Easter

The Biblical Background for Easter (Pascha) to Pentecost

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The celebrations of the Easter season have always been the most joyous festivals of the church year, for they focus on the event that vindicates Jesus as Lord and Messiah and that offers the promise of life for those who belong to him. “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15:20). The Easter or Paschal season includes Ascension Day and concludes with Pentecost.

Easter Day

The festival of the resurrection of Christ has been called “the greatest and oldest feast of the Christian Church” (Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church [New York: Oxford University Press, 1957], 432). There is no instruction in the New Testament regarding an annual festival of Jesus’ resurrection; every Lord’s Day, and indeed every gathering of his body, was a celebration of the presence of the risen Christ. Some exegetes, however, point to Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 5:7–8 as an indication that such an annual celebration of the Resurrection did occur among the early Christians: “For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival.… ” In time, traditional rites developed for celebrating the resurrection of Christ, such as the “Paschal Vigil” in which catechumens (new converts preparing for church membership) kept watch in fasting and devotion from the day before (Holy Saturday) into the early hours of Easter Day when they were baptized and received the Eucharist. The Eastern Church still observes the night vigil preceding an early morning Easter service, and it has been restored to Catholic and many Protestant churches as a result of the twentieth-century liturgical revival. The popular “sunrise service” followed by an Easter breakfast is a modern Protestant variation on this theme. These services are intended to commemorate the discovery of the Resurrection by Jesus’ followers “on the first day of the week, very early in the morning” (Luke 24:1).

The English name Easter, according to the early eighth-century church historian Bede, is derived from the name of the Anglo-Saxon spring goddess Eostre—a name that probably goes back to the fertility goddess Ishtar, or Astarte, the Ashtoreth worshiped by the Israelites during periods of apostasy (1 Sam. 7:3–4; 1 Kings 11:33). In many languages, the name of Easter is a derivation of the Hebrew Pesaḥ, “Passover” (as in Latin Pascha, French Pâques). Today, many students of liturgy argue for a return to the original name, Pascha, to avoid the pagan terms and concepts originally associated with the name Easter.

The date of Easter, like that of the Jewish Passover, moves each year and governs that portion of the liturgical calendar that moves with it (from the beginning of Lent through Pentecost). But whereas Passover moves with the procession of the lunar cycle of twenty-eight days, which defines the Jewish month, the date of Easter depends on the “Paschal full moon” and can fall in the Western church any Sunday from 21 March through 25 April. The early medieval church was marked by the “Paschal controversies,” bitter disputes over the method of determining the date of the Easter celebration.

The Gospels do not narrate the actual resurrection of Christ, but rather its discovery by Jesus’ disciples and his subsequent appearances to them. Thus the Resurrection retains that aura of mystery, or sense of the numinous, as an extraordinary manifestation of the power of God which cannot be encompassed by the grasp of the rational mind. To narrate the event itself would be to divest it of its gripping quality, just as artistic representations of it are unsuccessful (Grünewald’s and Blake’s being among the better examples). In the Gospels, one encounters the Resurrection through the eyes of its first beholders, in their startling discovery of the empty tomb and the angelic witnesses and in Jesus’ own sudden appearances to them in the garden, in the street, behind closed doors, on the road to Emmaus, at the supper table, and later beside the Lake of Tiberias. Each of the Gospels tells a different story of events in the days after Christ was raised from the dead. Yet, for any who would doubt the Resurrection, the variety in the Gospel narratives only adds to their credibility. It works against any accusation of the collusion of witnesses and shows that the wonder and excitement of the day of Resurrection was still a vivid memory in the various Christian communities out of which the Gospels emerged decades after the event.

One thing on which all the Gospels agree is that it was women who were the first witnesses to the Resurrection, chiefly Miriam of Migdal or Mary Magdalene (Matt. 28:1–10; Mark 16:1–8; Luke 24:1–10; John 20:1–18). According to Luke, the disciples were reluctant to believe their word (Luke 24:11), and John admits the disciples were slow to understand the Scripture that proclaimed Christ must rise from the dead (John 20:9). Sometimes the witnesses to the Resurrection did not recognize Jesus until he spoke a familiar word (calling Mary by name, John 20:16, 26; greeting his disciples, “Peace be with you,” John 20:19) or performed a familiar gesture (blessing and breaking the bread, Luke 24:30–31). Thomas, who insisted he would not believe Jesus was alive until he could feel his wounds, never had to do this; it was enough for Jesus to speak, and he knew him as “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:24–28).

The Resurrection, together with the Crucifixion, formed the cornerstone of the apostolic message; an apostle had to be one who could be “a witness with us of his resurrection” (Acts 1:22). Whereas the Crucifixion effected “for all time one sacrifice for sins” (Heb. 10:12), the Resurrection verified that Jesus was “both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36), the Servant appointed to restore the covenant (Acts 3:20–26), the “judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42), whether Jew or Gentile (Acts 17:31). Thus the earliest Christian creedal statements—like that of Paul, who “delivered to you as of first importance what [he] also received”—may have consisted largely of a listing of appearances of the risen Christ (1 Cor. 15:3–8 NASB).

Early Christian worship was therefore a celebration of the Resurrection. In Paul’s interpretation, the Lord’s Supper itself, though a commemoration of the new covenant in the symbols of Jesus’ body and blood, was not focused on his death so much as on his coming (1 Cor. 11:26) and, in fact, on his presence with his people through the koinōnia, or participation, in the life of his body (cf. 1 Cor. 10:16–17). The evidence of the life of the Spirit in Christian worship (1 Cor. 12–14; Eph. 5:18–20) is the witness to the Resurrection, since “the Lord is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:17). It is not by accident that Paul, writing to the Corinthians, moves directly from his discussion of the Resurrection—“Christ has been raised from the dead.… thanks be to God! He gives us the victory”—to instructions for the church’s assembly on the first day of the week (1 Cor. 15:12–16:2). The apostle John also testifies to the centrality of the Resurrection in worship; the majestic anthems of the Revelation, which must reflect the hymnody familiar to his readers, are centered in the ascription of honor and dominion to the Lord God and to Jesus the Lamb, “the firstborn from the dead” (Rev. 1:5) who declares, “I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive forever and ever!” (Rev. 1:17–18). In the worship of the church, the new Jerusalem, the Lord dwells among his people, so that “there will be no more death” (Rev. 21:3–4).

