“Much Ado about Time …” Part 2

In part 1 of this essay, I began my exploration of our modern-day calendar, especially how it relates to the great religious observances of Passover and Easter.  I even hinted that that calendar is somewhat controversial.  Here’s the conclusion for my essay.

I guess just about everyone knows that Passover and Easter do not fall on the same calendar days year after year like the Feast Days of Christmas (25 December) or St. Mary Magdalene (22 July), the first person reported in the Gospels to see the resurrected Christ and, thus, called the “apostle of the apostles.”  By the way, I’ve always admired this great lady and don’t believe for a minute all the ugly things church folks have said about her through the centuries.  Passover and Easter are often called moveable feasts; they hop around like spring bunnies in March and April.  But why in the world do they move around so much?  As a kid, I wondered about this and asked many adults –  ministers, teachers, community leaders – who offered nothing but blank stares, probably because there’s no easy answer.

Our starting point is the Vernal Equinox that always occurs around 20 or 21 March, thus marking the first day of spring.  It’s one of two times annually when the tilt of the Earth’s axis is inclined neither away from nor toward the Sun, the center of the Sun being in the same plane as the Earth’s equator.  (The second time is the Autumnal Equinox on 22 or 23 September.)  That’s the easy part.

Passover usually falls on the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere although it occurs occasionally on the second full moon (7 times every 19 years).  In 2010, Passover began at sundown on 30 March and extends to sundown on 5 April.  Thus, the Jewish calendar is lunisolar with every month starting with a new moon as prescribed in the Book of Numbers.

Easter is calculated as the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the Vernal Equinox.  Early Christians had in common the custom of consulting their Jewish neighbors to learn when Passover would fall and setting their festival accordingly.  Due to poor communications, however, the Jews in one city might determine Passover differently from Jews in another city.  The emerging controversy between those who advocated independent computation versus those who wished to continue the custom of relying on the Jewish calendar was formally resolved by the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE that endorsed a move toward independent computation.  But it did not specify any particular method of calculation so the older custom persisted until the Gregorian reform in the 16th century.  Imagine a 1300-year-long squabble!

This is where things get really tricky.  Eastern Orthodox Churches employ the old Julian calendar while the Western Churches use the contemporary Gregorian calendar – probably because of the snooty ecclesiastical politics surrounding that papal decree in 1582.  Consequently, only occasionally do both Churches celebrate Easter on the same day: for instance, on 4 April 2010 and again on 20 April 2014 and 16 April 2017.  Unlike the Western Churches, the Eastern Churches set the date of Easter according to the Vernal Equinox and the actual astronomical full moon as observed along the meridian of Jerusalem, the site of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial, and resurrection.  On the other hand, the Western Churches do not use the astronomically correct date for the Vernal Equinox but instead employ a fixed date of 21 March.  Further, by full moon, these Churches mean an “ecclesiastical” full moon based on church tables (thus, the ecclesiastical appellation) rather than an actual astronomical full moon.  This approach allows the date of Easter to be calculated in advance rather than to be determined by actual astronomical observances that are naturally less predictable.

Parenthetically, if you think all these church politics about the liturgical calendar are reprehensible, you should check out the ownership of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem: the historic site of Jesus’ death and burial.  No less than six congregations – Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Armenia Apostolic, Coptic Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox, and Syriac Orthodox – are deemed primary custodians of Christendom’s holiest site.  They all-too-often come to fisticuffs when someone simply moves a chair (that started a brawl among the faithful in 2002 that put 11 people in the hospital) or when someone leaves a door ajar into a chapel (that started another scrap among the faithful in 2004).  There’s even a ladder left permanently outside a front window in 1852 as part of the so-called status quo of territorial division among these six religious communities.  You can see the ladder in various engravings and photographs of the building ‘til this day.  Good grief.  What would Jesus say about all that silly hostility?

Since the early 20th century, occasional attempts to change the date of Easter to a fixed holiday in the Gregorian calendar have all fallen flat.  In 1963, the Second Vatican Council agreed to a fixed date (the second Sunday in April as the most likely suggestion), provided that a consensus could be reached among all Christian Churches.  Obviously, that did not happen.  Later, meeting in March 1997, the World Council of Churches proposed a solution: both methods of calculating the Vernal Equinox and the Full Moon would be replaced with the most advanced astronomically accurate calculations available, using the meridian of Jerusalem as the point of measure.  There has been no further progress toward agreement since that time.

Trying to get the Eastern and Western Churches to agree to anything seems as impossible a task as extracting honey from stone.  As a one-time Franciscan and philosopher, I was asked long ago by a colleague what I thought was the greatest challenge for modern-day Christianity.  “That’s easy,” I responded, “Getting out of the church parking lot after Sunday service.” It appears that the practice of one’s spirituality can find its greatest challenges in the most mundane moments of our day-to-day living: whether constructing a calendar or leaving church.

On the other hand, as a scientist, I find all this fuss about calendars fascinating.  It’s our attempt to find a comfortable absoluteness in the relativity of space and time.  Sadly, throughout history, that attempt has been chaotic and cutthroat at times.  We just don’t like it when something as fundamental as time is actually relative to our direction in space.  Instead we seem to be animals snug with our absolutes (including our traditions and religious identities) and woe be to the perceived interloper!

Let me conclude with a reference to Shiva as Nataraja: the great “Lord of the Dance” in Hinduism.  I know I’m crossing party lines, but I’ve always been attracted to the ancient symbolism inherent in this great deity.  Statues of Nataraja hold many attributes, but the two apropos to this discussion about time are his drum (shaped like an hour glass) and flame in his upper hands.  These opposing concepts show the counterpoise of creation and destruction.  In other words, the “tick, tick, tick” of time is only an illusion in the infinity of the Divine.

As a man of science, I find time essential to my work.  As a man of faith, however, I find time meaningless.  Eternity is collapsed into the here and now, and what I do with the present moment is a function of life itself.  Even the Master Darwin encouraged us all to be all we can be in the present moment.  That is the value of life.  As stewards of our ancient planet and as neighbors to each other, let us live fully and responsibly in this moment!