In this year 2025, the Jubilee year of the Council of Nicaea, Christians all over the world celebrate Easter on the same day
By Augustine Sokolovski, Doctor of Theology, Priest
On Sunday, April 20, 2025, the Orthodox Church celebrates Easter. In the liturgical calendar, this day is called «Bright Resurrection of Christ.»
This is the most important, most original, and most solemn Orthodox church holiday. There is no equal to it among other celebrations, remembrances, and feasts.
The celebration of Easter lasts exactly forty days. But even after that, the Easter celebration does not end. It passes into the Ascension of Christ. Then, exactly ten days later, Easter finds its fulfilment on the Day of Pentecost.
Pentecost is the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles. The Descent of the Holy Spirit made the Risen Christ visible and present throughout the Universe. In history, this was accomplished first through the Apostles and then through the Church. Therefore, Pentecost is the culmination of Easter.
In the Russian Orthodox Church, the feast of Pentecost is most often called the day of the Holy Trinity. Church science calls such a new understanding of the essence of a holiday from history to dogma its transformation into an ideological or theological celebration. In Orthodoxy, this is a rather rare phenomenon. On the contrary, in Western Christianity there are many such ideological feasts.
The celebration of Easter is preceded by Great Lent. This is the only completely obligatory, most ancient and most important fast in Orthodoxy. In one form or another, it is observed by all Christians: Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants.
In Orthodoxy, the main attention during Lent is paid to abstinence from food, and time is devoted to ascetic feats, and in Catholicism and Protestantism, to helping the poor and giving up bad habits and hobbies.
Orthodox holiness is first and foremost ascetic righteousness, while Western Christianity has always had a strong ethical and missionary focus. In the Orthodox tradition, Great Lent lasts several days longer than in Western Christian denominations. Therefore, from the last Sunday before Lent, called Forgiveness Sunday, to the day of Holy Easter, exactly 50 days pass.
50 days in the Bible is a special, sacred, symbolic number. Fifty days is a sign of completeness. In the Old Testament, it is a remembrance of the giving of the divine law, and a designation of a sacred jubilee.
The year is 2025. A day is a part of a year, and a year is a collection of days. In our church tradition, the passage of half of the Easter period is called «Mid-Pentecost». So, Mid-Pentecost, that is, half of the way from Easter to the Descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles, is also a special holiday. There are even churches dedicated to Mid-Pentecost.
25 years have passed since the beginning of the 21st century. Another 25 years will pass, another quarter of a century, another «Mid-Pentecost» years, and many of us will no longer be on earth.
Great Lent, which began on March 3 this year, was a time of repentance. Repentance is greatly helped by the memory of death. Great Lent consists of two parts. The first part is a sorrowful memory of oneself, this is asceticism. The second part, Holy Week, is the memory of the death of the Lord on the Cross.
Great Lent is also called Easter Lent, since the time of repentance and remembrance ends with the great joy of the Resurrection of Christ. Worthy preparation for Easter is the goal of Lent.
This year is special. After all, exactly one thousand seven hundred years ago the First Ecumenical Council took place in Nicaea. Then the Church once and for all, unequivocally and for all proclaimed that the Only Begotten Son of God was crucified on the Cross. The Son of God died for us on the Cross. Therefore, God Himself forgave us in Jesus Christ.
Like us in the 21st century, the Fathers of the Council of Nicaea in 325 were aware that a quarter of a century had already passed. It was obvious to them that time passes in an instant. After all, just a quarter of a century earlier, the Church had been through a time of severe persecution.
During the reign of the Roman Emperor Diocletian (284–305), the Great Persecution (303–313) of Christians began. But the Church stood firm.
Saints George, Catherine of Alexandria, and Pantaleon became martyrs of the Great Persecution. Saints Nicholas of Myra and Spyridon of Cyprus were its confessors. This is how the Church called the saints who suffered for their faith but remained alive.
In 313, Emperor Constantine the Great (272–337) signed a document that went down in history as the Edict of Milan. It recognized Christianity as a permitted religion. Thus, persecution of Christians was officially stopped. Just twelve years later, and this is also a sacred, biblical number, the Ecumenical Council was convened by Constantine’s will.
