On Nov. 30, the Church begins a new Church year with the First Sunday of Advent. The Liturgical Year is made up of four special seasons, and what is called Ordinary Time. The special seasons are: 1) Advent, 2) Christmas, 3) Lent and Easter. Most of the year is Ordinary Time, which is about 33 Sundays, when we will be reading from the Gospel of Matthew. 
    
The purpose of a regular calendar is to mark time in general. The Liturgical Calendar is a meditation on the life and ministry of Jesus. The Church uses a three-year calendar, based on the three so-called Synoptic Gospels. The Synoptic Gospels are Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Mark was the first Gospel written, and Matthew and Luke had a copy of Mark in front of them as they wrote their own Gospels. It seems that they also had another document that scholars call “Q,” or Quelle (German for “Source”), that contained many quotes from Jesus that are not included in Mark. Each of them seems also to have another source of their own.
    
If you are present for the three years of Sunday readings, you will hear 89.9 percent of the Gospels, 54.0 percent of the non-Gospel New Testament readings (Acts, Epistles, Book of Revelation), which comes to 71.5 percent of the New Testament. There is also 13.5 percent of the Old Testament, not including the Psalms.