The Ascension

In the New Testament, the ascension of Christ marks the close of his appearances to the disciples following the Resurrection. The full account of the Ascension is given by Luke at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles. After being raised from the dead, Jesus “after his suffering, showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3). At the end of this period, Jesus gathered his disciples together and promised they would soon be baptized with the Holy Spirit, receiving power to be his witnesses first in Jerusalem, then throughout Judea and Samaria, and then into other regions. Having said these things, “he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.” Immediately, two angelic messengers appeared, telling the disciples that Jesus “will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:4–11). Luke presents an abbreviated version of the story at the end of his Gospel (Luke 24:50–51) which establishes Bethany, on the Mount of Olives, as the setting and indicates that Jesus was parted from the disciples as he was blessing them. The longer ending of Mark’s Gospel links the Ascension to Jesus’ commission to “go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation” (Mark 16:15), declaring that after Jesus had spoken to his disciples, “he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God” (Mark 16:19).

The Resurrection establishes Jesus’ victory over death and his identity as the Messiah, the Son of God. The Ascension further establishes his kingship and authority over all things, as the one “taken up in glory” (1 Tim. 3:16), exalted by the Lord God to share his throne (Rev. 3:21) and to govern at his right hand (Acts 2:33; 1 Pet. 3:22). Having “gone through the heavens” (Heb. 4:14), Jesus continues to minister as High Priest, interceding for his people before God (Heb. 7:25–26). From his exalted throne he pours out the Holy Spirit, empowering his church for witness (Acts 2:33). In ascending into heaven, he sums up or “fills” all things and gives leadership gifts for the building up of his body and the equipping of Christians for service to God (Eph. 4:7–13). Thus the Ascension speaks of Christ’s present and ongoing work as “head over everything for the church” (Eph. 1:22). To the first disciples, the Ascension also spoke of Jesus’ return in judgment on the unfaithful, his coming “in like manner” in the clouds, which are a biblical symbol of the Lord’s dealing with violators of the covenant (Matt. 24:30).

The special observance of Ascension Day is recorded beginning with the latter part of the fourth century; rites associated with the day have included processions symbolic of the kingly authority of Christ. Since the Ascension occurred forty days after the Resurrection, Ascension Day falls on the sixth Thursday after Easter. Many churches, however, now observe it on the following Sunday.

Pentecost

The festival of Pentecost brings the Paschal season to a close. The name Pentecost is the Greek name for the Israelite Feast of Weeks (Shavu‘ot); it means “fiftieth,” referring to the celebration of this festival fifty days after Passover. It was on this feast day that the apostles, after Jesus’ resurrection, were all “filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues” (Acts 2:4), and it was on this occasion that they first openly proclaimed the resurrection and Messiahship of Jesus Christ, baptizing thousands of new converts. The Christian commemoration of Pentecost is attested in Jerusalem from the late fourth century. Pentecost was, like Easter, a day for baptisms, and the traditional English name Whitsunday is an allusion to the white robes worn by baptismal candidates.

In ancient Israel, the firstfruits of the grain harvest were presented at the Feast of Weeks (Deut. 16:9–10), which was also known as the “Feast of the Harvest” (Exod. 23:16) or “day of firstfruits” (Num. 28:26). At the offering of firstfruits, the worshiper was to recite the story of how the Lord had delivered Israel from Egypt and brought them into the plenteous land of Canaan. The agricultural symbolism of the festival remained predominant until the destruction of Herod’s temple when the emphasis shifted to the commemoration of the giving of the Torah. The symbolism of the “day of firstfruits” is important for understanding the meaning of the first Christian Pentecost.

Jesus had spoken several times to his disciples about the coming of the Holy Spirit: at the Feast of Tabernacles (John 7:37–39), on the night of his arrest (John 16:7–15), and in his appearances after the Resurrection (Acts 1:4–5). Jesus referred to the Spirit as “the gift my Father promised,” and at the time of his ascension, he equated the coming of the Holy Spirit with the power to be his witnesses (Acts 1:8). Acting as spokesman for the apostles, Peter on the day of Pentecost announced that Jesus, having “received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit,” had now conveyed it to his church as well. The phenomenon of speaking in other tongues is the evidence that Jesus lives, exalted at the right hand of God, from which he “has poured out what you now see and hear” (Acts 2:33). According to Mark’s Gospel, speaking with “new tongues” was to be one of the signs that would accompany those who believe and preach the gospel of Christ (Mark 16:17).

The Pentecost event, therefore, is a sign that a new epoch has begun. What Jesus promised has now been realized. The “last days” spoken of by the prophet Joel have arrived (Acts 2:16–18). Just as the Israelite, presenting his firstfruits, stands in the Promised Land, so the Christian, filled with the Holy Spirit, now stands in the completion of what was promised. For Israel, the possession of the land was the blessing that fulfilled the covenant. For the Christian community, baptized by the Spirit into one body (1 Cor. 12:13), the life of the Holy Spirit is the restoration of the covenant: it is the kingdom of God (Rom. 14:17), the “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17) of life energized by the risen Christ (Rom. 8:9–11), the “eternal life” of those who have the Son (John 4:14).

As the Holy Spirit is the “firstfruits” in Christian believers of what is to come (Rom. 8:23), so the apostolic church saw itself corporately as the firstfruits of a greater harvest. James wrote that the church had been brought forth by the Word as “firstfruits of all he created” (James 1:18). In the Revelation, John pictures the apostolic church as the 144 thousand, or twelve times twelve times a thousand, the true Israel of whatever tribal or cultural or linguistic background, “purchased from among men and offered as firstfruits to God and the Lamb” (Rev. 14:4). Because it marks the first gathering of believers to testify to the Resurrection (Acts 2:1), the beginning of the process of world evangelization (Acts 2:41), and the initiation of the church’s characteristic corporate life (Acts 2:42–47), Pentecost has rightly been called the “birthday of the church.”

The Pentecost event stands at a strategic point in the basic plan of the scriptural drama: it is the typological reversal of the damage done at the tower of Babel. At Babel, people were determined to build a monument to themselves, a culture without regard for God; as a result, they were scattered over the earth, unable to communicate (Gen. 11:1–9). In Pentecost, the language barrier is swept aside, as people “from every nation under heaven” hear the apostles “declaring the wonders of God” in languages they can understand (Acts 2:5–11).

