TRP2171 - The

Sanctification of Time

Week 6 Introduction to the

Liturgical Year

• Introduction to the church year • Calendar problems — complicating the

celebration of the liturgical year • Lectionary — history, current form, possible

reforms • Why do we celebrate feasts?

Week 6 Outline

• Recall the five cycles:

Day (hours of prayer, Horologion) Week (days of the week) Eight weeks (Octoechos) Fixed annual cycle of feasts (Menaion) Moveable annual cycle of feasts (Lenten Triodion, Pentecostarion)

Heortology

• Recall we contrasted:

Sanctification of Time (Dix and early liturgical historians)

vs. Sanctification of Time

(Taft, Schmemann and liturgical theologians)

Sanctification of Time

• Recall we contrasted:

Sacralisation of Time (Dix and early liturgical historians)

vs. Sanctification of Time,

or Time revealed as a proleptic experience of the whole mystery of salvation

(Taft, Schmemann and liturgical theologians)

Sanctification of Time

• Dix thesis: fourth century sees move from “pre-Nicene eschatology” to “Constantinian historicism”

• from holistic and eschatological to fragmented and historical • from one unitary proleptic experience of the whole mystery of

redemption to series of commemorations recalling successive events

• the first Christians lived in expectation of an imminent parousia

• when this doesn’t happen, disenchantment sets in, eschatology is blunted, Christianity formerly other worldly becomes part of history, and old unified Pascha, based on a sense of the immediacy of the presence of the Risen One, degenerates into an historical remembrance (and dramatic representation) of things past

Development of the Church Year as Historicism?

Division of the Original Unitive Commemorations

• division of former integral celebration into new feasts • definite historical mindset at work:

• date for Circumcision, Meeting, even Nativity itself • choice of Theophany and Pentecost as baptismal feasts

• new spirit in liturgy: e.g. St John Chrysostom at Pascha: “The day before yesterday the Lord was hanging on the cross; today He is risen”

• liturgical art moves from principally symbolic to more narrative and didactic forms

• legalisation of Christianity opens up pilgrimage routes, including to the Holy Land

• but do these support the “historicism thesis”? • or is it more complicated than that?

Evidence for Historicism

• first three centuries don’t ignore history: • history is not historicism: Biblical faith always rooted in the

historical event • history and eschatology are not mutually exclusive, but

actually inseparable (like early church expectation — transforming messianic expectation of contemporary apocalyptic Judaism — that the parousia would occur at midnight on Pascha)

• Pascha celebrated as a mystery rather than an event, but one grounded in salvation history

• some historicism already evident in these early centuries, e.g. Quartodecimans, Dionysius of Alexandia

Evidence against Historicism Thesis

• tension between: • dehistoricising Alexandrian approach: salvific events becomes

types, symbols of an interior, spiritual reality • historical Antiochene approach: focus on salvation history and

realised eschatology) approaches • tension resolved in anamnetic-eschatological / past-future worship • not historicism, but christological disputes of the 4th century that

break down this tension: • Alexandrians countering heresies with stress on divinity of the

Logos • Antiochenes emphasising historical economy of Christ’s saving

work • “…the middle fell out, the risen God-man interceding for us as

divine-human high priest now; and we are left with the two, unbridged poles of the dilemma: God and the historical Jesus” (Taft)

Evidence against Historicism Thesis

• Egeria and beyond: not necessary to have 4th-c. “revolution in religious consciousness” to explain pilgrimages, services at important Biblical sites, processions (quote from St Cyril of Jerusalem)

• appropriation of Old Testament imagery and imitation of Old Testament forms (see chart of feasts)

• feasts introduced for apologetic reasons • etc.

