Adapted
from an article entitled "Le Calendrier Ecclesiastique" by J. Besse,
which appeared in Foi transmise et sainte tradition, #78, published by
Monastère de l'archange Michel in Lavardac, France, which has kindly given
permission for this use. As the adaptation is extensive, responsibility for the
article as printed rests upon the translator/editor. The historical information
regarding conciliar pronouncements concerning the calendar rests entirely upon
the original article. Previously printed in Living Orthodoxy, No. 90
[Vol. XV, No. 6, November- December 1993]. – Fr. Gregory Williams [+2016].
Typos corrected.
Khomiakoff called
the insertion of the filioque clause into the Creed a "sin against
love." Even though it has not the same theological import, the
introduction of the Papal Gregorian Calendar into the Orthodox Church in 1924
by a minority party within Orthodoxy may likewise be called a sin against love,
concord and holy Tradition. The misleading and rather absurd attempt to mask
the truth concerning this calendar by calling it a "Revised Julian
Calendar" (the two coincide until the year 2800!) does nothing to
alleviate the transgression.
As if they had an
intuition of this unfortunate innovation, destined to destroy the
jurisdictional and liturgical unity of the Church, the four patriarchs
assembled at the Council of Constantinople of 1848 alerted the faithful people
by a solemn encyclical: "Those who accept modernism accuse the Orthodox
Faith which was preached to us of having been mutilated. But it is whole and
already sealed, accepting neither addition nor retraction, nor any variation
whatever. He who dares to think, to counsel or to do such a thing has already
renounced faith in Christ. He has already placed himself under the eternal
anathema, for having blasphemed against the Holy Spirit, Who is alleged not to
have spoken appropriately in the Scriptures and through the Ecumenical Councils.
It is not we, brethren and children well-beloved in Christ, who pronounce this
terrible anathema, but Our Lord Who has first pronounced it..."
The Orthodox
liturgical calendar is constructed of two independent yet interrelated
components. To tamper with either is to throw the entire into disharmony. The Paschalion
determines the time of the celebration of Pascha (not "Easter,"
concerning which more will be said later) and all the feasts which depend upon
it: the Sundays of the Paschal Cycle, Ascension, Pentecost, and several others
whose calendar date varies from year to year. The Menologion, the
sanctoral calendar, is of fixed date. Upon it depend the celebration of Our
Lord's Nativity ("Christmas"), Theophany (Epiphany) and nearly all
the feasts of the saints. The relationship of the Paschalion and the Menologion
(the calendar of fixed feasts) was established during the first ten centuries
on the basis of the Julian Calendar, which was thus sanctified and thus is
separated only with great difficulty from the Orthodox liturgical rhythm.
Certainly, the
adoption of the "reformed" (one might more accurately say deformed)
calendar, all but identical to the Gregorian calendar, widespread in the Roman
Catholic West since the 16th century, does not touch directly upon the dogma of
the Church (though it is not without dogmatic significance, concerning which
more later). Nevertheless, it seriously harmed the spirit and discipline of the
Church in numerous ways:
(1) Without reason,
it violated unanimous resolutions to the contrary taken by Orthodoxy, from as
early as 1583, to as recently as 1924.
(2) It reduced to
nothing, or nearly so, the Apostles' Fast. (In some years, when Pascha is very
late, this fast, according to the Church's reckoning, is caused by this foolish
"reform" to end before it begins. No wonder some call it the "ignored
fast"!)
(3) It introduced a
regrettable distortion between the Paschal and sanctoral cycles.
(4) It destroyed
the unity of festal celebrations throughout Orthodoxy.
(5) It gave pretext
for all manner of schisms.
(6) Above all, it
was clearly presented by its principal promoter, the false ecumenical patriarch
Meletios IV Metaxakis, an adventurer and notorious Freemason, whose avowed
model was the Anglican (Episcopal) Church, as a decisive step toward union with
the heterodox. It was in the name of a worldly and exterior love for the
heterodox (rather than a godly desire to aid them along the path of salvation)
that this blow was struck against love amongst the Orthodox people. One can
easily recognize therein, even by the testimony of Meletios himself, the
progress of ecumenism, anonymous and remote-controlled, never hesitating to
sacrifice some part or other of the Orthodox heritage in the interests of a
super-Church, of which the chief cornerstone is no longer the Son of God, but
rather Man, divinized by his own genius, his pride, and his technological
audacity.