After the Council of Nicaea, the Church entered a period of prosperity and, at the same time, dogmatic definitions. Pagan rulers seemed to have gone forever into the past. It seemed that the era of martyrdom was over. But it seemed that the path to holiness was closed. Therefore, contemporaries and disciples of the Council of Nicaea laid the foundation for monasticism. The first genuine monasticism was a craving for voluntary martyrdom in the asceticism of self-restraint. Then, in the Christian West, monasticism became learned and missionary.
Orthodox holiness is, first, ascetic holiness. After all, it was from them, the first monks, these sons of the Council of Nicaea, that we inherited the practice of Great Lent in the form we know it in Orthodoxy.
Tradition says that in ancient times, before the beginning of Lent, monks went to the desert, where they lived for 40 days without food and water. The day before, they reconciled with others and asked for forgiveness for all sins. After all, each of them understood that not everyone would be able to survive the subsequent hunger, thirst and other dangers.
This mutual forgiveness reminded them of the last days and therefore had an eschatological character. Eschatology is the science of the last times in theology. From this farewell forgiveness of monks before the beginning of Great Lent, the rite of mutual forgiveness on Forgiveness Sunday, with which the Church began Lent, originated. In Orthodoxy, this ritual is still solemnly performed during the solemn vespers.
But let’s return to the Council of Nicaea. An Ecumenical Council is a meeting of the episcopate of the Roman Empire, and sometimes also of some bishops outside it. The name itself speaks of this. After all, the «Universe», in Greek «oikumene», was the name given to all the inhabited lands in general, and to the inhabited lands par excellence, that is, the Roman Empire.
This is why the Bishop of Constantinople, the main city of Byzantium, eventually began to bear the title of «Ecumenical Patriarch». Since before the accession to the throne of Emperor Constantine and the signing of the Edict of Milan, Christianity in the Empire was considered an unauthorized religion and was persecuted, holding Ecumenical Councils in the early days of the Christian Church was impossible.
The city of Nicaea is in Asia Minor, in the historical region of Bithynia. The Greek name of this city literally translates as «victorious» or «victory». Today, this city is in Turkey and is called «Iznik». It is the same word as Nicaea, just pronounced in the Turkish manner, just like the French «Nice» on the Cote d’Azur. Everything everyday has theological or sacred contexts. Many everyday things have theological or sacred contexts.
The reason for the convocation of the Church Council was the teaching of Arius (250–336). He was a priest from Alexandria, or, in the language of ancient church terms, a presbyter of the Alexandrian Church. We know very little about the circumstances of his life. We have no data on his biography. It is assumed that he was born in the middle of the 3rd century in Libya or Alexandria.
Obviously, Arius had considerable authority among believers. With the end of persecution of Christians, the teachings he spread went far beyond the Egyptian capital. It should be noted that Egypt was not only the granary of the Roman Empire, but also the territory where the Jewish biblical faith, and later Christianity, found its greatest growth.
According to Orthodox teaching, the Son of God became man in Christ Jesus. Being a Christian and a priest of the Orthodox Church in Alexandria, Arius of course accepted this teaching. But he gave it his own interpretation and claimed that it was the only correct one. This is what made him a heretic. For heresy is neither a mistake nor an incorrect opinion, but the persistence in presenting as truth what has been recognized as false.
Arius taught that the Son of God was created. This meant that God the Word, the Logos, spoken of in the opening words of John’s Gospel (John 1:1), was once created by God the Father. If this were true, the Revelation that Christ proclaimed would not be complete. It would then come from man, and like all human knowledge, would be merely an interpretation. Furthermore, if the Son of God were a creation of God, He simply could not have saved men through His death on the Cross and His Resurrection. Thus, the connection between dogma and the Easter celebration was revealed Thus, the connection between dogma and the Easter celebration is clearly visible.
There are different versions of the origin of Arius’s teaching. The first version says that he was initially influenced by Alexandrian philosophy, so he allegedly borrowed his doctrine from philosophers.