Pentecost, then, has the possibility for a rich symbolism in Christian worship. Churches that emerged in the early twentieth century around the revival of the practice of tongues and the other New Testament spiritual gifts—the “pentecostal” churches—have received their designation from this festival. Pentecost has also been important in the modern ecumenical movement as an occasion for celebrating the worldwide unity of the church. Historically, it has been a day for the baptism of new believers and was considered a festival second in importance only to Easter. Although its potential in the church’s worship life today seems to be largely untapped, many churches are beginning to recover the significance of Pentecost as a major day of festive celebration.

Colors of the Christian Year

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Colors of the various seasons of the Christian year express the mood or feeling of the season. The following outline presents the colors most often associated with Christian seasons.

Advent. Blue or violet express the penitential nature of the season as well as the royalty of Christ.

Christmas. White expresses the celebrative nature of the season.

After Epiphany. Green expresses the ongoing eternal nature of growth. Use white for Baptism of the Lord Sunday and for the last Sunday which celebrates the transfiguration of our Lord.

Lent. Black, violet, grays, and/or muted blues express the solemnity of Lenten time.

Holy Week. Red is used as the color of the blood of Christ and of the martyrs. Black is also used to express the somber nature of Holy Week. For Holy Communion on Maundy Thursday, use white or red. For Good Friday and Holy Saturday, red, black, or no color.

Easter. Gold or white expresses the joy of the season. Use red on Pentecost Sunday. Red symbolizes fire and the coming of the Holy Spirit.

After Pentecost. Green expresses the ongoing work of God. Use white on Trinity Sunday, All Saints’ Day, and Christ the King Sunday. White expresses the celebratory nature of these days.

Other Uses of Color

White: wedding, funeral, Thanksgiving, dedication, baptism

Red or Scarlet: church anniversary, ordination/installation, confirmation, reception into the church, revival, preaching, missions, work of the Holy Spirit

During weekday services, use the color of season (after Epiphany, Passiontide, after Pentecost), or color of preceding Sunday (in Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter), unless a color is specified in the calendar for the day (Good Friday, etc.).

Denominational promotions and thematic events (Day/Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, World Communion Sunday, etc.) may be worked in with the Christian calendar emphasis for a given day without overshadowing that emphasis. Laity (women’s, men’s, children’s) days, church vocations, missions, etc., may be honored without supplanting the calendared day or season.

Civil and commercial holidays and observances NEVER supersede the Christian use for the main services on any Sunday, nor mix with them, if it can be helped. Civil days include national, state, and local holidays (Presidents’ birthdays, Memorial, Flag, Independence days, etc.). Commercial observances include Valentine’s, St. Patrick’s, Grandparents’, Mothers’ and Fathers’ days, etc. If possible, observe these in Sunday evening or midweek services, or with a church school or fellowship event.

How the Practice of the Christian Year Affects Congregational Life

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The way Christians keep time is a way of remembering. In communal worship, we remember and celebrate the events that make us who we are. Consequently, the celebration of the Christian year forms us into Christ’s body in the world.

Among the most remarkable aspects of the twentieth-century reform and renewal of Christian worship is the rediscovery of the church year. Twenty years ago no one could have predicted the extraordinary impact that the scholarship and the theology and practice of the church year would have on our preaching and worship. Every Christian tradition, except for the most narrowly sectarian Protestant churches, has established or proposed a version of the ecumenical new calendar and lectionary. The liturgical churches, of course, have always used calendars and lectionaries to order the worship life of the people. What prompts our reflection here, however, is an unprecedented convergence across denominational lines—including “free churches” and “liturgical churches”—on a basic theology of time represented in the new three-year lectionary.

Protestants are in the process of rediscovering the church year, not as an imposition from “outside,” but as a fundamental feature of authentic Christian worship that was part of Christian and Jewish experience from the beginning. For Judaism and for Christianity, time—and how we keep it—is crucial to faith itself. Why is this so? Because God’s self-revelation is historical and temporal. The events in and through which the living God has chosen to communicate with humankind are historical events. Even more to the point, remembering and proclaiming those events are the heartbeat of all preaching and worship. The community gathered about the Scriptures, the baptismal font, and the Table of the Lord is a community of memory. It keeps time with God by retelling and entering into the meaning and power of those “past” events again and again.

There is a considerable lack of understanding of how the laity enters into the formative and expressive range of the cycles of the church year. How a local congregation appropriates such faith and theological meaning into its ongoing worship and spirituality in common life and ministry is the point at issue.

Keeping Time as Part of Our Human Experience

In one sense time is so obvious but so hidden from us. Our temporality is itself a feature of all human experience. We know that a family gains identity and deepens its life by keeping anniversaries and by knowing how to celebrate well the significant events which mark that family’s history. Birthdays are kept with special rituals and celebrations; but so, too, in healthy families, are memories of deaths, transitions, and the characters and events of family history. At a family reunion, the foods are brought and ordered, the stories of our grandparents, aunts, and uncles are told, the songs and entertainments are performed, and the memories recited and made real.

Eating and drinking together in a family takes time. In everyday life, we come to understand certain matters only after we have had meals on birthdays, after funerals, with all the children home and with them all gone, and during the subtly changing seasons of our lives. How much more, then, is our eating and drinking at the Lord’s Table and our singing and hearing the Word of God this way. The meaning of our eucharistic meal deepens as we mature in the times and places of such gatherings.

The way Christians keep time—or fail to keep time—is a theological expression of what is remembered and lived. “Why do they keep coming, Sunday upon Sunday, year upon year, just to hear me preach, to sing the same songs, and to pray together?” This startling question from a beleaguered pastor opens up our subject to the real issue of congregational faith and life. Why, indeed, do Christians continue, over time, to gather with such regularity? Obligation? Custom? Or could they be searching for a way of opening their temporal lives to God—a search, perhaps, for genuine transformation? The answer is all of the above.

