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CHAPTER SIX

THE THREE CYCLES OF THE CHRISTIAN YEAR

To appreciate the construction of the historic Christian year, in its completed shape, and the sequence of its days, it is necessary to realize that it consists not just of a single cycle, but of three cycles, running concurrently. When this is understood, nearly everything becomes beautifully clear.

The First Cycle

The great festivals of the Christian year—those which have num- bered Sundays before or after them—follow an easily recognisable chronological sequence based on the life and saving work of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the Western form of the calendar, the first of these festivals is the feast of the Nativity, , on 25th December, with as a period of preparation, commencing about the end of November; and Christmas is followed by the Circumcision of Christ on 1st January;1 the , celebrating the coming of the Wise Men (or, in the East, Christ’s ), on 6th January; and Day, celebrating Christ’s death and resurrection, at Passover season, with as a period of preparation; Ascension Day, forty days after Easter; Whitsun, celebrating the pouring out of the by the ascended Christ, at season, another ten days later; and Trinity , summing up the revelation of God through these events, the next Sunday. There follows the long

1 1st January is the of Christmas Day, but has been observed also as the feast of the Circumcision since the sixth century. The feast spread from the East to the West and was adopted by Rome in the ninth century. In the latest revision of the Roman calendar, the feast of the Circumcision has been dropped, but it is retained in the Eastern and Anglican calendars. See K.A.H. Kellner, Heortology: a History of the Christian Festivals (E.T., London: Kegan Paul, 1908), p. 165; R.M. Nardone, The Story of the Christian Year (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), pp. 43f., 154f.; and, for source material on this and other festivals, Nicolaus Nilles, Kalendarium Manuale Utriusque Ecclesiae Orientalis et Occidentalis (Innsbruck: Rauch, 1896–97). 92 chapter six period of about 25 Sundays after Trinity (called in the Church of Rome and the Orthodox Church “Sundays after Pentecost”) which brings us back to Advent. Since the traditional collects and readings for Advent speak of Christ’s second coming as well as his first, the 25 Sundays vividly speak to us of the long period between Christ’s two comings. The sequence is chronological, but the whole is comprised within a single year, and as a result much of it has to be in symbolical time rather than in real time. The week from Christmas to Circum- cision—eight days, counting inclusively—is real time (see Luke 2:21), and the period of seven weeks from Good Friday and Easter Day to Whitsun (equivalent to the seven weeks from Passover to Pentecost) is real time. The rest, however, is symbolical time: this is true even of the twelve days from Christmas to Epiphany, which probably cor- respond to something approaching two years (see Matt. 2:7, 16). In the Eastern form of the calendar, the year begins not with Advent but with the pre-Lent Sundays, ten weeks before Easter. Easter is followed by the season between Easter and Pentecost; and a third season, which includes Christmas and Epiphany, completes the cycle, bringing the year back to the first of the pre-Lent Sundays. There is no : Trinity Sunday is a Western festival, which was not generally observed until the fourteenth century. Christmas is preceded by a period of fasting sometimes known as St. Philip’s Lent, covering the forty days from 15th November to 24th December. It is longer than Advent, and takes its name from the feast of St. Philip the apostle, which in the Eastern Church falls on November 14th. Since Epiphany, in the East, commemorates the baptism of Christ, the twelve days from Christmas to Epiphany sym- bolise a much longer period than in the West—not about two years but about thirty years (see Luke 3:21–23). On the whole, this looks like an earlier and less developed form of the Christian year, beginning with the oldest of the annual festi- vals, Easter and Whitsun.2 It is not difficult to see how the Western

2 Easter and Whitsun date from the second century, about two centuries earlier than Christmas and Epiphany (see, for example, my Calendar and Chronology, Jewish and Christian, chs. 3, 4), but not all features of the Eastern calendar are older than those of the Western. St. Philip’s Lent dates from the eighth century, whereas the Western Advent dates from the sixth (see Kellner, Heortology, p. 159).