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POSITION PAPER NR. 3
ARCHDIOCESE OF NEW OSTROG
Among those spiritual aspects of Orthodox Church life which have been treated with light-minded indifference in recent years, the question of the Church calendar ranks very high. Few people, it seems, realize the profound spiritual and theological aspects of the Church calendar, and the role it has in shaping our religious life. In our time, certain church bodies, for the sake of advancement of the heresy of Ecumenism, have abandoned the Church calendar, severing themselves from the traditional flow of the cycle of church life, and have adopted the civil calendar. The role of secularizing and de-spiritualizing these church bodies which has followed this action is easy to trace. By means of rationalism and various sophisms, these people seek not only to justify themselves, but also to tempt our younger generation into joining their error. For this reason, it has become necessary to say something about the question of our Church calendar, and point out how the maintenance of our Church calendar is a part of the firm confession of the Orthodox faith.
We proclaim these things, not in order to judge or condemn others, but in order to maintain the Orthodox faith among ourselves and save our own souls, and in order to defend and preserve the faith of our Saviour, that all those who will, may likewise find that truth intact, and joining themselves to it, also find salvation. We ought not to call our Church calendar "Julian" or the "old calendar". It is our Ecclesiastical calendar, and our use of it has been shaped and sanctified by the unique, harmonious flow of the cycles of Church life, of our life in Christ. Indeed, the Church calendar is a powerful symbol and reminder of our unbroken unity in all things with the ancient great martyrs, whose festal cycles of Church life were set according to this calendar, and indeed, of our unity with the Apostles and Christ Himself. For, the Paschalion (the canonical rule for setting the date of Holy Pascha) is established by the facts of Christ's earthly life. And the whole cycle of our yearly Church life rotates around this date, just as the life of the Orthodox Church rotates around our Saviour. Insofar as our religious adaptation of the measurement of time and the harmony of the universe is concerned, our Church life reflects and amplifies the words of the Scripture:
The heavens declare the Glory of God; and the firmament reveals His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night showeth knowledge, and there is no tongue where their voice is not heard. Their voice is gone out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world...The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple (Ps.19:1-7).
For, all the solar systems rotate around their source of "life". The nearer a planet or body is to that source, the more it is warmed and illumined by it. Life on our planet depends upon its maintaining its cycle and path, its axis and its proximity to the sun. So too, our life rotates around Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, and the yearly cycle of our Church life leads us into just such a life-giving spiritual relationship with Christ. And this is just what the Apostle says:
Since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen... being understood through the things which were made. (Rm.11:40; see St Athanasios the Great, CONTRA GENTES, Ch. 35).
This symbolic bond between the cycle of our Church life and the harmonious cycles of the created cosmos is further testified to by Scripture, for:
The whole creation waits expectantly for God's children to be made known. For the creation was made subject to frailty, not by its own fault, but by the Will of Him Who so subjected it, but yet with hope. We know that the whole creation has been groaning and toiling together until now [that Christ has manifested His Church]. That creation itself will be set free of its bondage to corruption, into the glorious freedom of God's children...For in this hope were we saved (Rm.8:18-24).
Thus, the question of our Church calendar is by no means a question of days, of whether the Gregorian or Julian calendar is more "correct" by the standards of fallen human society (neither one is more "correct" by the standards of earthly science, which uses a sidereal calendar). No, the question of our Church calendar is not a matter of making a rationalistic choice between two "incorrect" civil calendars. It is a matter of the harmonious cycle of our Church feasts and fasts, rotating around the great Feast of Feasts, the glorious Resurrection of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ a cycle which has been established by the Holy Spirit, settled by His inspiration through the First Ecumenical Council, which established the setting of the date of Pascha (the Paschalion). "Correctness" or "incorrectness" in the eyes of worldly men is of no importance, and all the rationalism of the fallen human nature concerning the Church calendar is totally insignificant. For, we are concerned here, not with our life in worldly society, whose prince we know is satan, but with our life in the heavenly kingdom of Christ. The question of what calendar our Church uses has been revealed canonically, therefore, not by the devices of man, but by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which has set the day of Pascha, and the cycle of Church life emanating from it and rotating around it. From the point of view of canonicity and of our Sacred Tradition, we can see no reason even to give consideration to severing ourselves from the Church calendar in favour of a purely secular (and incorrect) calendar as if numbers and days had any importance. For, as St Basil the Great says:
In truth, is this not the nature of time, whose past has vanished, whose future is not yet at hand, and whose present escapes perception before it is known? (HEXAEMERON, 1:6).
