In the course of the ecclesiastical year, the Church brings before us the chief events in our Lord’s life and the most striking instances of His work of redemption. The central point of the whole is the commemoration of His death and resurrection—_i.e._ Easter—to which all other events are related, whether those which reach backward to Christmas, or those which reach onwards to the completion of His redemptive work at Whitsuntide. In addition, there is, on the one hand, Advent, as a time of preparation for our Lord’s coming, reminding us of the four or five thousand years which intervened between the Creation and that event, and, on the other, the Sundays after Pentecost, representing the period after the foundation of the Church, and devoted to the consideration of the redemption won for us, along with its doctrines and blessings. The weeks of the year form the links of the chain, each Sunday marking the character of the week which follows it. The sacred seasons, as they pass in orderly succession, give outward expression to the spirit which animates the Church, and are of the utmost importance from the point of view of her worship, since they form one of the chief elements in the instruction of mankind in the truths of Christianity. By them one easily becomes familiar with Christianity itself. Every religion has its festivals, but none has so rich and so carefully thought out a system of feasts as the Catholic Church. If we may compare it to some artistically constructed edifice, we can regard the festivals of our Lord as forming the piers which support all the rest, the lesser feasts as contributing the decorations, and the Sundays, with their attendant weeks, as the stones of which the walls are built. Naturally all this did not exist at first, but, like many other things in the Church, has grown up into its present proportions from small beginnings. We are not told that the Divine Founder of the Church appointed a single festival or left behind Him any instructions on the matter; still the germ, destined by Providence to develop afterwards into the system of festivals with which we are familiar, existed from the beginning. The subsequent rich and varied development of this system was not the work of individuals, but was due to the working of the spirit which ever rules the Universal Church, and ever renews itself within her. Love towards the Redeemer and gratitude for what He has done for us called the round of Christian festivals into being. The authorities in the Church have played the part of the gardener, pruning away superfluous shoots and branches. In view of the numerous institutions of this kind, some of which date back to remote antiquity, it was not a mere figure of speech which Tertullian made use of when, referring to the numerous heathen festivals, he addressed the Christians of his time with the words, “You have your own ‘_fasti_’” (“_Habes tuos fastos._”—_De Corona_, c. 13).