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I was amazed at the feat that Christ prepared for the blessed Church, his bride. As I entered I saw prophets, martyrs, and the just; the apostles with the priests, then Baptism and the Cross. On the altar there was placed Christ’s own Body and His Blood for the pardon of all sins,” from the qolo hymn, Maronite liturgy for the Feast of the Consecration and Renewal of the Church
By Fr. Yuhanna Azize
“I was amazed at the feat that Christ prepared for the blessed Church, his bride. As I entered I saw prophets, martyrs, and the just; the apostles with the priests, then Baptism and the Cross. On the altar there was placed Christ’s own Body and His Blood for the pardon of all sins,” from the qolo hymn, Maronite liturgy for the Feast of the Consecration and Renewal of the Church
The Maronite liturgical year is inaugurated by the Feast of the Consecration and the Renewal of
the Church. If there are two Sundays available before Zechariah Sunday, then it is observed as
two feasts. On one Sunday, the Consecration, and on the next, the Renewal of the Church. By
opening the liturgical year, this feast is in effect the New Years Day of the Church. It shows us,
also, that church is our spiritual home. The liturgical year ends with the Season of the Holy Cross, when we solemnly remember the four last things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. In that period, the Gospel readings remind us of the Lord’s prophecies of the final days, and of the tribulations and persecutions which will come. These readings always strike us with an impact, for they remind us that even if we are not alive when the end of human history comes, yet we each of us face our own deaths, and what will be true of all the world will also be true of us, in a small personal way. As the first Season of the Liturgical Year, before the Announcement of the Lord’s birth, baptism, teaching, life, death, Resurrection, and Ascension, these feasts show that the work of the sanctification of the Church and her children is the work of all the year. This feast encapsulates what all the feasts of the year mean and point to: God’s mysterious plan of salvation through Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is the diving off point, so to speak, for our engaging once more in the unfolding history of the redemption.
We can also think of this feast as being like a wedding anniversary: each year we are reminded
of the new covenant between God and humanity, signed with the blood of the Lamb. So too, each anniversary, the bride and groom are reminded of their covenant solemnized at the altar of God.
