christian lives. Even those of us who are well informed on the subject will find new information as well as good reminders of things we may have forgotten. For example this is supremely logical but just never occurred to me:

Sunday did not become simply a Christian version of the Sabbath. Christians were wary of enforcing a day of rest, as such enforcement had been turned on Jesus during his earthly ministry (see, for example, Mark 2:23-27). In any event, most Christians could not refrain from labor on Sunday because it was an ordinary workday in the Greco-Roman world.

Christian observance centered on the Mass, which was in most places offered very early in the morning (before work), but sometimes also in the evening (after work). ...

Certainly The Feasts is a worthy accompaniment to Cardinal Wuerl's and Mike Aquilina's previous two books, The Church and The Mass. Taken all together they provide a thorough, accessible, and much needed look at aspects of the Roman Catholic faith which seem very mysterious to outside eyes.

[Kari]

This book listed a different subtitle on Goodreads, but I think this one is slightly more accurate – the book is more specifically tailored for Catholic readers than Protestants or other faiths. I was hoping for some ideas about church year practices that we might include in our family celebrations, but it wasn’t structured quite like that. The first half was a discussion of the history of feasting in the church and the second half did get into more specifics about some holy days. I learned several things about the Catholic church that I had not known but didn’t pick up anything for our family. Recommended for: people wanting to learn more about celebrations within Catholicism.

[Mark Einselen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally, a scholarly book that is accessible, encouraging, and nourishing. Far from being a textbook on the subject matter, this collection of short chapters efficiently outlines the origins of religious time (sevens days of creation, etc), expounds upon the feasts of scriptures, Jesus' own practices, and the traditions of the western Church.

While there are going to be some segments which rightly raise the eyebrows of protestants (even some Anglicans such as myself), Cardinal Donald Wuerl and Mike Aquilina repeatedly emphasize that each and every feast is - or should be - centered on Christ himself.

The prose are pastoral. The Biblical references are based. The end of it all is enlightening.

[. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Can’t be anything other than a 0 star from me, dawg

[Judith Babarsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third book by authors Cardinal Wuerl and Mike Aquilina, following The Mass and The Church. All three, while relatively easy and enjoyable reads, are by no means simplistic or watered down. The Feasts is very well written, drawing the reader along a path from the dawning of time and God’s institution of the Sabbath, through an informative history of the calendar, to a description of specific Feast Days that Roman Catholics celebrate.

While the authors are Roman Catholic, they do not ignore the foundation of Roman Catholic feasts in the celebrations of the Jews and the feasts that Jesus observed. They remind us that celebrations of feasts are the way we mark time, but they are also more than that – they are part of our collective memory and they form our understanding of our faith. Feasts are the way we remember the past, celebrate in the present, but they remind us of what we hope for in the future. Before Bibles became commonplace, the progression of feasts throughout the liturgical year instructed the faithful. By observing the various feasts, Catholics learned of the birth of Jesus (Annunciation, Christmas), the passion of Jesus (Good Friday), Christ’s resurrection (Easter), the birth of the Church (Pentecost), etc.

One of the most interesting chapters for me was the one on the development of the calendar and how the transition to a Christian calendar was difficult for early believers who had grown up with the Jewish calendar. The traditional Sabbath for Jews, Saturday, was transitioned to Sunday in the Christian calendar. Over time, the Catholic liturgical calendar was reformed by a succession of popes and Wuerl and Aquilina do a good job of documenting this is readable fashion.

The authors provide their readers with definitions for the various categories of days in the calendar: Sunday, Solemnity, Feast, Memorial, and Seasonal Weekday. With a clear and concise description of each, it is easy to figure out what’s what as well as comprehend the often times confusing changes to the “normal” Catholic calendar.

After the foundation is laid for the reader’s understanding of the history and meaning of the liturgical calendar, the authors lay out, chapter by chapter, each of the major Catholic Feast Days beginning, appropriately, with Sunday. Weaving history (how did Sunday emerge as the day that Christians celebrate the Sabbath) with how Sundays are celebrated (partaking in the Eucharist, a day of rest), the authors capture the essence of the Sunday Mass and its meaning for Christians today. This chapter also serves as the basis for all the following chapters as the Sunday Mass is the bedrock of the Catholic faith.

Moving on from Sunday, I have to admit that I found myself critical of the organization of the book. Having just finished describing the importance and meaning of the liturgical calendar, the authors seem to ignore their own wisdom which would have Christmas as the first Feast of the liturgical year. But, instead, the chapter following the one regarding Sunday is the one describing the Solemnity of Easter. Then comes the chapter on Christmas followed by Pentecost. I would have felt more satisfied as a reader had the authors followed the calendar in their chapter organization, beginning with Advent and ending with Christ the King. However, this is a small criticism.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and will undoubtedly return to it for approachable descriptions of the various Feast Days that the Catholic Church celebrates through the year. Each chapter is filled with history, Biblical references, and personal and theological reflections that capture the reader’s attention. In that sense, each chapter can be read in standalone fashion, but The Feasts takes on a fuller meaning when read as a whole. Taken as a whole, the book serves as a reminder to the reader of the totality of Salvation History as told through the liturgical year of Feasts.

[Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Feasts is the third, and most likely final, book in a series of books written by Cardinal Wuerl and Mike Aquilina, which are designed to instruct Catholics and non-Catholics on important aspects of the Catholic Church. The first two books in this series are entitled The Mass and The Church. In The Feasts, the authors begin by explaining the value and importance that man places in calendars and tracking of time. They use the example of fishermen using the lunar calendar and farmers the solar calendar to grow rich, and state that if we follow the Church Calendar, we can grow spiritually rich. They then walk us through the Jewish feasts that Jesus celebrated when he walked this earth. Following this a whole chapter is dedicated to defining terms like Memorial, Solemnity, Season, and Octave.

The book then gets to the heart of the matter with the remaining chapters. The authors first start by talking about the importance of Sunday and then there are individual chapters dedicated to Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. Next, they dedicate individual chapters to important solemnities of Jesus, including Epiphany, Ascension, Corpus Christi, and Christ the King. Unfortunately, the Annunciation and Presentation of Jesus in the Temple got lumped in with Christ the King. These are two important feast days, and considered part of the Twelve Great Feasts in Eastern Christianity. Next, we are treated to various other feasts and seasons, including Holy Trinity, Marian feasts (which could have easily taken up more than one chapter), and the Holy Angels.

I was very pleased that they devoted a chapter to Advent, as it is my favorite liturgical season. In this chapter, the authors discuss the beauty of Advent. Advent is a time of waiting and preparation, not a spend four weeks shopping season. In this season, we are preparing for the two-fold coming of Christ, both at Christmas and again at the end of the age. They also explain that the Eastern Christians view this as a season for purification and penance. I particularly enjoy Advent, because it is the start of a new Church year. It is a time to start over, begin again, and grow closer to God.

Overall, this was a good book with a lot of great information. I appreciate that the Eastern Catholics were not ignored in this book. However, there are a few things I would have changed. As I said earlier, I wish there had been more focus given to some of the particular feasts. I also think the book could have been a bit better organized. Since there was a great bit of focus on the importance of calendars and seasons, I think the book should have been arranged in the order the seasons and feasts appear on the calendar, starting with Advent and ending with Christ the King. Those complaints aside, this was still a good book that can teach both converts and cradle Catholics a lot.

[Patricia Mckenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book “Feasts” by Cardinal Donald Wuerl and Mike Aquilina is about the rhythm of the church. The very life of the church and seasons are a catechism. Even before there were books written down, the days and seasons told the story of Christ’s life. I loved the history of our holidays which coincides with the history of the church. I wanted to read this book to give me a sense of being part of the church, part of the body of Christ. I was surprised at the detail of feasts, fasts and saints. As Catholics we are incarnational people, always looking to the resurrection. The book takes us through Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter which you would expect. It also takes a broad view of the seasons and the year while also providing specifics that would intrigue the more seasoned Catholic reader. I would describe the book as bringing the beauty of the church closer for the reader to examine while welcoming all to take a closer look. I read the book straight through but I will also use it as a devotional during each season to remind me of our Catholic heritage. I recommend this book for understanding how the liturgical year makes us who we are as Catholics.

[Kari · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is very approachable and clearly defines and explains the major feasts, solemnities, memorials, weekdays and our Sunday liturgy—what they teach us, why we celebrate them and what we gain by our active participation in these life-giving mysteries as we join our lives to Christ.

If you ever wondered what the difference is between a feast, a solemnity or a memorial, or when (or why) some have been added to the Church’s calendar over the centuries, or why they matter to us today—you need to read this book.

Although this book is written for Catholics, I believe any one who wants to learn more about the life of Christ, to understand the Jewish roots of Christian feasts, the many saints who have influenced the world throughout the centuries, and what world events and circumstances have caused the papacy to adjust the modern calendar—this will be an interesting read for you as well.

The Feasts is an excellent reference to have on hand and to serve as a refresher to better prepare for the feasts and in particular the major liturgical seasons, and would be a helpful resource for catechists and liturgical ministers.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ever wondered why Catholics follow a liturgical calendar? And what’s with all those feasts and fasts and saints?

Cardinal Wuerl and Mike Aquilina give a good theological overview of the liturgical year. We get the why with references to Church documents and Scripture. It is not in chronological order though that doesn’t detract in any way.

A good quick read that covers why without it becoming a theological treatise. Short chapters, solid references, and clear explanations make this an easy read.

A definite recommend

[Csimplot Simplot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book!!!