• historicism is “one string in a full plate of spaghetti” (Taft)

Evidence against Historicism Thesis

Division of the Original Unitive Commemorations

• no need to posit move from “pre-Nicene eschatology” to “Constantinian historicism”

• best image to illustrate this: prism that refracts white light (Pascha) into its component colours (individual feasts and celebrations)

Development of the Church Year: Conclusion

Orthodox churches following the ‘Old’ or Julian calendar: • Jerusalem • Russia • Serbia • Ukraine • Georgia • Poland

Orthodox churches following the ‘New’ or Revised Julian calendar for fixed feasts, but Julian calendar paschalion:

• Constantinople (except Mount Athos) • Alexandria • Antioch • Greece • Cyprus • Romania • Bulgaria • Albania (mixed) • Czech and Slovak (mixed) • Orthodox Church in America (except Alaska, some

in Canada)

Calendar Problems: Different Liturgical Calendars

Orthodox churches using Gregorian paschalion: • Finland • Estonia

• lack of liturgical unity among Orthodox Christians • theological, historical, pragmatic misapprehensions

• “Orthodox Christmas” • “We don’t celebrate Pascha until after Jewish Passover” • church “canonised” the Julian calendar (“church” vs “civil” calendar) • new calendar implemented without consensus in 1923

• inner unity of Typikon broken • Apostles’ Fast (starts on moveable calendar, ends on fixed calendar —

so with Revised Julian usage and Julian paschalion, it ends before it starts some years)

• Revised Julian feast of Annunciation can’t fall any later than last week of Lent (week before Holy Week), rather than possibly during Holy Week or on Pascha (Kyriopascha)

• Revised Julian feast of St George can fall before Pascha (but its propers are all paschal)

• unrevised paschalion is in violation of the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea

Why Is this a Problem?

Council of Nicaea: “Let all Christians celebrate Easter on the same day: the first Sunday after the first full moon, which falls on the same day or immediately after the vernal equinox.”

• full moon, spring equinox, Sunday = all independent of calendar

• but from 5th century AD, paschalia (tables of Paschal dates) are disseminated based on Metonic cycle of 19 years (235 full moons) — named for Meton of Athens 5th c. BC — which reconciles solar and lunar cycles

Council of Nicaea and Dating Pascha

• mean tropical year = 365.242 days • Julian calendar year = 365.25 days

• leap year every 4 years • by 1582, had fallen 10 days “behind creation”

• Gregorian calendar (1582/1752) year = 365.2425 days • leap year every 4 years, except every 100, unless

divisible by 400 • Revised Julian calendar (1923) year = 365.24222… days

• leap year every 4 years, except for years that are multiples of 100 that do not leave a remainder of 200 or 600 when divided by 900

Why Different Calendars?

Calendar DiscrepanciesGregorian Julian G - J Revised Julian RJ - G

1600 Leap Year Leap Year 101700 Not Leap Year Leap Year 11

1800 Not Leap Year Leap Year 121900 Not Leap Year Leap Year 132000 Leap Year Leap Year 13 Leap Year 02100 Not Leap Year Leap Year 14 Not Leap Year 02200 Not Leap Year Leap Year 15 Not Leap Year 0

2300 Not Leap Year Leap Year 16 Not Leap Year 02400 Leap Year Leap Year 16 Leap Year 02500 Not Leap Year Leap Year 17 Not Leap Year 02600 Not Leap Year Leap Year 18 Not Leap Year 0

2700 Not Leap Year Leap Year 19 Leap Year 12800 Leap Year Leap Year 19 Not Leap Year 0

• so what can we do? • pray! • don’t keep repeating misunderstandings • Pott: “The Problem of a Common Calendar: Do

We Need to Reform our Liturgical Calendar or Our Understanding of the Time of Salvation?”

• article begins quoting Galatians 4.10-11: “You observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid for you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.”

Calendar Reform

“As A. Schmemann said, Christianity did not transform time but the calendar, whereas it should have done the opposite. Transforming time signifies filling it with the Mystery of Christ, announcing in time not its suppression but its fulfilment through the advent of the Kingdom, accomplishing in time what Christ did and continues to do, being in time the total memory of Christ by living the kairos of Salvation. This does not consist in the first place in splitting up the liturgical year in feasts to commemorate historical events, but more importantly in reforming our conception of time and transforming our ‘religious being,’ bound to ‘religious practices,’ in the living Body of Christ in the world today…

Calendar Reform (Pott)

“It is on leaving church that the Eucharist and liturgical feasts not only continue but rather become entirely real. Indeed, it is the life of the Christian that is the only real feast, a feast which is articulated in the double Christological dimensions of the ‘Communion of Saints’ (the unity of the baptized among themselves and in Christ), which is the condition by which participation in the Lord’s Supper does not lead to a condemnation (cf. I Cor 11.30)…

Calendar Reform (Pott)

“Reforming the liturgical calendar or any other aspect of the liturgy, inasmuch as the object of the reform is really the Christian liturgy, presupposes first that we have reformed the liturgical man or, at least, that there is the strong intention to do so; or at least that we are conscious of the problem and we do not deny it. The place and time of such a reform is neither a council, nor an official ecclesiastical document, nor even a new edition of the liturgical books, but rather the particular church, the parish, the community, and the family, assembled for the celebration of the Sunday and weekly Eucharist.”