Honest reflection upon the connections between worship and our deeper hunger for God raises a series of theological issues about temporality and the cycles of time that give Christian memory and proclamation its distinctive character. Whatever else our motives may be, human beings come to worship because there is a restlessness for God and a sense, however, obscured, that time and place and life need somehow to be sanctified. The search for holy times and places is itself an expression of a deeper hunger we have for the transformation of our transitory lives. Worship, no matter how dull and routine holds out some hidden promise of sanctification in the very midst of life with all its changes, confusions, suffering, joy, and mystery.

Keeping Time as a Christian Community

The Christian community gathers to remember and to enact its particular identity as those called out by God in Christ. Because all ministries are rooted in the redemptive presence and activity of Christ in the world, the church’s sense of time and place is oriented toward God’s self-giving in the whole person and work of Jesus Christ. Christian worship involves the gathering of a baptized people who are commissioned and empowered to serve the world. Such servanthood does not take place unless the church remembers with the whole sweep of Scripture and is enabled to hope for a real future in light of God’s promises.

How may we speak in our local churches of Christian worship as forming and expressing ordinary people in the mystery of God’s unfolding relationship with us? How can pastors and musicians, and the other liturgical ministries of the laity, enable a congregation to enter more deeply into the rhythms of the church year, the week, and the shape of each day’s prayer and work? Consider a short definition and then let us draw some concrete pastoral applications from this in light of what has already been said.

Christian worship is the ongoing liturgy of Jesus Christ in and through his body in the world. It is the ongoing relationship of love and service between God and the people of God formed in the story of Creation, covenant, prophecy, and the incarnation, death, resurrection, and reign of Christ. Worship is, therefore, something communal because it is our distinctive way of remembering and celebrating who and whose we are. The adequacy of how we sing and pray and are shaped by Word and sacrament requires living with the whole reality of what God has done, in Creation and redemption, and the whole promise of the reign of God in the whole Creation.

Such an account of Christian liturgy shows the mutuality of divine and human dialogue. Christian life together is thus patterned in accordance with the humanity shown in God’s history with us. The faith of the church from its beginnings manifests in its pattern of worship over time an implicitly Trinitarian structure—God the Father made manifest in history and prophecy, and supremely in the events of Jesus Christ—suffering, dying and rising—and in the Holy Spirit indwelling and making alive the community of those who believe. The early church remembered Jesus especially with the keeping of Sunday, the day of creation and of resurrection. The very term “Lord’s Day” had become a Christian term for the first day of the week by the early second century. Sunday was and is in essence, a weekly anniversary of the Resurrection. But it takes time for all such a claim means to be unfolded. This is the domain of the church year.

The temporal pattern of the year and the reading, preaching, singing, and hearing of God’s Word over time itself witnesses to the holy history of God’s act focused on the unfolding story of Christ’s redeeming life, teachings, dying, and rising. The center point for the church was and is the Christian Passover—the Easter Pasch—which we celebrate as the three days at the climax of Holy Week. This, in turn, is approached by remembering our mortality and by preparing ourselves for the renewal of the baptismal covenant at Easter. The two other great feasts in the early church were Epiphany and Pentecost. The new ecumenical lectionary and calendar recover the relationship between Easter and Pentecost in the “Great Fifty Days” as a time of the outpouring of the Spirit.

Entering into the rhythms of the church year thus implies that our musical experiences sensitively unfold this. By working carefully together, pastors and musicians can provide an extraordinary opportunity for the congregation to “live into” the unfathomable riches of the cycles of Christian time. This implies that entering into the cycles of the liturgical year is a way of unfolding and exploring the gospel itself: opening the treasury of who Jesus is and what he does in and through a human community called forth to conversion and transformation. So we enter Advent/Christmas/Epiphany precisely as a way of expectation, reception, and the manifestation of the love of God in human form. But in so doing, the Scripture itself opens new dimensions of reality to us. The same is true of Lent/Easter/Pentecost. In this case, the central mystery of participation in the death and resurrection of Christ is at the heart of the journey.

Far from “playing church,” a genuine entry into these two focal cycles of the Christian year, with the interconnection of Old and New Testament and the treasury of the church’s prayer and song, provides the very pattern of the Christian life itself. This is why the pastor’s understanding of the cycles of time and the ability to guide the church’s worship through such feasts and seasons is itself a spiritual discovery. Because the community of faith and each faithful person continue to experience the changes of life—growth, suffering, joy, passages of various kinds, and death—the liturgical year is never the same. For our lives are constantly being reinterpreted into the story of God with us. In this manner, “Keeping time with Jesus” may never fall into a habitual routine or empty cycles of ceremony. Rather, in and through such remembrance and retelling, our very lives are given significance and a deeper sense of time and place.

Keeping Time “Between the Times”

But this leads us to a further aspect of the spirituality of the cycles of time. There is a tension that is part of the intrinsic nature of the Gospel claim itself. Christianity claims that the Messiah has come, ushering in the new age and opening up a way into the Kingdom of God. At the same time, the world and our human existence go on. Empires still rise and fall; there is birth and suffering and human passage and death. There is the already of death and resurrection and the salvation from sin and death, but there is unmistakably the not yet. The rule and reign of God have not fully come into human history. So we live between the times. This tension is the permanent feature of Christian worship and of the Christian life. The ongoing liturgy of Christ in the world still calls us to journey and to serve a broken, suffering world. The sanctification of time and place and human life cannot be possessed apart from the concrete world of human experience. Yet authentic Christian worship is a time and a place of remembering and rehearsing and proclaiming what is yet to be, while all the time being about the work of redemptive love, mercy, and justice among the human family.

Not only the year as the arena of sanctification but the week and the day as well, are part of the discipline and discovery of the spiritual life. The early church took the week, with the Lord’s Day at its beginning and end, as the most significant liturgical cycle. For Sunday—the day of Creation and of resurrection from the dead, the “first day” and the “eighth day”—was the paradigm of the gathering in the Spirit. Christians celebrated the Eucharist every Lord’s Day as the pattern for orienting all other times, including the liturgy of the hours for the sanctification of the day and the feasts and seasons in which Word and Eucharist reflected the unfolding of the larger story of salvation.

The pastor and musicians must therefore offer the treasury of this tradition to contemporary Christians. To be a community of living memory is thus to desire to live in light of who God in Christ is: his advent and birth, his appearance and death, and his resurrection, ascension, and life-giving Spirit is given to the community of faith. Within this discipline of time, we live with the symbols, the sign-actions of God in baptism and Eucharist, and the works of love and mercy.

