As we close in on the end of the calendar year, our rector posted thoughts about the liturgical calendar in our parish bulletin. We Orthodox know at some level that the calendar of festal events and saints’ days “sanctifies time” — but do we live it fully? It’s not an easy thing to prioritize the “holy appointments,” as Fr. Stephen Freeman recently characterized them, in our lives that are typically super busy with various other activities. An excerpt:

This feast, this day, this time in my life, if I will keep the appointment, I can meet God. The feasts on the calendar are not appointments with memorials, the recollection of events long past. They are invitations to present tense moments in the liturgical life of the world. In those moments there is an intersection of the present and the eternal. They are theophanies into which we may enter. The events in Christ’s ministry that are celebrated (to use one example) are of little importance if viewed in a merely historical manner. It is not enough to say and remember that Christ died. The Christian faith is that I must become a partaker of Christ’s death. Christ is Baptized, but I must be a partaker of His Baptism. This is true of all the feasts and is the reason for our liturgical celebrations. The Church is not a memorial society—it is the living presence of Christ in the world and the primary means by which we may share in His presence. There is no time like the present, for only in the present does time open its riches to us and bestow its gifts.