The Christian year

The Christian year is a quietly powerful piece of teaching by repetition. It tells the story of Christ across twelve months, and a worshipping community that goes through it slowly finds the year teaching them.

What are the seasons, and what colours do they use?

The table below sets out the year in order, each season tinted with its own liturgical colour — the colour of the hangings and vestments you will see in the building during that season. The seasons vary greatly in length: Holy Week lasts only days, while ordinary time after Trinity is the long stretch that runs from June through to Advent.

Why is it called “ordinary time”?

From the Latin ordinalis, meaning “counted” — the weeks are simply numbered (the “Sixth Sunday after Trinity”, and so on). It does not mean “boring” or “second-rate”. For many Christians, the long ordinary time after Trinity is when the regular work of growing in faith, in community, takes place.

Which particular Minster moments are worth coming to?

A few worth coming to at least once. The Advent Procession in late November or early December — a candlelit, choir-led service marking the start of the new church year, moving through the building station by station — is one of the most atmospheric services of the year. The Christmas Tree Festival fills the Minster with trees sponsored by well over a hundred local organisations — a shop window for community life across Beverley, and a delight for children. The Carol Services in mid-December (often two of them) are a Beverley institution. The Christingle service is for children. And Easter, above all, is worth coming to: see below.

Holy Week: the heart of the year

Many people are surprised to learn that, for Christians, the week before Easter matters even more than Christmas. Holy Week walks day by day through the last days of Jesus’s life, and the Minster keeps it with some of the most moving services of the year.

On Palm Sunday, which remembers Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem, the choir sings Stainer’s The Crucifixion in the evening in place of Evensong. On the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings there are short reflections led by the clergy, followed by Compline, the ancient night prayer of the Church, sung by the choir. On Maundy Thursday evening the Communion remembers the Last Supper, the meal Jesus shared with his friends on the night before he died, and feet are washed, as he washed his disciples’ feet. (“Maundy” comes from mandatum, the “new commandment” to love one another.)

Good Friday is the most sombre day of the year. In the morning the choir sings Mattins, almost the only time the Minster keeps that service in the year: stark, unhurried, and for many people the most powerful hour of the whole week. Straight afterwards the churches of Beverley walk together through the town in the Walk of Witness.

Then Easter Day breaks. Early in the morning the choir climbs the West Tower and sings Easter hymns from the top, while the congregation gathers below at the West End; the day goes on with the festal Easter Eucharist and a festal Evensong in the afternoon. The times are published on the Minster website each spring.

Where the Minster’s year meets the town’s

Several moments in the year draw the Minster together with the civic and wider community life of Beverley. The Civic Service for Saint John of Beverley in May brings the Minster and the town’s civic life together. Quebec Sunday, kept on the Sunday nearest 13 September, honours the Minster’s long links with the local regiment. Remembrance Sunday in November is observed with the town’s civic procession. The Walk of Witness on Good Friday morning is a quiet, slow procession with the wider Beverley churches (see Holy Week, above). And the annual Harpham Well Service, on the Sunday closest to Saint John’s feast day, is a longstanding pilgrimage to the spring at Harpham — Saint John’s reputed birthplace — where the choir sings, prayers are said, and water is drawn from the well. The Minster’s outward life reaches beyond the town, too — close to home and around the world — through its mission partners: part of how the community seeks to live the gospel, and not only to speak it.

Section 10 of 26 in the Companion