There is no
possibility of comprehending or appreciating the interior life of the Orthodox
Church upon the basis of the rationalist criteria which prevail throughout most
of denominational Christianity; still less so, on the basis of the radically
emotional criteria which infuse the revivalist/ pentecostal groups. For
Orthodoxy, any radical distinction between dogma, the fundamental doctrinal
understanding of the Church, and its daily expression in the life of the
Church, can only be artificial. Morality, liturgy, and personal piety are all
flowers of the same dogmatic plant. They live in it, and from it adopt an
eternal and sanctifying rhythm. By altering but one element of the whole, even
one called "minor," but in fact received by the Church and thus
sanctified, one in fact alters the Tradition altogether, in its entirety. Under
a rationalist, and often masonic, influence, the modernists have substituted a
moralist idealism for the divine-human character of the Church, the Body of
Christ. Furthermore, it is in the name of humanitarian idealism, a complete
stranger to the realism of the Church, that ecumenism pretends to justify
itself.
So far as the
question of astronomical exactness is concerned, the Gregorian calendar is at
least as much in error as the Julian. Shocking as this statement may sound to
the average "modern" mind, a brief consideration of the various
elements (most particularly the solar and lunar cycles) to which a calendar
should respond makes its accuracy apparent. Even more than the Julian, the
Gregorian calendar hopelessly ruptures the harmony between the traditional
concept of time (as we see it in the Holy Scriptures) and the Church Calendar.
[1]
Several great
Russian astronomers and theologians of the 19th and 20th centuries have clearly
shown the advantages kept, despite its imperfections from an astronomical
perspective, by the Julian calendar. Notably, these demonstrations were the
result of Professors [Vasily] Bolotov, [Alexey] Georgievsky, and [Nikolai]
Glubokovsky who, before 1917, caused numerous attempts to introduce the
"new style" which arose in the scientific and civil communities of
Russia to run aground.
Professor
Glubokovsky (†1937) has shown that the author of the calendar reform adopted by
Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, Aloysius Lilio Ghiralda, believing that the earth
was at the center of the solar system, was compelled to artificially conform
the Gregorian year to the actual tropical course of the sun (by which the
solstices and equinoxes are defined), by an intermittent and non-periodic
adjustment (the leap year). By contrast, the Julian calendar, which reflects
the genius of Sosigenes, serves better the influence of the heliocentrism
taught by Aristarchus of Samos, relying upon the periodic rotation of the earth
around the sun... a cycle much more stable and independent.
In 1948, Professor
Georgievsky [†1984], of the theological academy of Moscow, spoke to a
pan-Orthodox conference conducted on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of
the autocephaly of the Russian Orthodox Church: "In contrast with the new
Gregorian Calendar, and the so-called ‘Corrected Julian Calendar’, the
calculation of the ancient Julian Calendar is very simple. It has an enormous
scientific importance for astronomy, history, and the Paschal Canon. The
simplicity, viability and convenience of the Julian Calendar alone do not
explain the fact that the days repeat their cycle exactly every 28 years, the
new and full moon their cycle every 19 years, and the Paschal Canon repeats its
cycle exactly every 532 years." (Acts t. I, р. 399.)
