Liturgical Celebrations in the Diocese of Arlington

Provided below are resources to help you participate more deeply in the liturgical life of the Diocese of Arlington. Our participation in the liturgy is so important because by responding to God’s call to gather together in worship we come to share more and more fully in Christ’s work of accomplishing our sanctification and giving perfect glory to God.

Indeed, God the Father sent His Son, the Incarnate Word, “to preach the Gospel to the poor, to heal the contrite of heart, to be a ‘bodily and spiritual medicine,’ the Mediator between God and man” (Second Vatican Council, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, no. 5). Christ achieved this work of redeeming humankind and giving perfect glory to God principally by His Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension. By sending His Spirit at Pentecost, Christ sent the Apostles in order to perpetuate His work by preaching and by means of sacrifice and sacraments. Therefore, since Pentecost “the Church has never failed to come together to celebrate the paschal mystery” (no. 6). Indeed, Christ Himself is present when we respond to God’s call to come together, and Christ associates us with Himself in His saving work, especially in liturgical celebrations. “Rightly, then, the liturgy is considered as an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ” in which our sanctification “is signified by signs perceptible to the senses” and “the whole public worship is performed by the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ,” and in which “we take part in a foretaste of the heavenly liturgy” (nos. 7-8).

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_{Photo Credit: Joe Cashwell (Diocese of Arlington Priesthood Ordination 2018)}