Easter and Pascha - Why the Calendar Difference

A Renaissance Pope, Julius Caesar, and Izni

St Constantine and the 318 Fathers of Nicea I

holding the Creed, or “Symbol of Faith”

 in Greek

People, Places, and Events that Influence the Easter - Pascha Calendar  

Modern commercial calendars have a citation that will generally read “Eastern Orthodox Easter.” Typically, this citation falls a week after the Western Easter.  You may find it as advanced as five weeks later into the month of May.

The reasons for the differences in the calendar can be found by looking back over the past seventeen hundred years at the people, places, and events that influenced this occurrence.

When the First Ecumenical Council met in the city of Nicea, now known as the town of Iznik, Turkey, the Council’s main focus was to refute Arius and hammer out the basics of Christology and produce an agreed-upon Creed.  The 318 Fathers assembled had a secondary task: to arrive at a common date for Easter.

At that time, certain Churches of the East followed the Hebrew lunar reckoning of the 14th Nissan, since the Gospel sets the passion narratives clearly in the context of the Jewish Passover.

The assembly decided to adjust to the Greco-Roman solar calendar of that era established by Julius Caesar, but using a formula that took into account the lunar element.  The trigger was the Vernal or Spring Equinox.  The full moon that followed the equinox was the second calculation.  Arriving at the Sunday that coincided with or followed the full moon determined Easter.  For a millennium and a half the Church had a common date to celebrate its holiest of feasts.

By the high Middle Ages it had become apparent that Julius Caesar’s calendar was slowly losing minutes, adding up over the centuries to almost two weeks!

The Gregorian calendar, also called the Western calendar, was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582.  The Vatican astronomers and a Calabrian physician corrected the lapse by a leap that tallied 13 days.  The Catholic countries of Europe followed suit.  The Russian Empire adopted it as a civil calendar only after the Bolshevik Revolution at the start of the 20th century.

The Eastern Orthodox Churches clung to the Julian reckoning until the 20th century.  Some Eastern European churches continue to observe the Julian [or Old] calendar; even those that have adopted the Gregorian [or New] calendar fall back to the Julian reckoning to compute Easter for the sake of the unity of Pascha, as Easter is known among the Orthodox.

In 1997, the World Council of Churches (WCC), in Aleppo, Syria, devised and then reaffirmed in 2009 in Lviv, Ukraine, a formula to return to a common paschal date with the strictures of the Council of Nicea: a concession to the Orthodox.  The first principle would be to use the actual date for the spring equinox and for the occurrence of the full moon.  This would eliminate a 13-day gap between the “ecclesiastical” equinox entrenched in the two calendars, as well as the occasional appearance of a full moon during that time span, which now sometimes gives the Western Churches a very early Easter and the Eastern Churches a Pascha in May.

The Orthodox would have to forsake a medieval interpretation that insists that the Christian feast day follow the Jewish Passover. This accounts for the frequency of the Orthodox date being a week later than the West’s.

The WCC’s efforts rest on on a true desire for the Churches worldwide to celebrate the Lord’s rising together.  Inertia and mistrust put other issues in the forefront.  In the Orthodox Church, each independent Church would need to ratify the change.

By becoming aware of the roots of the complexity behind the calendar differences we might be more respectful and understanding; despite two calendars, in spirit we still rejoice together in the core mystery of our faith… that Christ is risen