New Warrior Ministries!: What is Time? part 2

What is Time? Part 2

Greetings in Christ Jesus,

What is Time?

Part 2

Sunday December 4 2016

We are continuing to look at time as in days, years, months, and centuries as well as specific calendar dates for Christian feasts and fasts. This is in fact a personal issue with me because much of the church is split simply over calendar dates. The Body of Christ can scream as much as it wants about truth but there is much of the argument that is nothing more than ego and pride.

In part 1 We took a quick look at the date of Christmas, the celebration of the birth of our Lord and learned that it was initially not something the church concerned herself with. The resurrection was the day to celebrate because this was of course the whole reason Christianity exists. Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven to the right hand of God the Father. This date became important to the whole of Christianity. Eventually the church began to study the date of the birth because she wanted to celebrate it, Two dates were settled on; one Eastern and one Western. It was determined that the two would agree to disagree and left it at that. (for the time). Actually January 7 in Orthodoxy is the same as December 25 in the Western world. This is the difference in time between the Julian calendar and the Gregorian calendar. We’ll look at this later.

Pascha or Easter or the Resurrection date had similar issues between East and West. The Easter/Pascha problem actually begins in the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, and Luke identifies the Lord’s Last Supper with His disciples as a Passover meal. This would place the death of our Lord on the day after Passover. On the other hand, the tradition of the Gospel of John situates the death of our Lord at the very hour the paschal lambs were sacrificed on the day of Passover itself. This variation in the interpretation of the Scriptures led to two different practices. The one observed Pascha/Easter on the day of Passover, regardless of the day of the week and so it is a fixed date. The other observed it on the Sunday following Passover. By the time of the fourth century, the Sunday practice prevailed throughout the Church universally; yet, there were still differences.

So a council was convened; the First Ecumenical Council, convened at Nicaea in 325 A.D., took up the issue. It determined that Pascha/Easter should be celebrated on the Sunday that follows the first full moon after the vernal equinox – the actual beginning of spring. If the full moon happens to fall on a Sunday, Pascha/Easter is observed the following Sunday. The day taken to be the invariable date of the vernal equinox is March 21. So, the determination of the date of Pascha/Easter is governed by a process dependent on the vernal equinox and the phase of the moon.

So far so good right? A church council agreed on a method of dating the celebration of the risen Lord. Ooops, hold on, the Jews used this same method to calculate Passover and so Pascha/Easter was originally celebrated on the same day as Passover. This itself wasn’t a problem, but then something else happened; When the Jews became dispersed there was a departure from the way Passover was reckoned at the time of our Lord’s death and resurrection. This caused the Passover to precede the vernal equinox in some years. It was, in fact, this very thing that led to the condemnation reflected in Canon 1 of Antioch (ca. 330 A.D.) and Canon 7 of the Holy Apostles (late 4th century) of those who celebrate Pascha/Easter “with the Jews.” The purpose of this condemnation was to prevent Christians from taking into account the calculation of Passover in determining the date of Pascha/Easter. This date had already been fixed by the church universally.

There were some more issues back and forth but by the sixth century, a more secure mode of calculation based on astronomical data was universally accepted. This was an alternative to calculating Pascha/Easter by the Passover date and consisted in the creation of so-called “paschal cycles.” Each paschal cycle corresponded to a certain number of years. Depending upon the number of years in the cycle, the full moon occurred on the same day of the year as at the beginning of the cycle with some exceptions. The more accurate the cycle, the less frequent were the exceptions.

In the East, a nineteen-year cycle was eventually adopted, but in the West an eighty-four-year cycle was used. The use of two different paschal cycles inevitably gave way to differences between the Eastern and Western Churches regarding the observance of Pascha/Easter.

So, we then have another change that was made by the church in the calendar; the western church adopted the Gregorian Calendar in 1582 to replace the Julian Calendar. This was done to adjust the discrepancy between the paschal cycle approach to calculating Pascha and the available astronomical data. The church was trying to get closer to accurate time according to the astronomical data. The Orthodox Church continues to base its calculations for the date of Pascha on the Julian Calendar, which was in use at the time of the First Ecumenical Council. And so it does not take into account the thirteen-day difference between the Julian and Gregorian Calendars.

What this means is that Pascha/Easter may not be celebrated before April 3, which was March 21, the date of the vernal equinox, at the time of the First Ecumenical Council. In other words, a difference of thirteen days exists between the accepted date for the vernal equinox then and now. But understand; time and the moon cycle did not change, only a date on a calendar attempting to get closer to real time changed.

Now Rome, (who was now the world power) had a lot of

difficulties in making their calendar because of their

superstition that even numbers were unlucky. So because of that

their months were 29 or 31 days long, with the exception of

February, which had 28 days. But four months of 31 days,

and seven months of 29 days, and one month of 28.

So the Romans invented an extra month called

Mercedonius of 22 or 23 days. It was added every

second year. The Roman calendar eventually became

so far off that Julius Caesar, advised by the astronomer

Sosigenes, ordered a major reform. The year of 46

B.C. was made 445 days long by his decree, bringing

the calendar back in step with the seasons.

Then the calendar became based on solar time (with the value of 365 days and 6 hours). The months were 30 or 31 days in length, and to take care of the 6 hours, every fourth year was made a 366-day year or a leap year. Caesar then decreed the year begin with the first day of January, not with the vernal equinox in late March. This calendar was named the Julian calendar, after Julius Caesar, and the Eastern Orthodox churches continue to use it to this day for holiday calculations. However, despite the correction, the Julian calendar is still 11 1/2 minutes longer than the actual solar year, and after a number of centuries, even 11 1/2 minutes adds up.

So to help everyone understand my frustration when those who are determined to attack any and all who do not use the so-called church calendar, the church calendar was created by a pagan empire and named after a pagan emperor, this church calendar is nothing more than the pagan calendar in use at the time of the first ecumenical council. Those who continue to use it I do not speak against. However those who continue to use it and call everyone else a heretic and attack those who use the Gregorian calendar need to re-examine their Christian conscious. Now let’s take a look at the Gregorian calendar in use today.

Before we begin looking at the next calendar; the Gregorian calendar, I have a question; the church is ever consumed with time, if a monastic was or is late for liturgy/mass or late for or misses the hours there is a great penalty given, the same for the laity except not so much in the modern times. If one is late for liturgy/mass/worship it is frowned upon. Every minute of every day is given by Almighty God and we are not to abuse these minutes but each minute serves a purpose. It has even been said that there will be enough time for rest in the grave we do not need the sleep that we crave because there is so much work to do.

Considering the above statements wouldn’t you think that if we can get closer to actual time within creation then we should do so? Should we cling to something simply because it existed at some point even if it is proven to be inaccurate? How are we so concerned over every minute and yet completely ignore time itself? Think about this.

This article will continue next time.

In Christ