The Church Calendar: Just a Question of Thirteen Days?

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).