Keep the Faith: ‘Christ is Risen!’ — Orthodox Christian world celebrates Easter
Happy Easter #HappyEaster
Wait a sec. Wasn’t Easter back at the beginning of April? For Roman Catholic and Protestant Christians, yes. But your Orthodox Christian brothers and sisters celebrate Easter — or Pascha, the Greek term which is commonly used throughout the Orthodox world — tomorrow, on May 2. Why the difference? It’s complicated … but here it is, in brief.
An early Church regulation (from 325 A.D.) called for Pascha to be observed on the Sunday after the Jewish Passover — the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring (vernal) equinox. If the full moon were to fall on a Sunday, Pascha would be celebrated on the next Sunday — they thought of everything! Simple enough … but in the nearly 1,700 years since this decision was made, things got a bit more complicated.
First, lacking the internet (or even the Farmer’s Almanac) to look up when the first full moon of Spring was due, astronomers, around the sixth century, developed tables based on lunar cycles that repeated after a set number of years. Once you figured out what year of the cycle you were in, you could look up the date of the first full moon of spring — and the Sunday after was, by definition, Pascha. But over time, two different sets of tables came into use, one in the East and one in the West. Slightly different dates for Pascha sometimes resulted.
More significantly, in the 16th century, Pope Gregory XIII introduced a “new calendar” which addressed certain flaws in the Julian calendar which preceded it, aligning it far more accurately with the Earth’s annual revolution around the Sun. While many of the Orthodox churches moved in the last century to the new (Gregorian) calendar for their fixed feasts — like Christmas, Epiphany and Transfiguration – most continue to use the older (Julian) calendar when calculating the date of Pascha.
On the Julian calendar, which has now fallen 13 days behind the Gregorian, the spring equinox doesn’t occur until April 3, 13 days after March 21. If a full moon occurs, then, after March 21 but before April 3, it wouldn’t count — on the Julian calendar — as the first full moon after the spring equinox. In this instance, we’d have to wait for the next full moon, and ultimately the Sunday after that, for Pascha.
This explains the occasionally longer discrepancies between the two Easter dates, such as we saw this year: a full moon fell on March 28, which was the first full moon after the spring equinox for the Catholics and Protestants, but the Orthodox had to wait for the next full moon on April 26. In each case, they celebrated Easter or Pascha on the first Sunday after their respective spring full moon.
But there’s another reason why it’s still legit to greet you in the middle of May with “Christ is Risen!”, which — rather than “Happy Easter!” — is the traditional Orthodox greeting.
Pascha is not simply one of the feast days of the Church. The Orthodox hymnography, in fact, refers to Pascha as “the chosen and holy day, first of Sabbaths, King and Lord of days, the feast of feasts, holy day of holy days!” And we celebrate it, joyfully, for a full 40 days, because Jesus “presented Himself alive after His passion by many proofs, appearing to (His apostles) during 40 days, and speaking of the kingdom of God.” (Acts 1:3) So, until June 10, Orthodox Christians will greet one another as I am happy to greet you: “Christ is risen! Truly He is risen!”
For more information on the Orthodox celebration of Pascha, I’d recommend www.oca.org/saints/lives/2020/04/19/27-holy-pascha-the-resurrection-of-our-lord.
The Rev. Seraphim Solof is assistant pastor of St. George Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral in Worcester.
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Keep the Faith: ‘Christ is Risen!’ — Orthodox Christian world celebrates Easter