Holy Days

Last week we saw that we should be present at the Eucharist every Sunday and keep it as a day of worship in honour of God and of Our Risen Lord.  But, of course, the Christian religion is not a matter of one day in the week but of every day.  As George Hebert’s famous hymn reminds us:

 “Seven whole days, not one in seven,
 I will praise thee…” (1)

As the Catechism puts it, our duty to God is to “…serve him truly all the days of my life”. (2) So today we’re going to think of some of the Festivals or Holy Days of the Church’s Year.  In olden times in England, on the great holy days, people had the day off, and there is still an echo of this in our word holiday, which is the same word as holy day, because the holy days were then holidays.