St Barnabas Northolt Park

The Fairway, Northolt, Middlesex, UB5 4SX

Times and Season in the Church Year

 

As Christians we believe that God is beyond all time and his love is everlasting. But God also comes into human history; most noticeably as Jesus came to a particular place and a particular time. Therefore time matters to us.

Because time matters, each day is holy to God and a gift from God. Each day we can remember with thankfulness God’s invitation to us to have life.

But there is so much richness here that Christians, almost from the beginning, have paid particular attention to the different aspects of what we believe at different times of the year. This cyclical remembering allows us to enter more fully into each aspect of what we believe– to really live it and let it live in us.

 

Each and every Sunday we gather to remember and to celebrate the anniversary of Jesus’ resurrection on the first Easter Sunday.  Then through the year the Church marks special seasons and festivals.

As the special seasons of the year revolve we learn more about who God is through our retelling the story of God and his actions in human history but we also engage with the story for today. In the liturgical year therefore, we celebrate both God’s actions in the past – our historical story of faith - and God’s actions now in our own time – so our shared history becomes our own lived story today. 

 

This living and remembering has deep roots in the Jewish tradition and Jesus himself participated in festivals through which the Jewish people did, and continue to, remember God’s faithfulness and their calling to be His people.

The different seasons of the Christian Church year particularly focus on the life of Jesus. They provide a way for us to remember and to reflect on Christ’s coming, his life and his willingness to go to the cross for us, his resurrection, his ascension and his sending of the Holy Spirit.

 

So, at St Barnabas we join with other Christians around the world to mark the special seasons and festivals of the Church, including:

 

Advent, Christmas and Epiphany which mark  Christ’s first coming to us as he was born a baby and his second coming when he will come again as King and Judge.

 

Lent, Holy Week and Easter which mark Christ’s willingness to lay down his life for us and his rising to new life, offering us to the hope of life eternal.

 

Pentecost when we celebrate the sending of the Holy Spirit of God to empower and to equip Gods people to know him and to live for him.

 

The focus for each season is picked up in the prayers we use, our Bible readings, the songs and hymns we sing and the predominant colours used in Church.

  • Join us for our regular Sunday service
  • 10am lively mass with music

020 8423 3775
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