Scholar’s Compass: Lent and Easter’s Timing

The time when Easter is ordained to take place is, like the Paschal celebrations as a whole, redolent with sacred mystery. In the first place, we are careful to wait until after the equinox to celebrate the Lord’s Passover . . . so that the feast-day on which the Mediator between God and man, having destroyed the power of darkness, opened the way of light for the world, might show its inner [significance] by means of the order of time. — Bede,  0  (trans. Faith Wallis)

Reflection

It was a revelation to one of my Jewish students when she realized that the holidays she cherished tied the rhythms of her life throughout the year to the agricultural and social cycles of ancient Israel. What had begun as a term paper about the Jewish calendar had become an intellectual journey that transformed these days from mere dates in the Gregorian calendar into moments of meaning connected to her heritage.

One of these holidays is Passover—the feast of unleavened bread. For us, it is commemorated in the Last Supper. There Jesus instructed his disciples on the connection between the history of Passover, the present time of his impending passion, and the future of the Church. The next day, Jesus would be crucified, and on the third day after that he would rise from the dead.

Often, this sequence of holy days appears as dates on the calendar. Even worse, these are unpredictable dates that wander about from year to year. They lack the reliability of Christmas. Everything from Ash Wednesday through Pentecost seems irregular. However, this apparent wandering has some intriguing symbolism.

In the timing of Easter, the early church emphasized the symbolism of light. The spring equinox marked when the length of day—hence light—began to be greater than the length of night—hence darkness. Full moons are not just the brightest nights, but the time when the moon fully reflects the Sun’s rays toward Earth. In astrological thinking (which was part of astronomy in the early church), Sunday was the day that the Sun’s influence was the greatest. Easter symbolized the victory of light over darkness, and its correct timing in relationship to the Sun was consequently important. As Bede wrote, “what the light of eternal beatitude promises us is most fully celebrated when the light of the Sun, progressing according to its yearly increase, wins its first victory over the shadow of night.” Just as Christ’s birth occurred at the darkest time of year, Easter celebrated the end of this darkest time and the victory of light.

Lent prepares us so that the seeming irregularity of the timing of Resurrection Sunday does not take us by surprise. As in the parable of the ten virgins (Mt 25:1-13), Lent is a time to make sure we have enough oil to keep our lamps lit until the bridegroom comes. It is the time of literal darkness in which we should cultivate our light. Since Easter’s timing seems so irregular, we are a bit like the virgins with the lamps—not entirely sure when the groom will arrive. Lent teaches us to tend our light.

Questions

1. What do I do to give meaning to moments in time?

2. What will I do during the Lenten season to break from my routine in order to cultivate Christ’s light?

Prayer

SIGNS, SEASONS, DAYS AND YEARS
By Margaret Adams Birth

Originally published in Penned from the Heart, v. 18 (Son Rise Publications, 2012)

“And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years. . . .” (Genesis 1:14, KJV)

Good morning, Lord.
Thank You for this new day.
Thank You for the light of dawn
that shines through nightmare-darkness,
that slips through fear's shadows in my heart.

Good afternoon, God.
Thank You for this bright zenith.
Thank You for this view of Heaven's heights
that encompasses my daily comings and goings,
that watches over my every move.

Good night, Father.
Thank You for the moon in all its phases.
Thank You for this lesser light
that is always there—like You—
that shows its fullness to me, in the fullness of Your time.

Bio:  Margaret Adams Birth has her first chapbook of poetry,  Borderlands,  forthcoming. She also writes “sweet” secular and Christian fiction as Maggie Adams, mystery stories as Rhett Shepard, and short nonfiction as Margaret Birth. You can find her author page at  www.facebook.com/MaggieAdamsRhettShepard, where she will provide updates on the release of  Borderlands  and her other writing.

Further Reading

Augustine. Letter to Januarius (epistle 55). Available at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102055.htm.

Bede. The Reckoning of Time. Faith Wallis, trans. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Further  Notes On Easter’s Timing

The apparent wandering of Easter is somewhat illusory. Just as the landscape appears to move when we travel in a car, train, or plane, it is the calendar that moves relative to Passover. Passover is the same day every year in the Jewish calendar. Passover is always the 14^th day of Nisan. Passover always must fall after the spring equinox. To ensure this, an extra lunar month is sometimes inserted into the Jewish calendar to keep it roughly reconciled with the solar year. Since Passover is the same date every year in the Jewish calendar, Passover only moves in the Roman-derived Gregorian calendar that dominates our lives. One would think that since the Last Supper was a Passover meal, Lent and Easter would occur at about the same time every year relative to the Jewish calendar.

It is not that simple. The Nicene Council determined the timing of Easter stating that it should be the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. This was a convoluted—and unfortunately anti-Semitic—way of creating a rubric that would not directly tie Easter to Passover and yet still result in the two days being around the same time each year. This decree created a challenge, however. To observe Lent, one needed to be able to predict when Easter Sunday would be. This was no easy task, and the job fell onto scholars who used the astronomy of the time to create tables that would allow parish priests to be able to accomplish such calculations reasonably well. Eventually, the Venerable Bede came up with the tables that would be used for many centuries, and according to another Anglo-Saxon, Byrthfert, before a priest was allowed to serve a parish, the priest had to demonstrate the ability to determine when Easter was, and consequently the start of Lent. Now we just look up all of this on the Internet.