A Theology of the Christian Year

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The resurrection of the crucified Christ is the point on which the weekly and annual cycles of the Christian calendar turn. In fact, it supplies the clue to the whole history of salvation and indeed the cosmos. Every Sunday and every Easter day is a commemoration and celebration of the resurrection of Jesus and an anticipation of the day when the same Lord will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and finally establish God’s universal kingdom.

Sunday

Let us begin by looking at Sunday. It was “on the first day of the week” that the tomb of Jesus was found empty (Matt. 28:1; Mark 16:2; Luke 24:1; John 20:1) and the risen Lord interpreted the Scriptures to the two on the road to Emmaus and revealed himself to them, and later to his other disciples, at the table (Luke 24:13–32, 33–49). In Paul’s time, the Christians at Ephesus gathered on “the first day of the week” to hear the apostle preach and to break bread (Acts 20:7–11). A century later, Justin Martyr reports that Christians from town and country gathered together in one place “on the day of the sun” in order to hear the Scriptures read and expounded and to take Eucharist: “We assemble on Sunday because it is the first day, that on which God transformed the darkness and matter to create the world, and also because Jesus Christ our Savior rose from the dead on the same day” (First Apology, 67). The contemporary Epistle of Barnabas, taking the recurrent first day as also the eighth, speaks of “celebrating with gladness the eighth day, in which Jesus rose from the dead,” “the beginning of a new world” (15:8–9) or, as Basil of Caesarea put it in the fourth century, “the image of the age to come” (On the Holy Spirit, 27). All these themes are resumed in Charles Wesley’s hymn “For the Lord’s Day”:

Come, let us with our Lord arise
Our Lord, who made both earth and skies;
Who died to save the world he made,
And rose triumphant from the dead;
He rose, the Prince of life and peace,
And stamped the day forever his …
Then let us render him his own,
With solemn prayer approach the throne,
With meekness hear the gospel word,
With thanks to his dying love record;
Our joyful hearts and voices raise,
And fill his courts with songs of praise.

When the followers of Jesus assemble “in his name,” they find the risen Lord present “in their midst” (cf. Matt 18:20). For the preacher, in particular, this is the ground and realization of the promise that, when the gospel is proclaimed, “whoever hears you, hears me” (Luke 10:16). All faithful preaching of “Christ crucified” (1 Cor. 1:23) is the gift of Christ’s enabling presence and a means by which the living Lord continues to speak to his people and to the world. Even when the Resurrection is not especially emphasized (and we shall see later that it is quite appropriate for the preacher to focus on other events in the Lord’s career over the course of the year), every sermon is implicitly a testimony to the Resurrection and an offer of eternal life to those who through Christ come to God in repentance, trust, and obedience. That the Christian assembly, and the preaching which is a constitutive element in it, regularly take place on a Sunday is an expression, in the symbolism of cosmic and historical time, of the foundational, continuing, and yet-to-be-fulfilled importance of the resurrection of the crucified Christ to the gospel, the history of salvation, and the destiny of the world.

The Eastern Orthodox think of every Sunday as “a little Easter.” Conversely, Athanasius of Alexandria had already called the fifty days of the Easter season “one great Sunday.” Let us look for a moment at Easter as the church’s yearly focus on Christ’s death and resurrection.

Easter: The Christian Passover

“Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us” (1 Cor. 5:7; cf. 13:1, 15:36). The earliest Christian Pascha appears to have been a unitary commemoration and celebration of Christ’s death and resurrection. In the Asian churches the feast was kept each year on 14 Nisan; in Rome, on the following Sunday. The Roman practice won out by the third or fourth century. The Easter night of Saturday to Sunday, during which the Paschal Vigil was held, remained in that time of keen eschatological expectation the favored moment for the Lord’s final advent. The Old Testament prophecies, whose reading formed the scriptural core of the vigil service, had found their first fulfillment in the death and resurrection of Christ, and now their universal consummation was awaited. Good Friday, which emerged into prominence with the more chronologically, geographically, and even dramatically oriented liturgical events of Holy Week around the sites of Jerusalem in the latter fourth century, had some earlier grounding in the weekly observance of Fridays as fast days. Palm Sunday, and then Maundy Thursday, became purely annual occasions in which the historical commemoration of the detailed events of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and the Last Supper was the dominant content.

Eastertide

From Tertullian we know also that, as early as the second century, Easter extended forward into a “most joyous season” of fifty days. During the entire seven weeks of Eastertide, Christians did not kneel for prayer but rather stood in order to mark the heavenly location of believers in the risen and exalted Christ, in anticipation of the general resurrection; nor did they fast, for they were enjoying a foretaste of the heavenly banquet with the messianic bridegroom. Easter was the season of the Alleluia, a hopeful sign of the time when “we shall do nothing but praise God” (Augustine). The oldest practice of the church draws heavily on the Fourth Gospel, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Apocalypse for scriptural readings during “the great fifty days”: the followers of Christ, rejoicing in the gift of the other Paraclete, the Spirit of truth, spread the good news of salvation and tasted the life of heaven.

Pentecost

The fiftieth day of Easter retained the name that could also designate the whole period: Pentecost. The first evidence we have of a special feast to “seal” the Pentecostal period comes from the fourth century. In dependence on Acts 2:1ff., the gift of the Holy Spirit to the 120 is commemorated and the Spirit’s abiding presence in the life and witness of the church is celebrated. Our oldest testimony to the feast links the descent of the Spirit to the ascent of Christ, and preachers continued to make the connection. A separate observance of the Ascension on the fortieth day (cf. Acts 1:3) is, however, attested only a little later than the evidence for the feast of Pentecost of the fiftieth. It may be that first Pentecost, and then Ascension as a distinct feast, together with the development of Holy Week, all mark a growing tendency to historicism in the church’s liturgical sense, where the church of the earliest centuries had held the death, resurrection, and exaltation of Christ closer together in a single mystery whose evangelistic and eschatological import was brought home to the assembled believers by the Holy Spirit.

The Empty Cross. The symbol of the empty cross with the rising sun speaks of the resurrection of Jesus. Often, as is the case with this cross, the INRI (Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews) is displayed at the head of the cross, as are the nails.