Calendar Reform (Pott)

“The Gospel Lectionary of the Byzantine Church” — David Petras

• lectionary consists of two different sections from the New Testament for every liturgical day of the church year

• focal point is Pascha • some evidence (per Mateos) there was once an Old

Testament reading as well (like in Syrian liturgy) • outside of Lent, Old Testament readings only found

during Vespers on eves of particular feasts and important saints

Lectionary

• Byzantine Gospel cycle has three separate cycles: Saturday, Sunday, and weekday

• each is complete but not independent • Saturday, Sunday: selected pericopes • weekday: lectio continua (omitting selections read

on Saturday and Sunday) • during the course of the year, almost all of the four

Gospels are read (assuming daily Divine Liturgies!)

Lectionary

• Gospel of Matthew: Saturdays and Sundays from Sunday of All Saints to “Exaltation of the Cross” mini-cycle

• Gospel of Luke: Saturdays and Sundays after Cross mini-cycle to second Saturday before Lent (Meatfare), interrupted by mini-cycles of Nativity and Theophany

• Gospel of Mark: except for first Sunday, read on all Saturdays and Sundays of Lent

• Gospel of John: read continuously during the Pentecostarion from Pascha to Pentecost, with some selection of material

• weekday readings follow this except Mark 1-8 is read during 12th to 16th weeks after Pentecost and 8-15 (i.e. repeating chapter 8) from 30th to 35th weeks

Lectionary

• History: Saturday and Sunday cycle emerged first, along with continuous reading of John during Pentecost: dated as early as 4th c. (early for liturgists, late for NT scholars)

• monastic origin? • Typikon of the Great Church (10th c.) doesn’t give weekday

readings, but they probably existed by then • Saturday and Sunday cycles have “almost equal weight” —

reflecting that in 4th c. these were still “vying for honour” (cf. St Gregory of Nyssa: “With what eyes will you, in fact, be able to look Sunday in the face after having dishonoured the Sabbath? Do you not know these two are brothers and to do injury to one is to assail the other?”)

Lectionary

• criteria for selection of Saturday and Sunday gospels?

• preference for miracle stories (signs of resurrection?), which are included at the expense of other narratives, teaching and parables

• possible reforms? • especially given Sunday-only observance • even with limited selections, repetitions (demons

into swine, forgiveness of paralytic, blind man or men at roadside, possessed boy, rich young man, and parable of king’s banquet)

Lectionary

Petras proposes: • keeping Sunday lectionary as is (“in the wisdom of

tradition”) • alternating Saturday and Sunday cycles in a period of two

years • third year could be selection from Gospels of Mark and

John that are not read on Sunday • maintaining every year the thematic Sundays (from

Publican and Pharisee to All Saints, plus Cross, Nativity, and Theophany mini-cycles)

• “such a cycle of readings can help the ultimate purpose for selecting Gospels: to proclaim the fulness of God’s word in the preaching of the Church”

Lectionary Reform

Historical events or saving mysteries? • in early church, celebration of “saving mystery

revealed in several events” (eg Theophany—“Feast of Lights” or Pascha)

• “what was being celebrated was not a past saving event but an eternally present saving mystery”

• thus feasts are “an ongoing call and response, a new life, which we call salvation, that was called into being by saving events that are past only in their historicity”

“What Is a Christian Feast?” — Taft

• Our liturgy doesn’t celebrate a mere past event. Our liturgy participates in an eternal reality. 

• Christ is actively present in Christian worship. • Jesus Christ is the foundational, essential aspect of

Christian worship. • We are essential aspects of Christian worship. • So if the Bible is the Word of God in the words of men, the

liturgy is the saving deeds of God in the actions of those men and women would live in him—we become Christ for one another. 