At the same
conference, Metropolitan Anthony (Vadkovsky) declared: "The Julian
Calendar... constitutes on all occasions the healthy anchor which holds the
Orthodox back from being definitively swallowed up by the heterodox world. It
is like a standard under which the children of Orthodoxy may gather to form a
single body. The authorization for certain children of the Church to separate
from us in church practice, walking in step with the heterodox, despite all its
apparent utility and even without the slightest difference of dogma, could in
the future have regrettable and even fatal consequences for the well-being of
the Church. It could well serve as a weapon in the hands of the enemies of the
Church." (Acts t. I, pp. 399-400). This was also the opinion of the
representative of the Bulgarian Church (which seems to have a short memory!):
"In the practice of the Orthodox Church, one can no more admit a mixed
calendar -- that is, that one establish the fixed-date feasts following the
Gregorian style, with Pascha and the moveable feasts determined after the
fashion of the Julian Calendar." (p. 423)
Finally, Professor
Bolotov [†1900] wrote in 1899 to the Russian Astronomical Society: "I
remain, as in the past, a convinced partisan of the Julian Calendar. Its great
simplicity constitutes its scientific advantage, in contrast to all the
so-called corrected calendars. I think that the cultural mission of Russia
consists, in this question, in that she must maintain for yet several centuries
the Julian Calendar so as to make it easier for the people of the West to
abandon the Gregorian reform, of which no one has need, and to return to the
ancient undeformed style."
Furthermore, it is
a bit of a paradox to see some Orthodox tempted by the Gregorian Calendar just
at the moment when Rome contemplates its abandonment altogether in favor of a
perpetual calendar fixed and defined by the United Nations, which suppresses both
the weekly cycle (and thus the Resurrection celebration of each Sunday) and the
variable Paschal cycle. For an atheist society, an atheist calendar...
The "new
calendar" was a sin against love amongst the Orthodox from its very
beginnings. It was by surprise that Patriarch Meletios IV Metaxakis, assisted
more or less against his will by his old teacher the Archbishop of Athens
Chrysostom I Papadopoulos, brought about the adoption of this reformed calendar
by several bishops hastily assembled at Constantinople in 1923. Few of these
were in any sense representative of those whom they "represented." It
is noteworthy that this initiative was little to the taste of the great
majority of the autocephalous churches. Firmly and with discernment opposed by
Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) of Kiev, already in exile, it encountered a
very limited success. With few exceptions, it was then in fact adopted only by those
patriarchates which counted only a handful of faithful, in which Church life
had become very decadent. Meletios IV had been patriarch of Alexandria before
becoming ecumenical patriarch. He retained a powerful influence on that church,
which remained very small in number. It was the same with respect to Antioch.
The first
significant exception was Greece. But, as we have seen, Meletios had a great
influence on its chief bishop. The second was Romania, where the higher clergy
were often very liberal and rallied themselves to the position of
Constantinople.
Informed by
Metropolitan Anthony of the perils to which the introduction of the "new
calendar" would inevitably lead (a risk of division which the Soviet power
encouraged), the holy Patriarch St. Tikhon of Russia revoked his initial
inclination to adopt the new style, and the Church of Georgia followed suit.
The Churches of Jerusalem, Sinai, Serbia and Bulgaria, as well as the
monasteries of Mt. Athos (with the exception of Vatopedi) categorically refused
the new style. It was only much later, under the laicizing and ecumenist spirit
which arose there, that certain Western parishes of the emigration were
authorized to accept it. Under pressure from the Communist state, the Church of
Bulgaria finally accepted it after 1970; however, as was the case with Greece
and Romania in 1924, this initiative immediately provoked a schism.
It is necessary to
emphasize (for it would certainly appear otherwise from a Western perspective)
that the vast majority of Orthodox Christians throughout the world keep still
to the traditional calendar of the Church: Russia, the Ukraine, Georgia, Serbia,
Jerusalem, Sinai, Athos, and a major portion of Russians in exile, not to speak
of the millions of Greek and Roumanian old-calendrists, the schism of which,
while regrettable, is entirely comprehensible.
The partisans of
the "new calendar" have carefully concealed the repeated
condemnations of the Gregorian calendar by Church authorities over more than
three centuries. These severe warnings have concerned not only the Paschal
cycle, but just as much the menology, the sanctoral calendar, that of the
feasts of fixed date. It is as if they were concerned to condemn in advance the
partial reform of 1923. Let us recall only the most clearly stated positions:
• The Council of
Constantinople of 1583, presided over by the patriarchs of Constantinople,
Alexandria and Jerusalem, convened after the calendar reform instituted by
Gregory XIII, urged the Orthodox, under pain of anathema, "not to accept
the new Paschalion, nor the innovative sanctoral calendar."
