Matariki and the Calendar of Life
A southern hemisphere calendar is distinct from a northern hemisphere calendar.
One of the challenges of liturgical theology is to consider the role of local calendars while maintaining unity with the calendar of the Universal Church, because as Catholics we belong to a Church larger than New Zealand, with deeper and longer traditions than our history, that take us back to the sources of the Judeo-Christian religion.
How do we bring the treasure of this tradition to the contemporary social experience of today’s Aotearoa New Zealand?
http://a simple explanation of Matariki
Calendars
Calendars are a dynamic relationship between people and their natural environment.
Calendars express where people are located, how they interact and what is important to their shared existence.
Public Holidays, Bank Holidays and Holy Days are all part of the same construct of meaning. They give flow to the cultural, commercial and religious year.
They are identifiable markers on the journey through the year.
When they occur in the calendar of a nation, like ours, they are “used” by people in a variety of ways. These days are marked by debate because their value, purpose and necessity do not enjoy universal agreement. Most often they are commercialised where shopping is the dominant form of entertainment.
Personal calendars include birthdays, wedding anniversaries, ordination days and Name Day, as well as baptism and First Communion day, the day of death and funeral. All are important to the personal and familial calendar, but they are not shared by all. These days are marked with prayer, gathering, song and food. They are markers of life, progress and change. Some are celebrated with laughter and others with tears.
Matariki
Where does Matariki fit in the Christian Tradition?
Traditionally, we remember our dead at every Mass when we pray the intentions in the Eucharistic Prayer. We pray for our beloved dead especially during the month of November, on the feasts of All Saints and All Souls, which are now degraded through the commercialisation of Halloween.
As Catholics, we share across the Church the traditions of the Month’s Mind and the Six Week Prayer for the dead. Though these two traditions originate in the Irish and European Churches respectively.
The Gospels speak of “seeing the star in the East” and how it leads the wise to worship at the feet of God.
The festival of Christmas was adapted from the Roman pagan feast of the “victory of the sun” or the winter solstice, and Easter is linked to the ancient near Eastern month of 15 Nissan and is a moveable, lunar festival.
Since the Council of Nicaea (325) Easter has been celebrated on the Sunday following the vernal equinox (between March 22 and April 25).
The feast of the Resurrection celebrated on Easter Sunday morning, is the festival of new light, the new day and the rising of the Son. It comes after waiting through the night for the new dawn, the new light of Christ.
When it is celebrated on Saturday night it celebrates taking the people of God from light into darkness; when it is celebrated throughout the night of Saturday to Sunday or before dawn on Easter Sunday morning it celebrates leading the People of God from darkness into light.
The gift of the new day of Easter must be expressed continually in personal prayer and the community liturgy of the Church. It is celebrated every time we baptise, attend Mass and celebrate a sacrament and proclaim the Gospel through words and actions.
Liturgical Calendars
Latin Rite Catholics and Western Protestants follow the Gregorian Calendar and celebrate Easter on a different day to the Oriental, Eastern Rite Churches that follow the Julian Calendar. The date of Easter determines other festivals, like Pentecost and the Ash Wednesday.
Even earlier, the Hebrew Passover represents the fusion of two separate festivals that are also related to the seasons: the spring sacrifice of nomadic shepherds call Passover and the Canaanite agricultural festival of the Unleavened Bread.
Over time these festivals merged and blended their traditions.
Passover became a remembering of Israel’s redemption from slavery using unleavened bread, bitter herbs and roasted lamb. It provided the context for the Last Supper, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.
By the second century, the Church began to celebrate a Christian Passover (Pascha) that borrowed and modulated Hebrew traditions and practices.
Consequently, the celebration changed in emphasis to the unitive feast of the Cross and the Resurrection of Christ and Jesus was identified as the Paschal Lamb, the Messiah or Christus. It celebrates the Church waiting for redemption through deliverance from sin and death.
This primitive Pascha was focused on the totality of the redemption in Christ, not exclusively on the Resurrection.
Will Matariki be the opportunity to strengthen these traditions, or will it compromise or confuse them?
Will we adopt it as a liturgical feast day in the National Liturgical Calendar as we have with ANZAC Day that takes precedence over other feasts of the Church?
A simple explanation of Matariki
Liturgical Rites
The feedback coming from the Synod Process is identifying that so many Catholics do not know their own liturgical tradition and don’t understand how the liturgy functions. People appear to use the term “liturgy” without actually understanding what it is.
Too many equate liturgy to ritual and ritual to entertainment and entertainment as the basis of the recruitment and retention of attendees. Where “liturgy” is not “look and book; excite and attract” it has failed in its objective.
This very shallow understanding of liturgy is not helped when either where people follow a rigid ritualism and offer a mechanistic or utilitarian understanding of liturgy as: “I say my prayers and God gives me a reward”.
Equally, a full understanding of liturgical prayer does not mean that the local parish or school can “do their own thing” as if they did not belong to the Body Catholic, in union with their bishop.
This is a shame after more than 100 years of Catholic Education, renewal experiences like Renew, diocesan and parish programmes, Catholic newspapers and higher education that we find ourselves, telling ourselves, that we find worship a negative, exclusionary experience and that we don’t know what believe!
Why has no one been listening?
What has stopped us from learning, appreciating and valuing our traditions of liturgical practice, theological learning, spirituality and spiritual teachers?
If this is the actual context of our Church then we lack the tools to understand Matariki and its place in the liturgical calendar and the liturgical life of the Church.
Where we see worship reported as tiring, uninviting and exclusory we have a serious issue.
Navigating this change requires theological leadership because we have to avoid the extremes of neo-paganism and fundamentalist traditionalism. For this, we need theological leadership.
In the end: Liturgical rites and their celebration reflect the people who celebrate them.
Joe Grayland
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