The Orthodox Church Calendar (p. 1)
One of the obvious factors that set Orthodox Christianity apart is the church calendar-the cycle of feasts and fasts that gives shape and structure to the life of the Church. The true significance of the calendar is something that can only be fully appreciated through actual participation in the liturgical and social life of a parish; however, we can give you a glimpse of the outlines here.
There are many aspects of the Christian life, from penitence to rejoicing; they cannot all be experienced at once, and none should exclude the others. The church year gives believers an opportunity to experience them all in proper measure. The primary components of the calendar are as follows:
- Pascha, the Feast of Feasts, the Resurrection of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (known in the West as Easter). The date of Pascha changes every year (falling in April or early May), and the dates of several other feasts (called "movable feasts") are linked to this date.
- The Twelve Great Feasts, each commemorating an event in the life of the Lord or of His Mother (which are also important events in our salvation). Some of these are "movable" (linked to Pascha) and others are "fixed," occurring on the same calendar date each year.
- Lesser feasts commemorating the saints of the Church. Most of these are fixed dates.
- Days and seasons of fasting, most of them linked to one of the feasts.
Because of these two discrepancies in dating, Orthodox Pascha falls most often one week after Western Easter, but sometimes it falls four or five weeks after, and sometimes on the same day.
The Date of Pascha
One of the first questions asked by many visitors to the Orthodox Church is, "Why do you celebrate Easter on a different day from Western Christians?"
The full answer to this is complex and would require quite a bit of historical background, some of which you can read about here. Briefly, both the Eastern and Western churches calculate the date of Easter based on the first full moon after the vernal equinox. However, the West uses the date of the vernal equinox according to the Gregorian calendar (March 21), while the Orthodox Church uses the date according to the Julian calendar (April 3). (This is true for all Orthodox churches, even those that use the Gregorian calendar for everything else.)
The full answer to this is complex and would require quite a bit of historical background, some of which you can read about here. Briefly, both the Eastern and Western churches calculate the date of Easter based on the first full moon after the vernal equinox. However, the West uses the date of the vernal equinox according to the Gregorian calendar (March 21), while the Orthodox Church uses the date according to the Julian calendar (April 3). (This is true for all Orthodox churches, even those that use the Gregorian calendar for everything else.)
In addition, the Orthodox Church requires that Pascha fall after the Jewish Passover, as Jesus' Resurrection came after the Passover. This is done in order to preserve the significance of Pascha as the fulfillment of the "type" of the Passover. The Passover of the Israelites from Egypt through the Red Sea and eventually into Canaan represents the passage of the Christian from sin through baptism into the Kingdom of heaven. As the blood of the Passover lamb painted on the Hebrews' doorposts in the shape of a cross protected them from the angel of death, so the blood of Christ shed on the Cross preserves us from eternal death.
The Celebration of Pascha
The more interesting question really is, "Why do you make such a big deal about
Pascha?" In many Protestant churches, the only things that set Easter apart
from the other Sundays of the year are a larger attendance at service,
a special drama production, lots of
fancy new clothes, and maybe an Easter egg hunt after coffee hour. And
it's all over. Others take the feast more seriously and attempt to
honor its true meaning, perhaps observing Good Friday. But in the
Orthodox Church, we take months to get ready for Pascha, our
observances increasing in intensity as the day gets closer. On
Pascha itself we go wild with joy, and we keep on celebrating until
Ascension, forty days later. Why?
For the Orthodox Christian, the central fact of our faith is neither Christ's Birth nor His Crucifixion, but His Resurrection. The cradle and the cross are nothing without the empty tomb. As St. Paul wrote, "If Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins!" (1 Corinthians 15:17). It is in His Resurrection that Christ has freed our fallen humanity from the curse of death. Through His Resurrection we are granted eternal life. What could be greater cause for rejoicing than that?
But the wisdom of the Church tells us that we cannot rejoice as the occasion demands unless we first have mourned for our sins. As Christ said of the woman who washed His feet with her tears, "Therefore I say to you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little" (Luke 7:47). The truth is that we all have sinned and been forgiven much, but we are prone to forget this fact. For this reason we have Great Lent to remind us of our sinfulness and of how much we need God's forgiveness.
Great Lent, the primary element of our preparation for Pascha, consists of a forty-day period of fasting from certain foods and from worldly entertainments, accompanied by special services and an increased emphasis on prayer and almsgiving. As Lent is a spiritually intense time, the Church helps us to prepare ourselves for this also, through an emphasis on themes of repentance in the five Sundays leading up to Great Lent (often referred to as the Triodion).
Great Lent ends with Lazarus Saturday, when we commemorate Christ's raising of Lazarus from the dead-the foretaste and promise of His own Resurrection. Then comes Palm Sunday, when we shout Hosanna with the children as the King enters Jerusalem. These two days of joy allow us to catch our breath and prepare for the intense effort of Holy Week, the week leading up to Pascha.
Now the focus shifts from mourning for our own sins to accompanying Our Lord through the final days of His life on earth. Especially from Holy Thursday on, it seems as if we never leave the church as we commemorate each of the events of Christ's Passion with prayer and intensified fasting. People take time off from work and school as much as possible, and St. Lawrence Academy classes are dismissed. Ordinary time and activities fade into unreality as we celebrate the Lord's Supper with His disciples, watch with Him in Gethsemane, follow Him through His trials before the Sanhedrin, Pilate, and Herod, see Him mocked and scourged and hung upon the Cross, take His body (a near-life-size icon) down from the Cross and lay it on a flower-strewn bier, and watch over it as He descends into Hades to free those held captive to death.