Another version suggests that Arius was a student of Antiochian theology. In this case, he became an opponent of philosophy. Thus, being a consistent Antiochian, he based his teaching exclusively on the literal understanding of the text of the Holy Scripture.
The beginning of the fourth century was the time of the most severe persecutions in the ancient history of Christianity. As we have already mentioned, it was the so-called Great Persecution or the persecution of Emperor Diocletian. This event was so significant that some ancient Eastern Churches began a new era, that is, a new chronology, from this historical moment. Diocletian considered Christians enemies of the state. At the same time, he reformed the Empire.
Thanks to Diocletian’s reforms, the Roman Empire in its eastern part, Byzantium, lasted another 1150 years. After all, Constantinople was captured by the Ottomans in 1453. At the same time, the Ottomans themselves did not consider themselves destroyers of the history of New Rome on the Bosporus, but its continuers.
Perhaps the most important of all the reforms was the division of the Empire into two parts: the East and the West. At the head of these huge parts were placed two emperors. These two emperors were subordinate to two other rulers with the title of Augustus — in the East and in the West respectively.
Surprisingly, the division of the Churches into Orthodox and Catholic subsequently occurred along the same boundaries that Diocletian had once established. Was it a kind of time bomb, a sly grin of a persecutor? But thanks to this reform, the Empire managed to survive and exist for an incredibly long time. Christianity managed to spread both in the East and in the West, while becoming uniquely united in diversity. Perhaps, at least in part, Diocletian thus atoned for his sin?
But let us return to Arius. I believe that consciously and perhaps without realizing it, Arius was creating a kind of theological imitation of Diocletian’s political reform. In his scheme, the Son became a kind of co-ruler with the Heavenly Father. Whether Christ was transformed into an emperor-co-ruler, or, together with the Holy Spirit, into a ruler with the title of Augustus, is not important to us. Moreover, it is not entirely clear how exactly Arius taught about the Spirit.
Diocletian did indeed see Christianity as an implacable enemy of the state. Arius «reformed» the Holy Trinity to show that Christians were not enemies at all. Moreover, within the framework of such logic, the theology of Christians would not only not contradict, but would legitimize the emperor’s reforms. Whether this is true or not, we will never know.
It is noteworthy that Emperor Constantine himself, who initially rejected Arianism at the First Ecumenical Council, sided with the Arians at the end of his life. Old age was approaching him, and he was increasingly turning into a dictator.
Researchers tell us that Arianism, in which God the Father was the creator of the Son, eventually came to seem to him a more suitable model to follow than the «democratic» Holy Trinity of the Orthodox Church, in which the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are completely equal.
It is very important that if the Church Fathers likened the Holy Trinity to earthly realities, they did not resort to the analogy of government, but to the human soul. It was precisely by the likeness of the unity of reason, word, and memory that Saint Augustine taught about the unity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the Trinity. Moreover, in his epochal work «On the City of God» Augustine asserted that the Kingdom of God is a Republic, at the head of which is Christ Himself.
The Ecumenical Council of Nicaea formulated the Creed. The main element of this document was the assertion that Jesus Christ is the incarnate Son of God, Consubstantial with God the Father. The Nicaean Creed also speaks of faith in the Holy Spirit. It should be noted that in that era, each local Church, and often each diocese, had its own Symbol of Faith. But from the moment of the Ecumenical Council, they all had to correspond to the content of what was proclaimed in Nicaea.
Here is the text of the Nicene Creed. Nowadays, it is not used in worship. However, Orthodox Christians should not only remember its content thoroughly but even learn it by heart.
“We believe in One God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible.
We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, the only begotten, that is, of the essence of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father, by Whom all things were made both in heaven and on earth. Who for us man, and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate and was made man; He suffered, and the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven; From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
And we believe in the Holy Spirit.
But those who say: ‘There was a time when He was not;’ and ‘He was not before He was made,’ and ‘He was made out of nothing,’ or ‘He is of another substance’ or ‘essence,’ or ‘The Son of God is created,’ or ‘changeable,’ or ‘alterable’ – they are condemned by the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.”
