The Liturgical Year Unlike pagan religions which see time as an endless cycle, Christians see time as being linear; it has a beginning and will have an end. Within Christianity's linear, "big picture" sense of time, though, the passing of hours is experienced as cycles of meditations on holy things. Think of a spiral -- of a circle of time moving ever forward toward His Coming -- and you will have a sense of "Catholic time." The Catholic year (the "liturgical year") is made special by cycles of celebrations commemorating the lives of Jesus and His mother, the angels, and...