Church Environment

Most of us don’t give much thought to either the church calendar or the physical environment of our worship space.  Our Catholic calendar ends with a Sunday, the Feast of Christ the King which we celebrate today, just as it begins on a Sunday, the First Sunday of Advent, which we celebrate next week.  Unlike the civil calendar which focuses on months and weeks, the church calendar focuses on Sundays, and the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

If you have ever seen a church calendar you’ve noticed that it is a wheel with the Sundays along the outer rim with the weeks laid out like the spokes of a wheel.  Those spokes are divided into the main groups which represent the seasons of our liturgical year.  The first grouping is Advent, Christmas, and the Epiphany.  Next is Lent, Easter, and Pentecost.  The remainder, and largest group, is Ordinary Time, which is what concludes this weekend.

Our worship space should speak with an artistic statement of what we are praying about.  It should call us to reflect.  We don’t decorate churches, we create an environment of prayer.

Easter and Christmas are huge festive seasons.  The environment has a celebratory feel.  In the secular world Easter is a Sunday.  In the church this is seven full weeks of maintaining a festive tone.  In the secular world Christmas is a day.  In the church Christmas lasts until the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus giving us three weeks of Christmas!  Many probably think the church has forgotten to take down the decorations because we were so busy.  Not so!  The calendar is precise in its timing!

There are two pensive and contemplative seasons.  This first is Advent, the four Sundays before Christmas.  The other is Lent, the 40 days before the Sacred Triduum.  During these times the environment in the church is more austere.  Even our music takes on a more contemplative mood as instruments are muted and arrangements are simplified.  During Lent our music even becomes a-cappella and the church looks the most barren of the year.

All the transitions of our worship space are done through the vision of an art and environment committee, and it takes many muscles to transition a space this size from season to season as we move around the liturgical calendar.

Church environment trumps everything else.  Weddings, funerals, and other celebrations all must adjust themselves to the environment which is present.  A wedding during Lent needs to maintain the season of austerity.  A Christmas wedding cannot change the church environment because the colors clash.

The world we live in is not static, there are seasons.  The same is true of the church environment.  To every season there is a time and purpose.

We are both concluding and beginning our calendar year of faith.  Our church space takes on a reminder that we are on a journey through all the seasons of our lives.