To Be An Anglican Christian Lesson 3 Anglican

To Be An Anglican Christian Lesson 3: Anglican Traditions

What we are going to learn today: 1. What is Anglican tradition 2. Church Year

What is Anglican tradition • Tradition covers everything from teachings, practices, and worship. Over the course of 2000 years, lots of good, prayerful, and smart people have thought, taught, and prayed about Jesus’ teachings. So there is a lot written down, taught, and carried down generation to generation. • Do you know the difference(s) between carrying on traditions and being traditionalist? Do you see any cons of being traditionalist?

Church Year (1) • Church Year is one of the main traditions guiding our spirituality. • Christians live by the secular calendar (what types of calendar you have been living by; how is your life related to and guided them) just as everyone else does. Anglicans also live by another year, another calendar, known as the Church year. • The liturgical cycle divides a calendar year into a series of seasons. Just as each season in the world of nature has a distinct quality, each season in the Church liturgical cycle has a distinct mood and spiritual nuance.

Church Year (2) • The Church calendar is not of much use for keeping track of time, except in terms of Church Sundays and Holy Days. But it is an invaluable guide and aid to the constant repetition and clarification of the Christian story. • It charts our path past all of the mileposts of the Christian story. In a reasonably orderly manner, the Church year refreshes our memory of Christ’s coming, of His manifestation to the Gentiles (the non-Jewish world), of His temptation, His Passion, His Crucifixion and Resurrection and Ascension, of the Baptism of the Church by the Holy Spirit. Then, during the Ordinary Time, it provides an opportunity for study and consideration of the moral teachings of the Bible and the practical duties of the Christian life.

Church Year (3) • By systematically remembering and reexperiencing the key aspects of the life and ministry of Jesus, we are refreshed, deepened and reconfirmed in our own faith and depth of understanding. And because we are not the same person with the same understandings from year to year, our experience of the Church Seasons is similarly different and deeper each year.

Church Year (4) • Without this arrangement of the Church year, worship can become a disorderly and confused hodge-podge. • With it, we review and relive, year by year, the facts and meaning of God’s gift to us of His Blessed Son, that we might know the Truth and be set free forever.

The Calendar

Seasons, dates, meaning and color Seasons Time Jesus Christ we Color for the season 1 Advent From 4 Sundays before Christmas Day to Christmas Eve was coming to save us wait Purple 2 Christmas Twelve days from December 25 to Jan 5 was born to dwell among us welcome white 3 Epiphany (January 6 th) to before Ash Wednesday, normally 5 to 7 weeks Manifested the glory and the love of God witness green 4 Lent Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday (the day before Easter Sunday), total is 46 days (40 days + 6 Sundays) Suffered, was nailed and was buried follow Purple 5 Easter Sunday + 48 days (49 days); Easter Sunday is the Sunday after the first full moon after Vernal Equinox Rose from the dead, appeared to many people and ascended into heaven trust white 6 Pentecost (Ordinary Time) Pentecost Sunday to the day before the first Sunday of Advent Sent the Holy Spirit to lead us serve green

The Liturgical Colors • The colors of the hangings on an Anglican church’s altar table and of the stoles and Communion vestments worn by the clergy are appropriate to the season of the church year. Each color is symbolic: o White, for purity and joy, is used during the great festivals of Christmas and Easter. o Red, signifying blood and fire, is used on Pentecost and martyrs’ days. o Purple or violet, symbolizing penitence and mourning, is the color of Advent and Lent. o Green is for life, hope, and peace; it is used for seasons of Epiphany and Pentecost. o Black represents great sorrow and is used on Good Friday.

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