Sunday 4 August 2013

Liturgical Year - Determining the Sunday and Weekday Cycle

The Catholic church has got its own calendar, just as many other religions also do. This calendar is called the Liturgical Year (to be referred to as LY henceforth) and familiarising oneself with the LY would help one know and prepare the Mass, Prayers, Readings, etc. of the day.

The easiest way to know the prayers and readings of the day is to use an ORDO. The ORDO is a calendar (often found online or in a booklet form) which prescribes the Mass and prayers which is to be celebrated each day. However, if you do not have access to one, then you would need to calculate manually (which can be a rather messy task).

Basically,  the LY is broken into a cycle of 3 for the Sunday and a cycle of 2 for the weekday:

Sunday
Year A - Readings taken from the Gospel of Matthew
Year B - Readings taken from the Gospel of Mark
Year C - Readings taken from the Gospel of Luke

Weekday (Mon to Sat. Note that Sat evening uses the Sunday cycle)
Year 1
Year 2

To determine which Sunday and Weekday cycle the present year is:

For the Sunday cycle
1. Divide the present year by 3.
If the division results in a balance of 1, then that year uses Year A.
If the division results in a balance of 2, then that year uses Year B.
If the division does not produce any balance, then that year uses Year C.
For example, if the present year is 2013:
2013/3 = no balance. Thus, the year uses Year C.

For the Weekday cycle
Odd number uses Year 1
Even number uses Year 2
For example, 2013 is an odd number. So the year uses Year 1.

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