The permanent contribution of the Easter/ Pentecost season to the method and message of the preacher resides in its insistence on the theological inseparability of Christ and the Spirit. The Spirit of truth, the other Paraclete, brings to remembrance all that Jesus has said (John 14:26), takes the things of Christ and declares them (16:14), vivifies the flesh which even in the case of the Incarnate Word is of no avail on its own (6:63). When Peter preaches under the Holy Spirit’s inspiration, it is Christ crucified and risen that he proclaims, and baptism in the name of Jesus Christ is promised to bring the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:14ff., 38). It is only by the Holy Spirit that one can confess “Jesus is Lord” (1 Cor. 12:3), and when the Spirit is given to believers, it is to transform them into the likeness of their Lord (2 Cor. 3:18, cf. Gal. 5:5–6, 13–25). The Spirit enables Christ’s fellow-heirs to call God “Abba” (Rom. 8:14ff.; Gal. 4:6). It is through Christ that we have heard the gospel, become believers, and been sealed with the Holy Spirit as the pledge of our inheritance unto a day of redemption (Eph. 1:13–14, 4:30). “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in us, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you” (Rom. 8:11). What is thematically celebrated in “the Great Fifty Days” governs the message and method of all faithful preaching.

Beginning locally before the year 1000, the Western church has kept the first Sunday after Pentecost is Trinity Sunday. This more “dogmatic” feast can serve at least two purposes: it is a reminder that the work of our salvation—the self-giving incarnation and passion of the Son, his exaltation and continuing intercession, and the mission of the Spirit—is grounded in the eternal mystery of God; and it also allows us to rejoice in the fact that Christian worship is no less than a creaturely sharing in the life and communion of the Triune God.

Lent

The calendrical influence of Easter extends also backward through Lent. In the patristic church, the Paschal Vigil was the high moment for the administration of baptism into the death and resurrection of Christ. The climactic rites of Christian initiation described in the so-called Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus belong to the great service of Easter eve. After a preparatory catechumenate of several years, the learners finally emerged as “the elect,” and in the weeks immediately preceding Easter they underwent decisive instruction in the faith, summarized at last in the creed and in the Lord’s Prayer, and the candidates were solemnly exorcised in order to “make room” for the Holy Spirit who would henceforth fill their lives. Our season of Lent originated in the final weeks of preparation for baptism. It became also the season when penitents were made ready to have their baptismal privileges restored to them. Because we never outgrow our baptism, and indeed all of us continue throughout this life to struggle in grace to master the remnants of sin, it eventually came to be regarded as a salutary practice for all believers to “remake” their own baptismal preparations each year during Lent. In our own time, the Roman Catholic church, in a widely imitated step, has introduced into its paschal liturgy a “renewal of baptismal vows.” Traditional Scripture readings for Lent relate the story of redemption and include Old Testament types of baptism as well as Gospel episodes which have baptismal resonances. The preacher has the opportunity to recall Christians to their baptismal foundations, somewhat in the way the apostle Paul grounded his exhortations and ethical instructions in the decisive act of grace which baptism signifies (e.g., Rom. 6; 1 Cor. 6:11; 12:12–13; Col. 2:11– 3:17).

There is, however, a secondary pivot in what may perhaps be thought of as the irregular ellipse of the church year, namely the incarnation of the Word. It is Christmas as a focal celebration that we now look at.

Christmas: The Savior’s Birth

When Jesus saw the light of day, it was in fact rather the world that was being illuminated by the incarnation of the divine Word. The birth of the eternal Son of God from a human mother was the early dawn of a new day, the drawing near of “the Sun of righteousness” (Mal. 4:2). Although Scripture does not help us to fix Christ’s nativity on December 25 (Rome) or January 6 (Egypt), it was doubtless influenced along one track or another by the natural practice of observing the winter solstice as the point at which “the sun begins again to grow.” Eventually, the Roman date won out. That the present-day Slavonic Orthodox celebrate Christmas on a different date (thirteen days after what the rest of the world calls December 25) is only due to their refusal to make the “secular” transition from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar.

Epiphany

Some other aspects of Christ’s “manifestation” to the world were left to a January season of Epiphany (Greek epiphaneia; Latin manifestatio): his showing to the Gentiles (the Western church placed the visit of the Magi on January 6, whereas the East associates it directly with Christmas), his public appearance as the divine Son (the Eastern church places Christ’s baptism on January 6, and the Western church traditionally kept January 13), and the shining forth of his glory at the wedding feast of Cana (the second Sunday after Epiphany in the West). An ancient Latin Epiphany antiphon weaves these themes together beautifully:

Today the heavenly Bridegroom weds his Church,
Since Christ has washed away her sins in the Jordan;
The wise men hasten with their gifts to the royal wedding,
And the guests are made glad by the water turned to wine.

A hymn by Christopher Wordsworth prolongs this threefold manifestation into Christ’s ultimate epiphany:

Sun and moon shall darkened be,
Stars shall fall, the heavens shall flee;
Christ will then like lightning shine.
All will see his glorious sign;
All will then the trumpet hear,
All will see the Judge appear:
Thou by all wilt be confest,
God in Man made manifest.
Grant us grace to see thee, Lord,
Mirrored in thy holy word;
May we imitate thee now,
And be pure, as pure art thou;
That we like to thee may be
At thy great Epiphany;
And may praise thee, ever blest,
God in Man made manifest.

The preacher’s task is to allow the glory of God to be seen in the face of Christ Jesus (2 Cor. 4:6), so that, being by that beholding changed from glory into glory (3:18), the righteous by faith may at the last shine like the sun (Matt. 13:43).

Advent

Epiphany became, after Easter and Pentecost, the next most favored moment for Christian baptism; and the preceding season of Advent, which is confined to Western Christianity, may in that respect have had origins similar to Lent. The liturgical themes of Advent, however, offer only a few hints of preparation for individual baptism and seem rather to envisage more directly the first and final comings of Christ. They encourage Christians to relive the Old Testament expectations that they believe were fulfilled at Bethlehem and, simultaneously, to prepare themselves for the Lord’s return at the consummation. Isaiah is a favored source of Scripture lessons since the book lends itself to a “stereoscopic” reading that sees the prophecies as both realized in Christ and yet still outstanding until the End.