• This same
decision was reiterated by councils at Constantinople in 1587 and 1593, this
latter being presided over by the patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria,
Antioch, Jerusalem, and by a representative of the Church of Russia.
• In the nineteenth
and at the beginning of the twentieth century, one after another the various
local Orthodox Churches condemned again the use of the Gregorian calendar for
the fixed feasts- at Constantinople in 1827, 1895, 1902 and 1904; Jerusalem, Russia
and Romania in 1903; Greece in 1919.
Only after long
reluctance did the Protestant world begin to accept the papal calendar. Great
Britain continued to use the ancient Church Calendar for all affairs, religious
and civil, until the 18th century... and then only changed its course over
considerable protest from the religious community. Even today, certain Swiss
valleys continue to keep the ancient Julian Calendar, even for their civil
affairs. The Uniate portions of the Roman Catholic Church also resisted the
change of calendar, which provoked a temporary schism amongst the Melchites
when Rome imposed it upon them in the 19th century. Most of the Roman Catholic
Ukrainians and Russians even now keep the true Calendar, not to speak of the
Old Believers, the Copts and the Jacobite Syrians.
Perhaps few
Americans (certainly high school history books don't make much of a point of
it!) are aware that the Church Calendar was the only calendar in use on
this continent until the time of the American Revolution. It persisted long
after, indeed, in one form or another in some of the more remote regions of the
country. In our own mountainous region, there are still to found older folk who
remember their parents or grandparents keeping "Old Christmas." This
has sometimes been explained away as an alternative name (no matter how absurd)
for Theophany (Epiphany, sometimes called "Little Christmas"), but
careful inquiries have made it clear that this is not the case... There was a
specific, even if fragmentary, awareness that some chicanery had been worked
upon the calendar, and that the "real" Christmas didn't come until
thirteen days after that marked on the official calendars.
On a purely
practical level, the Julian Calendar certainly has some incidental, but far
from insignificant, advantages, particularly in the West. The celebration of
those few feasts widely observed (notably Christmas, became "X-mas")
has become at best sentimental, and at worst, outright pagan. Its follow-up
with the chaos of New Year's Eve, and the dreadfully materialistic hype of the
weeks of compulsive shopping which precede it, make it an especially good time
to avoid. For any serious Christian, it can come only as a great relief to
sidestep all that and wait for the arrival, in the stillness which follows, of
the traditional day for the celebration of the Nativity of Christ, on that day
which "the world" calls 7 January, but the Church knows to be 25
December. In this, the faithful can clearly perceive one dimension of the
difference between "to be of this world" and "to live
in the world." Do not even the Jews and the Muslims have their own
peculiar religious calendar? Why should we be reticent about ours?
There is no small
irony in the current situation in the West. While the Protestant world loudly
proclaims its separation from, if not outright hatred of, Rome, it continues to
accept the dictates of Rome concerning the very calendar by which it regulates
its life. [There are, to be sure, some radical sects, scarcely Christian in
character or doctrine at all, which reject any liturgical dimension to time
whatever, and therefore even any celebration of the Birth or Resurrection of
Our Lord. With such extremes we are not concerned here.]
No matter how
remotely, it was and is the Pope upon his throne in Rome who decreed that the
ancient Church Calendar should be abandoned in favor of keeping the equinoxes
and solstices in their "proper place" in the calendar. Who celebrates
the equinoxes? Certainly, they have never been celebrated by the Church... but
they are very important in any pagan calendar.
It was and is the
Pope whose determination of the date of Pascha is substituted for the decrees
of the Council of Nicea, with preposterous results. Until the time of Nicea,
there was some variation in various parts of the Church concerning the choice
of date for the annual celebration of the Resurrection of Our Lord. In some
places, it was treated as a fixed date (following the Hebrew calendar, of
course); in others, it was kept in relationship to the Jewish feast of
Passover, itself a variable feast. The hundreds of bishops assembled at Nicea,
guided by the Holy Spirit, decided that it was harmful to the life of the
Church for such a pivotal celebration to be kept on different days in different
places, and so resolved upon a formula for determining a single date for the
entire Church, to be variable from year to year, based upon the Biblical
formula for the determination of Passover, and always falling after
Passover.
