Liturgical Studies
.oOo.
Calendar, Time, and Eternity
- Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann, on the original
Structure of Christian Worship: Chapter 2 of Introduction to Liturgical
Theology (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, Crestwood, NY; 2d ed. 1975)
pp. 40-71; including "The Mystery of the Eighth Day" (this section is also available as a separate pdf): the Church goes beyond the Sabbath just as the resurrection goes beyond creation (and thus the Seventh
Day Adventists and some 'messianic Jewish' movements, who don't get the difference between Sabbath and Lord's Day,
are deeply mistaken).
- Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann, "Theology
and Eucharist": St. Vladimir's Seminary Quarterly, Vol.
5, No. 4, Winter 1961, pp. 10-23.
- Thomas J. Talley, "The
Day of His Coming", a discussion about the origins of the feast of Christmas
which appears in The Origins of the Liturgical Year (Pueblo Books,
Liturgical Press, Collegeville: 1986 and 1991), Part Two, sections 1 through
6 (pp. 79-103). Shows that there is little evidence for the popularly held
assumption that Christmas was instituted to counter the pagan Saturnalia.
Talley published a sequel to this in 2003, the next item here:
- Thomas J. Talley, "Further Light on the Quartodeciman Pascha and the Date of the Annunciation", Studia Liturgica 33 (2003) 151-58. Pascha originally celebrated both the death and resurrection of Christ and his incarnation. For this reason, his conception and his passion were held to have occurred on the same date. Thus from the date of his crucifixion— 14 Nisan (Passover) on the Jewish calendar— one could compute the date of his birth. The fourteenth of Nisan was held variously in the early church to have occurred on April 6 or March 25. Add nine months to either date, and you have January 6 (Epiphany/Theophany) or December 25 (Christmas). Christmas is not the Christian adoption of the festival of the birth of the invincible sun, established by the emperor Aurelian on December 25 in A.D. 274. Indeed, the new evidence strengthens the suggestion that Aurelian, sought to unify Rome’s competing religions by taking a cue from the growing Christian sect’s celebration on December 25 of the birth of Christ whom, following Malachi 4.2, they already called “the Sun of Righteousness.”
- St. John of Damascus, “On
Astrology”: Book II, Chapters VI and VII of his Exact Exposition
of the Orthodox Faith.