Liturgy Is Both Christ’s and Ours (pp4-5)

True Christian Liturgy • Just the life of Christ in us that we both live and celebrate • This life is the Holy Spirit which dwells in us • This is salvation Liturgy is a present encounter: salvation is now • The death and resurrection of Christ are past events only

in their historicity • They are eternally present in the triune God who entered

our history but is not entrapped in it True identity formation for Christians is letting Him conform us to Himself in His pattern • To suffer in Christ, to die in Christ, to live in Christ • So that I’m not living, but Christ is living in me

Liturgy Is Life in Christ (pp5-7)

• why have feasts, then? why not celebrate all-inclusive feasts of the “paschal mystery”?

• the answer is in the Scriptures and how the work… • “…the Bible presents the sequence of historical

saving events as a medium for presenting the story of an encounter with God, and employs the later cultic memorial celebrations of this encounter as a means of overcoming the separation in time and space from the actual saving event”

Why Feasts? (pp7-8)

• liturgical memorials: NOT return to the past NOT repetition in the present

• because savings events are ephapax (ἐφάπαξ), “once and for all”:

• Romans 6.10 “died — ” • Hebrews 7.27 “gave Himself up — ” • Hebrews 9.12 “entered into the holy place — ” • Hebrews 10.10 “we are sanctified through the

offering of the body of the Lord Jesus — ”

Why Feasts? (pp7-8)

• but these past “once and for all” saving events continue to be active when they are encountered anew and responded to in faith

• “the Holy Spirit came to stay” • “So these saving events created and manifested

and remain the bearers of a new and permanent quality of existence called salvation, initiating a permanent dialectic of call and response between God and us”

• ritual moment of liturgy becomes a “synthesis of past, present and future”

Why Feasts? (pp7-8)

Christ is the Age to Come (eschatos vs eschaton) In Christ, man and the world have come to be what they were meant to be (completion, pleroma) Protohistorical days before the fall have come full circle with the restoration of humanity through the resurrection of Christ Therefore age to come is not a historical event — not something from the past, and not something in the future — it’s an end in the sense of completion / wholeness. Our eternally present completeness.

The Age to Come Is Now (pp8-9)

- Every part of “sacred history” (think of significant OT places, objects, events, people) has been assumed into Christ o Think particularly of components of OT worship - And we too are called to be Christ – “so our worship is his same sacrificial existence in us” (10) - Through the liturgy we partake of Christ’s life, and so the life in Christ is created and nurtured in us as we participate in the liturgy - “For the purpose of the liturgy is to generate in our lives what the church realizes for us in its public worship” (11) o The Liturgy – public expression of the church’s relationship with God o Spiritual life – our “personal relationship with God” - The liturgy then is efficacious to enact Christ’s redeeming work in the Church – it continues to apply Christ to the here and now

Liturgy Personalised in Christ (pp9-13)

Distinction between:

• kerygma (“preaching the Good News to awaken the response of faith”) — which is preached to those who have not yet heard, and

• anamnesis (memorial of Christ’s “dynamic saving power in our lives”) which is continually proclaimed in the liturgical assembly “to recall us to our commitment to the Good News already heard and accepted in faith”

Liturgy Is Anamnesis (pp13-14)

The End Time is not in the future but now, operating through the present reality of God being with us in a way similar to Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances in the Gospel. This kind of His presence is real and experienced, but different from that before Pascha. Just like the apostles do not recognize Him at first when they see Him after the Resurrection and are unsure, but they recognize Him during the breaking of the bread, among us too his presence is only accessible through faith. The new way in which Jesus is present with us is through the Holy Spirit, and when we are, as in Matthew, “gathered in His name.” Thus, the main interest of the New Testament Church is to experience Jesus present in Church through his spirit when we are gathered there, not to keep a record of the historical events of Jesus’ life.

Emmanuel—God With Us (pp14-15)

“The Second Coming (is) not imminent, and the eschatological definitive victory won by Christ must be repeated in each one of us, until the end of time. … For this reason, Sacred history is never finished. It continues in us…” (p.16)

Life in Christ (pp16-17)