This same Council
of Nicea was called in the first instance to address a variation in teaching
concerning the single most significant dogma of the Christian Faith, something
we today (unless we are of the liberal modernist variety) take for granted: Who
is Jesus? There had arisen a persuasive preacher, Arius, who was teaching that
He was the greatest of all God's creations... but not God Himself, not the Son
of God. Arius was able to draw multitudes (even, in some cases, entire
countries) into his pernicious teaching – a notion much more comfortable for
sinful man than the Truth. Even today, of course, this dreadful blasphemy rears
its head (though not with any genuine historical continuity) in such sects as
the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Unitarians.
There is almost
certainly a relationship between these two actions of the Fathers of the
Council. On the one hand, they condemned the heresy of Arius and proclaimed the
Truth in what we now call the Nicene Creed, the Symbol of Faith: "I
believe in One God, the Father Almighty...; And in One Lord Jesus Christ, the
Son of God..." On the other, addressing one of the practical ways in which
we affirm and celebrate this Truth, they fixed the celebration of the
Resurrection of Christ, Pascha. ["Easter" is an undesirable name,
derived from a pagan festival in honor of Oestre, the Teutonic equivalent of
the Egyptian fertility goddess Osiris, whence the word "estrus." This
same Osiris, with her partner Isis, is much beloved of the Freemasons and other
Gnostic/ecumenist cults. Anyone who doubts the connection is invited to journey
to San Francisco and pay a visit to the facade of the Masonic Temple Al-Islam
(!!), there to witness a remarkable display of religious emblems carved in
stone, amongst which are the much-suffering Cross of Christ alongside the
scimitar of Islam... the whole overshadowed by a giant bas-relief of Isis and
Osiris. Calendar, names of feasts, theology... the whole forms one continuous
fabric.]
How did they fix
this celebration? Quite specifically, it was related to the Hebrew Passover...
for "Christ is our Passover." He, the Son of God, is the sacrificial
Lamb; He is the Messiah, the One Who is the true Deliverance. In other words, the
calendar itself proclaims the Truth: "I believe... in One Lord Jesus
Christ, Son of God...."
If one wishes to
unravel this Truth, to hide it away from the conscience of the believers, how
better to begin? To attack it directly would be to provoke a rebellion. First,
"reform" the calendar so that time itself no longer tells the Truth.
Then, overlay the true Christian celebration with a wide variety of pagan
foolishness or worse (one need recall only Easter bunnies and the perversion of
the holy Bishop Nicholas, one of the Fathers of the Council of Nicea, into
"Santa Claus"). Finally, it may become possible to persuade at least
some that emotions and sentiment and social work are far more important than
such silly questions as calendars and even theology...
In the end, we come
back to where we began, for the whole tissue of Christian life forms a single
fabric. Not infrequently, someone taxes those who are casually dismissed
(perhaps even by themselves) as "Old Calendrists" with being so
foolish as to suppose that salvation could have anything to do with something
so insignificant as a mere thirteen days. Ultimately, of course it doesn't...
indeed, ultimately, it has nothing to do with time at all. But God Himself
chose to become incarnate, to be made flesh in time, for our salvation,
and therefore gave to time a significance it did not previously have. So for
us, here and now, it is indeed vital. To turn our backs on the Truth incarnate
in time, as incarnate in God made Flesh, is to deny the Incarnation and the Resurrection
itself. To unravel the seamless robe of Christ...
1. This concept is explored in greater depth in A
Scientific Investigation of the Calendar Question, by Hieromonk Cassian
(CTOS: Etna, CA, 1998), and in The Orthodox Church Calendar: In Defence of
the Julian Calendar, articles by Bishop Photios of Triaditsa and Ludmila
Perepiolkina (Holy Trinity Monastery: Jordanville, NY, 1996).
