Fr Raphael Vereshack
25-03-2007, 03:40 PM
Nina wrote:
Dear Father Raphael,
Your Blessings!
Wow! Thank you for the information! I had no idea. I assumed that OC and NC this year had basically the same Lenten calendar. I do not know why...
Please explain to me. Bright Saturday that you mention is the Saturday after the Holy Resurrection? And another question. We celebrate St. Mary of Egypt twice during Lent?
The Church Calendar is made up of a combination of two liturgical cycles; the Paschal & the Menaion.
The Paschal cycle is centered on the Feast of Pascha. From here we have all the Sundays after Pascha through Ascension up until Pentecost. On the 2nd Sunday after Pascha which is when we commemorate the Myrrhbearing Women we begin the weekly tone system from Tone 2 up through 8. Tone 8 will be the week after Pentecost which will be All-Sts and from this point on we go from Tones 1 through 8 repeating this for the rest of the liturgical year until we reach Palm Sunday.
Of course besides the tone of the week we also have pre-Lenten & Lenten commemorations for each Sunday before Pascha: eg Publican & Pharisee (in the Byzantine tradition this is preceded by Zachaeus Sunday), etc before Lent; Sunday of Orthodoxy, etc during Lent. St Mary of Egypt is always commemorated on the 5th Sunday of Lent; which is a week before Palm Sunday and two weeks before Pascha. Then follows the week after Pascha which is Bright Week wherein we find Bright Saturday which is the Saturday after Pascha & the Sundays after Pascha like Thomas Sunday all the way to Pentecost.
Now you will notice that on any year on a given pre-Lenten Sunday: let's say this Sunday which is St Mary of Egypt, the tone will be different. The reason why this is so is because the Tones follow from the date of Pascha which changes every year. But the Lenten commemorations; eg St Mary of Egypt on the 5th Sunday remain. So on the 5th Sunday of Lent St Mary of Egypt will always be commemorated but the tone is likely to be different from last year or next year.
All of this together makes up what we call the Paschal cycle. It looks very complicated at first but actually it is just a liturgical cycle centred on the Sunday when Pascha is celebrated every year. All Orthodox churches, except for Finland retain this cycle. So that's why all of us NC or OC celebrate Pascha and all these other Sundays related to this together.
The second cycle is the Menaion cycle which follows the monthly calendar date. On each date we commemorate specific saints or feasts. So for example on April 1st we commemorate St Mary of Egypt. If April 1st were to fall within Lent then you would be commemorating St Mary twice- but not, if as with the OC this year, when April 1st will be after Pascha (actually St Mary coincides with Bright Saturday on the OC this year)..
This is the cycle that has been affected by the Calendar change between Old & New Calendar since on the NC today is March 25 but on the OC it is March 12. Thus on the NC today is Annunciation as this Feast is on March 25. But on the OC Annunciation will be in another 13 days since that is when March 25 will be.
A last point is that the combination of these two cycles makes up what we call the Liturgical Calendar. Because the way these two cycles will coincide will be different every year we need rubrics to explain how to synchronize these two and do the service for the day properly. This is much too complicated to know just like that so every church prints up a Liturgical Calendar for each year which all the parishes and monasteries need to have in order to know how to do the services properly.
This sounds very complicated. The first time you look through the printed Liturgical Calendar it looks very confusing and intimidating. But in time if you follow along especially on the kliros you begin to get the inner logic of the Calendar which is extremely profound.
In Christ- Fr Raphael
Dear Father Raphael,
Your Blessings!
Wow! Thank you for the information! I had no idea. I assumed that OC and NC this year had basically the same Lenten calendar. I do not know why...
Please explain to me. Bright Saturday that you mention is the Saturday after the Holy Resurrection? And another question. We celebrate St. Mary of Egypt twice during Lent?
The Church Calendar is made up of a combination of two liturgical cycles; the Paschal & the Menaion.
The Paschal cycle is centered on the Feast of Pascha. From here we have all the Sundays after Pascha through Ascension up until Pentecost. On the 2nd Sunday after Pascha which is when we commemorate the Myrrhbearing Women we begin the weekly tone system from Tone 2 up through 8. Tone 8 will be the week after Pentecost which will be All-Sts and from this point on we go from Tones 1 through 8 repeating this for the rest of the liturgical year until we reach Palm Sunday.
Of course besides the tone of the week we also have pre-Lenten & Lenten commemorations for each Sunday before Pascha: eg Publican & Pharisee (in the Byzantine tradition this is preceded by Zachaeus Sunday), etc before Lent; Sunday of Orthodoxy, etc during Lent. St Mary of Egypt is always commemorated on the 5th Sunday of Lent; which is a week before Palm Sunday and two weeks before Pascha. Then follows the week after Pascha which is Bright Week wherein we find Bright Saturday which is the Saturday after Pascha & the Sundays after Pascha like Thomas Sunday all the way to Pentecost.
Now you will notice that on any year on a given pre-Lenten Sunday: let's say this Sunday which is St Mary of Egypt, the tone will be different. The reason why this is so is because the Tones follow from the date of Pascha which changes every year. But the Lenten commemorations; eg St Mary of Egypt on the 5th Sunday remain. So on the 5th Sunday of Lent St Mary of Egypt will always be commemorated but the tone is likely to be different from last year or next year.
All of this together makes up what we call the Paschal cycle. It looks very complicated at first but actually it is just a liturgical cycle centred on the Sunday when Pascha is celebrated every year. All Orthodox churches, except for Finland retain this cycle. So that's why all of us NC or OC celebrate Pascha and all these other Sundays related to this together.
The second cycle is the Menaion cycle which follows the monthly calendar date. On each date we commemorate specific saints or feasts. So for example on April 1st we commemorate St Mary of Egypt. If April 1st were to fall within Lent then you would be commemorating St Mary twice- but not, if as with the OC this year, when April 1st will be after Pascha (actually St Mary coincides with Bright Saturday on the OC this year)..
This is the cycle that has been affected by the Calendar change between Old & New Calendar since on the NC today is March 25 but on the OC it is March 12. Thus on the NC today is Annunciation as this Feast is on March 25. But on the OC Annunciation will be in another 13 days since that is when March 25 will be.
A last point is that the combination of these two cycles makes up what we call the Liturgical Calendar. Because the way these two cycles will coincide will be different every year we need rubrics to explain how to synchronize these two and do the service for the day properly. This is much too complicated to know just like that so every church prints up a Liturgical Calendar for each year which all the parishes and monasteries need to have in order to know how to do the services properly.
This sounds very complicated. The first time you look through the printed Liturgical Calendar it looks very confusing and intimidating. But in time if you follow along especially on the kliros you begin to get the inner logic of the Calendar which is extremely profound.
In Christ- Fr Raphael