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Second Sunday of the Year
19 January 2008
Dear Friends in Christ,
How to calculate the date of Easter was one of the earliest, longest-running, and most bitter controversies in the first centuries of the Church’s life. Those who are interested in learning more about the history of this dispute can do an internet search for the “Easter controversy.” You’ll find a long and complex tale of how to blend the Jewish observance of Passover and the Christian celebration of the Resurrection, and the story includes the deliberations of an Ecumenical Council, long discussions between Rome and Alexandria, and a sixth century collision in England and Scotland of the old and new Roman methods for finding the date of Easter.
After centuries of wrangling, the formula which was finally accepted by all is this: Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday following the first full moon following the spring equinox. (N.B. This story is made even more complex by the adherence of Orthodox Christians to the old Julian calendar which gives them a completely different set of dates than our Gregorian calendar.) Because the spring or vernal equinox is always on 21 March, this means that the first possible date of Easter is 22 March and the latest possible date is 25 April. But although it is possible for the full moon to fall on the day of the equinox and allow Easter to be celebrated on 22 March, that is very rare. The last celebration of Easter of 22 March was in 1818 and the next one will be in 2285.
Almost as rare is the celebration of Easter on 23 March, which happens this year. The last such Easter was in 1913, and the next one will be in 2160. All of this means that this year we will keep the earliest Easter in the lifespan of anyone born between 1913 and 2160, which also means that we will have a very early Ash Wednesday: 6 February. And that, in turn, means that we will have only three Sundays of Ordinary Time between the end of Christmastide and the beginning of Lent. And that, finally, means that we have very little time to prepare for the time of preparation for Easter. Even though the last strains of the final Christmas hymn are still echoing in the church, we must now turn our hearts and minds to the startling words of Ash Wednesday: Remember, man, you are dust, and unto dust you shall return. And on Friday of this week, the Church will keep a feast that shows us the shape of all repentance and renewal: the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul.
Chapter 9 of the Acts of the Apostles recounts the meeting on the Damascus Road of the Lord Jesus and Saul of Tarsus which transformed the first great persecutor of Christians into the foremost preacher of the Gospel. Saul, Acts tell us, was on a mission to find and punish anyone “belonging to the Way.” This was the first description of the common life of the disciples of Jesus, “the Way.” And this name reveals the nature of our ongoing, lifelong need for conversion; we are on the Way, on a pilgrimage in the Way of the Lord Jesus, the Way of the Cross. Let’s seize the opportunity of an early Easter and Lent to repent now, today, and turn again to the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Father Newman