The preacher will use the season of Advent not only to build up to the celebration of Christmas but also, following medieval practice, to confront the “four last things” of death and judgment, heaven and hell. This is the existential application to each individual of Christ’s awaited coming again in glory to judge the quick and the dead (cf. 2 Cor. 5:10).

Two traditional feasts related to the date of Christmas are the Annunciation (March 25, nine months before December 25; cf. Luke 1:26–38) and the Presentation of Christ in the temple (February 2, forty days after Christmas; cf. Luke 2:22–40).

The Rest of the Year

If we were to draw the “irregular ellipse” of the church’s year, we should find the line fading into brokenness shortly after the feast of the Epiphany (January 6) until just before Lent (for many centuries the West had the pre-Lenten Sundays of Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima), and then again from Pentecost or Trinity Sunday until just before Advent (the twentieth-century Roman feast of Christ the King, now placed on the Sunday immediately preceding Advent, is but the most recent instance of anticipating the season). For long the “green” Sundays—the most “neutral” color for liturgical vestments—were numbered “after Epiphany” and “after Pentecost” or “after Trinity.” Beyond the first week or two, these scarcely constituted coherent season, although there may still be continuing tendencies to thematize the earthly life and ministry of Jesus (particularly the former) and the ongoing life and mission of the church in the second. The current Roman Catholic bluntly designates these periods as “ordinary time” (per annum).

“Ordinary Sundays” remain, however, precisely Sundays. That fact calls the preacher to bring the Scripture readings and the sermon into relation to the pivotal event and mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection.

Lectionaries

Lectionaries do not fall directly from heaven. Rather they codify and promote patterns in the liturgical reading of Scripture that have commended themselves to the church over a greater or lesser extent of time, space, and confessional tradition. They are necessary because it is impossible to read the whole of the Bible in a particular service of worship; they are valuable insofar as they allow the broad range of the biblical witness to be heard. Lectionaries perpetually exhibit a certain tension between the reading of entire biblical books in course (lectio continua) and the eclectic selection of passages from the canon that are appropriate to particular times and occasions. The more definite the theological or Christological content of a feast or season, the more likely are the lessons from the Old Testament and the New (Epistle and Gospel) to be arranged for their typological and thematic point and counterpoint; this is a strong testimony to the belief in the unity of the Scripture, although there is a danger that the Old Testament, in particular, will be used for snippets to match the New. On the other hand, the individual books of the Bible have a greater chance of communicating their characteristic message when they are read more continuously. Mixed cases are found in, say, the semicontinuous reading of Isaiah in Advent, or of St. John, the Acts, and the Revelation in Eastertide.

The many coincidences of lectionary patterns over time, space, and confessional boundaries bear witness to a remarkably common sense among Christians as to what Scriptures belong when, if the full range of redemptive history is to be commemorated, celebrated, and anticipated over a regularly recurring period (hitherto usually a year). In recent decades, various ecumenical efforts have been made to bring the various confessional practices into even greater harmony. In Britain, The Calendar and Lectionary (1967) of the semi-official Joint Liturgical Group, which spreads the readings over a two-year period, has exercised great influence on the official revisions of Anglican and Protestant churches. Unfortunately, this pioneering work has tended to isolate the British, since churches in other areas, particularly of the English-speaking world, have preferred to base themselves on the three-year Sunday and festive lectionary of the postconciliar Roman Catholic church (Lectionary for Mass, 1969). In particular, the pattern of “naming” the three years after the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke has proved popular. In some respects, however, the Roman lectionary has undergone adaptation in its reception by others. Thus the American Consultation on Common Texts, in order to avoid the sometimes strained typologies of the Roman Old Testament snippets, has attempted a more continuous reading of the Old Testament in each of the three years in the Sundays after Pentecost, with only a rough typological correspondence between the Pentateuch and Matthew, the Davidic narrative and Mark, and the prophets and Luke.

Protestant preachers in many regions and denominations are increasingly finding it a boon to have the scriptural matter of their sermons “provided” for them through the use of a lectionary. If, as Karl Barth almost implied on a couple of occasions, one should preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, the use of a lectionary offers a better chance for the Scriptures to relate to our current perceptions of the world and human affairs, rather than the other way around. This is not to say that a particular event may not sometimes impel the preacher to turn to another Scripture for the sermon, but the congregation ought not to be robbed of the steady and consistent reading of the Scriptures in the worship assembly.

We thereby come to one final theme that has tentatively surfaced at a number of points in our discussion and now needs to be dug out: the theme of history and mystery, of time and eschatology.

History and Eschatology

It is sometimes argued that the fourth century marked a dramatically new phase in the Christian understanding of history and of this temporal world. Certainly, it is no accident that this century—that of Constantine’s conversion—provides our first evidence for the practice of an annual Holy Week (Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday), a feast on the day of Pentecost (and soon a separate Ascension day), and a celebration of the Savior’s birthday and public appearance (with Christmas and Epiphany becoming distinct feasts). Yet it may be a mistake to discern a drastic change rather than a more subtle and gradual shift of emphasis. There was no sudden decline from kairos into chronos (to use a distinction beloved of an older biblical theology). The church’s Constantinian “settlement into the world” was foreshadowed, if H. Conzelmann’s exegesis of Luke-Acts in Die Mitte der Zeit has value at all, in the Lucan accommodation to the delay of the Parousia.

There was probably from the first touch of historical commemoration in the early designations, as we saw of Wednesday and Friday as weekly fast days. The weekly Sunday and the yearly Easter, both inferable from the New Testament writings, commemorate the raising of Jesus from the dead, which was considered as at least a historical event. The resurrection was, of course, more. That is why Christian worship is always also a celebration of Christ’s presence and an anticipation of the Lord’s return. With Christ, the final kingdom began its irruption into this world, and all our created time has become, as the Orthodox theologian Olivier Clement puts it, “porous” to God. Every Sunday, in particular, is a declaration of the eschatological qualification brought to time and history by the resurrection of the crucified Christ from the dead.