Not only has the Paschalion been established canonically, and the cycle of our festal year set around it, but canonical local councils of the Church have already discussed the question and ruled upon it. Indeed, the Council of Jerusalem of 1583 was convened precisely in order to discuss the question of the "new" calendar. This canonical council ruled firmly against the acceptance of any change in the Church calendar. Likewise, the Council of Constantinople, which met in that same year under the auspices of Patriarch Jeremiah of Constantinople, Patriarch Sylvester of Alexandria and Patriarch Sophronios of Jerusalem, issued the following Sigillium (a canonical Synodical Decree):
The sigillium of the Patriarchal Encyclical to the Orthodox Christians of every land, commands them under the penalty of epitimia and anathema not to accept either the new Paschalion or the new calendar, but to remain with that which has been well defined once and for all by the 318 holy and God-bearing fathers of the First Ecumenical Council.
This Sigillium was signed by the three patriarchs and by numerous hierarchs. The question was discussed again at the Council of Constantinople of 1583, and in the eighth canon of that Council, those who would abandon the ecclesiastical calendar and adopt the Gregorian reckoning for the festal cycle, were again anathematized. Occasion to rule on the calendar arose again in 1593, at the great Pan-Orthodox Council of Constantinople. At this great council, the four eastern Patriarchs, the legate of the Russian patriarchate and senior hierarchs delegated by the other Orthodox Churches, canonically established and decreed:
He who does not follow the traditions of the Church which have been decreed by the Seven Holy Ecumenical Councils which have ordained well that we observe the Holy Pascha and the festal calendar [menologion], and who wishes to follow the new Paschalion and festal calendar...let him be anathema and outside the Church of Christ and the assembly of the faithful....
Thus we can see already that to change from the use of the ecclesiastical calendar to the use of the Gregorian, or "new" calendar, could raise serious questions concerning the canonicity of the church body which did so, since they would be in direct rebellion against the canons and these Councils, and under the anathemas and excommunications and bans of the great Pan-Orthodox Council of Constantinople. In addition to the rulings of these canonical local Councils, we are bound by the decisions and decrees of others, the 1903 Council of the Church of Romania, the decree of the Russian Church (28 February, 1903), of the Church of Jerusalem (5 June, 1905), the Church of Greece (14 July, 1903) and of the Church of Alexandria (1924). In 1582, the matter was resolved for the Orthodox Church of Poland, when Patriarch Jeremiah decreed the penalty of excommunication for any there who would dare to change the calendar. These decisions were not made with regard to "numbers or days" but with regard to our relationship to Christ and to the world, with regard to the Sacred Tradition and the canons of the Church. Moreover, the 1903 decree of the Romanian Church very beautifully demonstrates the bond between the Church calendar and the canonicity of a given church body:
The Sacred Synod of the Holy Autocephalous Church of Romania is of the opinion and resolves that we abide within that wherein we find ourselves today. For, it is impossible not to violate the prescriptions of the canons should we wish to consider some change or reform of the Julian calendar, with which the Orthodox Church has lived for so great a time. Moreover, it is not permitted to us to touch even with our finger [i.e., to alter even slightly] the ancient decisions which constitute the glory of our Church.
There could be no other reason for rebelling against these canonical decisions of the Church than for the sake of advancing the heresy of Ecumenism. Such an action can only be motivated by a desire to identify more with this world than with Christ and His Holy Church, to be in unity more with the philosophers of this fallen society than with the divine society of the saints and of our holy and God-bearing fathers in the heavenly kingdom. Therefore we abide in these things which have been given to us by Christ and the Holy Spirit through the sacred councils of the Holy Orthodox Church. And we abide therein not as without understanding, but precisely because we do have understanding.
+Archbishop Lazar Puhalo
+Bishop Varlaam Novakshonoff
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