Lazarus Abboud
The First Ecumenical Council completely separated the Christian Pascha from the Jewish Passover and freed us from following their calendar, and Rome and Alexandria followed the custom of Pascha. Thus the First Ecumenical Council proclaimed the following:
“We announce to you the good news concerning the agreement about the holy Pascha: that this matter has been settled rightly, so that all the brethren who were in the East and used to celebrate Pascha with the Jews shall henceforth celebrate Pascha, the most glorious and most holy feast, at the same time as the Church of Rome celebrates it, and as you and all who have celebrated it thus from the beginning celebrate it”(1)
And among the words of the Emperor Constantine (the Saint): he declared that it is not at all fitting, especially for this most holy feast of all feasts, that we follow the tradition or calculation of the Jews …therefore we must have nothing in common with the Jews”(2)
All the churches have since followed the rule by which Rome and Alexandria celebrate, and the rule upon which Pascha is determined is the following: ((One waits for the completion of the moon, that is, for it to become full, after the spring equinox on 21 March. The first Sunday after the completion of the moon is the Sunday of the feast of Pascha. Accordingly, there are three pillars to this rule: the spring equinox, the first full moon after it, and the Sunday following the full moon)).
For the principle upon which the unification of the feast was built is neither doctrinal nor does it follow the tradition of the Apostles, for the Apostles themselves were divided into two traditions:
The first, according to Saint John the Theologian: a first tradition that celebrated on the fourteenth of Nisan (with the Jews), on whatever day of the week it fell, even if it fell on a Tuesday or a Monday. And it celebrated on the day of the Lord’s death on the cross the commemoration of the death, the passion, and the resurrection of the Lord — that is, the resurrection and the crucifixion on the same day.
And the second: according to the teachings of Peter and Paul, the two chiefs of the Apostles, which the churches such as Rome followed, for they celebrated Sunday for the resurrection and Friday for the crucifixion (see Asad Rustum, vol. 1, pp. 81-85).
For the rule did not come from a principle that is neither theological nor doctrinal, but rather from the following principle: “The feast of Pascha, which is of great holiness, must be celebrated everywhere on one and the same day, and it is not fitting that we differ in opinion over something sacred”(3). The three rules that can be understood from the decree(4) are:
1. The entire Church must celebrate the feast of the world’s salvation through the resurrection of the Savior on the same day.
2. The Church must not follow the Jewish calculation but must have its own calculation.
3. The customs of Rome, Egypt, and Greece must be followed.
The difference that exists also does not go back to a doctrinal or theological cause, and neither the West nor the East violated the rule of the Ecumenical Council. The difference goes back to the fifteenth century, when it was discovered that the Julian calendar is not entirely accurate and is thirteen days behind; for astronomers discovered the error of the calendar in the days of Pope Gregory in the year 1582, and Pope Gregory decided to reform the calendar, which was named after him the Gregorian calendar. And the adoption of this calendar affected the result of the rule, for when the 21st of March arrives in the Gregorian calendar, it is the 8th of March in the Julian calendar which we follow as Orthodox.
The Westerners did not violate the rule of the Ecumenical Council as some unfortunately claim, alleging that only we have preserved the canon of the Council (see the article by George Ghandour). For the Ecumenical Council did not impose the following of the Julian calendar alone, nor that we should not follow what is more accurate; rather, it imposed the principle of the unification of the feast. And they did not violate the principle of the First Ecumenical Council, and we also did not violate it. Both of us, as Orthodox and as Catholics, have correct results, but also both of us are in error because together we violated the golden rule that the Council followed in determining Pascha, which is that the feast should be held on a single day throughout the entire universe. Together we violated the canon of the Council.
As for the failure to take a decision to celebrate together, it is more political than ecclesiastical or theological. For example, the Maronites in Lebanon do not want to celebrate with the Easterners because they see themselves as belonging to the West in terms of identity. And the Patriarch of the Syriac Catholics decided that his people in Homs, despite their being a numerical minority, should celebrate with their brethren in the West, and they left their brethren and neighbors in the neighborhood. And the papal ambassador in Syria, Cardinal Mario Zenari, called … and reminded the Syriac Catholic archdiocese of Pope Francis’s call to the bishops of the East to consolidate unity among the churches, even if it required following the Eastern calendar. (We will not celebrate together; whoever wants to come to us is welcome). Our pride sacrificed Christ.
The principle is neither doctrinal nor theological, and it is not as is rumored and taught in a wrong manner (by the admission of the Orthodox and Syriac church leaderships) (8), no “but rather that the Orthodox Church accepts a fixed date for the feast”(9). The principle is that the feast should be held together. For the principle has been violated, and the church leaderships, all of them Eastern and Western, especially in the East, bear this responsibility entirely. And perhaps the solution will not come from above but from the people. Metropolitan Georges Khodr says: “I am now certain that the common people may be closer to the spiritual reality than the company of the learned if they insist on the necessity of fixing one day for the resurrection”(10). We live in a region that wants to breathe Christ with sincerity and faithfulness, that wants not to see itself divided. The faithful have grown weary, and the date of the feast has become a stumbling block, and indeed other peoples mock the Lord because of us. Our peoples must speak their word, a prophetic word, in the face of all the pride of the ‘we,’ if we have a sincere desire for the salvation of the world and for preaching the gospel in the name of Christ Jesus.
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References
1. Collection of Ecclesiastical Canon Law, or the Canons of the Universal Christian Church, compiled, translated, and arranged by Archimandrite Hanania Elias Kassab, An-Nour Publications, 1989, p. 114.
2. Ibid., Collection of Ecclesiastical Canon Law, p. 115.
3. Ibid. (Collection of Ecclesiastical Canon Law), p. 116.
4. The First Ecumenical Council, Nicaea I (325), Fr. Michel Abras and Fr. Antoun Arab, The History of the Great Ecumenical Councils 2, the Pauline Library, first edition, 1997, pp. 161-162.
5. Article: Pascha between Two Calendars, Roger Asfar, the Ta’addudiyya website, dated Tuesday 2/04/2024.
6. Article: A Study on the Dating of Pascha, Fr. Touma Bitar, the website of the Family of the Holy Trinity.
7. Dr. Asad Rustum, historian of the Antiochian See, The Church of the City of God, Great Antioch, Part One 34-634 AD, Dr. Asad Rustum, publications of the Pauline Library, first edition, 1988.
8. a. The patriarchal decree issued by His Holiness Patriarch Mor Ignatius Aphrem II concerning the change of the date of Pascha: 404/2021.
b. Article: An Initiative to Unify the Date of Pascha in 2025, George Tawfiq Ghandour, Al-Watan newspaper, published on: 30 April 2021.
c. Article: Aram I Met the Pope, published in An-Nahar newspaper on 05-04-2018.
9. George Tawfiq Ghandour, The Road to the Great Orthodox Council, publications of the Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East, first edition, June 2015, p. 43.
10. Sunday Talk, Religion and Religions (2), Metropolitan Georges Khodr, p. 197.