Over time, though so qualified, is not abolished. The Savior himself “needed”—we can infer after the event—the years of his earthly life, from the moment of his conception to the day of his ascension, for the multifaceted work of redemption. Moreover, the mystery of God’s design for the world apparently includes the centuries that have since passed. And still, the Parousia has not taken place. What is worked out in time and history will belong, we conclude, to the final kingdom of God, however marvelous the transformation it will undergo in the general resurrection which Christ’s presaged. If the Creator’s saving purpose accommodates itself to time and history in these ways, it is entirely appropriate to commemorate, celebrate, and anticipate it in the temporal symbolism that the church’s calendar represents. That is in no way to deny the openness of all Christian worship and the whole of Christian existence to the entire mystery of God.

The Origins of the Christian Year

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In the first centuries A.D. the cycle of Christian time grew out of the conviction that all-time finds its meaning in the death and resurrection of Christ. Thus the early Christians, beginning with the paschal event, extended the Christian calendar forward to Pentecost and backward to Lent and Holy Week. Later, in the fourth century, Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany were developed to complete the cycle.

The Easter Cycle

In the first days of the life of the church following Pentecost, there is no indication of any observance of special times. However, it is clear that by the time of Paul’s ministry it had become customary for local communities to gather for the breaking of bread on the first day of the week, and it has been suggested that occurred after sundown ending the Sabbath (see Acts 20:7–12). By the end of the first century, the observance of the first day by common worship seems established, as was the observance of the fourth and sixth days of the week with fasting (see Didache, chaps. 1 and 14.) For most of the church, this shaping of the week sufficed, and one week was like every other. The Gentile church had no reason to adopt the major annual festivals of Judaism. However, it seems likely that the community in Jerusalem continued to observe Passover, with its day of preparation a memorial of the death of Jesus. This community was largely dispersed following the destruction of the city by Titus, and our earliest evidence for the annual observance of Passover by Christians comes from Asia Minor. For example in the Epistula Apostolorum, 15, a document assigned to Asia Minor in the second century (perhaps the first half of the century), the risen Christ is presented as addressing the apostles in the following words:

And you, therefore, celebrate the remembrance of my death, i.e., the Passover; then will one of you be thrown into prison for my name’s sake, and he will be very grieved and sorrowful, for while you celebrate the Passover, he who is in custody did not celebrate it with you. And I will send my power in the form of my angel, and the door of the prison will open, and he will come out and come to you to watch with you and to rest. And when you complete my Agape and my remembrance at the crowing of the cock, he will again be taken and thrown in prison for a testimony, until he comes out to preach, as I have commanded you.

In Asia Minor, the preparation of the Passover (the fourteenth day of the first spring month, Nisan) was observed with fasting, and a vigil was kept through the night of Jewish feasting until cockcrow when the observance was ended with a simple Eucharist. When it became difficult to observe the day according to the Jewish calendar, which was adjusted as needed by rabbinical authorities, some Christians in Asia Minor adopted the local version of the Julian calendar and kept their Passover on the fourteenth day of its first spring month, Artemisios. When the capital of the empire moved to Constantinople in the fourth century, the Roman calendar was adopted in Asia Minor, and we encounter its designation of 14 Artemisios, April 6, as a fixed date associated with Pascha (the Aramaic word for Passover adopted by Christians). By the third century in the West, on the other hand, the historical date of the Lord’s death had been computed to have been March 25.

The emperor Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem in 132, and all the circumcised, including Christians, were forbidden to enter the new city, Aelia, built upon the rubble of the old. With the expulsion of Jewish Christians, Gentile bishops came to assume leadership of the Jerusalem church. It is believed that it was this mixing of Gentile leadership with local Jewish Christian custom that led to the observance of the paschal fast on Sabbath and the vigil through the night from Sabbath to the Lord’s Day, with the concluding Eucharist in the early hours of Sunday morning, in accordance with prevailing Gentile custom. So the annual Passover became Easter Sunday. For many in the second century, the annual paschal fast on Sabbath was joined to the weekly fast on Friday to yield a two-day fast, and in the following century, both Syria and Egypt yield evidence of the further extension of the paschal fast to six days, the “Holy Week” still known to us.

In the second century, we encounter significant evidence that the celebration of our Lord’s triumph, begun with the Eucharist that terminated the paschal fast, was extended for fifty days, called the Pentecost. This was probably derivative from the counting of fifty days to the Feast of Weeks in Judaism, but it took on a distinctive Christian character as a period of rejoicing during which fasting and kneeling in prayer were considered inappropriate. During the third century this period, but especially Pascha itself, came to be considered the most appropriate time for baptism, and in some churches, the immediately preceding weeks were devoted to the preparation of candidates for that rite. After the Council of Nicea (A.D. 325) that period was extended to the forty days we know as Lent.

The Christmas Cycle

The date of our Lord’s birth is not known, and the Gospels are clearly indifferent to the question. Mark, indeed, does not mention the Nativity and is content to present the baptism in Jordan as the beginning of the gospel. Around the turn of the second to the third century, Clement of Alexandria reports that some Basilideans celebrated the baptism on January 6, and there is reason to believe that he associated this same date with the birth of Jesus. This would be just nine months after the paschal date of April 6, and some of the early paschal homilies in Asia Minor speak not only of the Lord’s passion and resurrection but also of the Incarnation and so of the conception in the womb of the virgin. By the fourth century, we know that the date of the Lord’s death had been taken to be that of the conception as well, allowing the setting of the Nativity date nine months later. As January 6 appeared in the East as that nativity date, so by the early fourth century (or earlier) December 25 was recognized as the nativity date in the West. That was also the date of a pagan festival, the Birthday of the Invincible Sun, instituted by the emperor Aurelian in A.D. 274. The relationship between the new Roman festival and the Christian association of the birth of the Lord with the same date remains disputed. Some believe that Christians chose the date already celebrated and recast it as the birthday of the Sun of Righteousness. Others suppose the Christian date to have been arrived at independently by computation from March 25, established as the date of the Lord’s death (and conception?) long before Aurelian’s festival.

In the course of the fourth century, the two festivals of the Nativity of Christ (December 25) and the Epiphany (January 6) were mutually adopted in East and West. In the East, Epiphany celebrated both Christ’s birth and baptism in the Jordan. In the West, however, the Matthean nativity narrative was divided, and the January 6 festival celebrated the visit of the Magi, leading to the restricted understanding of Epiphany as “the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles.”

Not until the sixth century did there appear the fast before Christmas, a fast of forty days progressively shortened at Rome to the four Sundays of Advent, which we now know as the opening season of the Christian year.