The last part of the Nicene Creed is the so-called anathema, that is, the excommunication of heretics from the Church. And this is precisely the Catholic and Apostolic Church. In the following Creeds, particularly in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed that we use, this anathema will be omitted, but the words about the Church will remain. Thus, the Catholic and Apostolic Church will become a new part of the Creed. To the two original properties of the Church, its characteristics, in the Creed, two more will be added. The confession of faith in the Church sounds like this: ‘’We believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.”
Arius was condemned and excommunicated from church fellowship. After this decision of the Council of Nicaea, he could no longer receive communion or serve the liturgy in the Church. Little is known about the circumstances of his subsequent biography. Arius died in Constantinople. According to eyewitnesses, death overtook him when he was hastily heading to the church to receive reconciliation in faith and to be returned to Eucharistic communion.
The First Ecumenical Council marked the beginning of a new era. Christianity became a powerful theological and philosophical force. It became obvious that it was to be not just a moral teaching or a system of rules and regulations, but a dogma, that is, a way of speaking about God, who was destined to constantly transform this world.
The history of the Council of Nicaea is well documented. We know the names of the participants, the circumstances of the event and the decisions made. At the same time, it is obvious that the past is the sister of oblivion, and therefore not everything was preserved. What remained unknown was often supplemented by popular piety.
Thus, according to church tradition, Saint Nicholas (270–343) was among the participants of the Council. Moreover, according to the same tradition, Nicholas was not only present at Nicaea, but actively opposed Arius. When Arius continued to defend his beliefs, Nicholas allegedly struck him with his hand. Subsequent tradition, lives, sermons, and even liturgical texts repeated this story. Moreover, in the Middle Ages this story was taken as an argument that Christians should persecute heretics following the example of Saint Nicholas. At the same time, we know that Christ did not approve of violence in the Gospel. «Put away your sword, for he who takes the sword will perish by the sword,» Jesus said to Apostle Peter in the last minutes of His earthly life (Matthew 26:52).
What did Saint Nicholas actually do at the Council of Nicaea? It is known that in the ancient rhetorical tradition, a teacher who listened to his student’s speech and remained dissatisfied with the quality of his argumentation had to pat him on the cheek in a friendly and fatherly way. This is exactly what St. Nicholas did. But since Arius was not a cleric, that is, an active priest of the diocese of Nicholas, the city of Myra in Lycia, Arius’ supporters obviously protested. For a formal violation of canonical order, Nicholas was punished. But soon, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, this erroneous decision was reversed.
All this once again confirms the image of St. Nicholas as a merciful shepherd. The oratorical gesture of the saint speaks of his high education. Nicholas was not only a shepherd of his people but also belonged to the cultural elite of society. Undoubtedly, he not only preached beautifully, but also wrote magnificently. One can only mourn the fact that none of his writings have reached us.
History is not just memory and recollection, but also the sister of oblivion. According to St. Augustine, the Lord, being outside of time, became incarnate and Himself became temporary to free us from time.
Finally, it was in Nicaea that the rule for celebrating Easter was determined for all Churches. In the first centuries of the Church’s existence, there were at least three main traditions for celebrating Easter.
- Referring to the Apostle John the Evangelist, who, according to tradition, was the founder of the Church of Ephesus, the Christians of Asia Minor celebrated Easter on the 14th day of the spring month of Nisan, approximately as the biblical people celebrated it in the Old Testament.
- The main Churches, Rome and Alexandria, and many others after them, celebrated Easter on the first day of the week, that is, on the Sunday after the first spring full moon after the equinox.
- The third way of celebrating Easter, every Sunday, was widespread in all churches. The Council of Nicaea decided to unite the last two traditions.
The principle for determining the date of Easter was now: once a year on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.
And therefore, following the Fathers of the Council, the Church celebrates Easter on the first Sunday of spring once a year, and the small Easter, every Sunday, is celebrated by us every Sunday every week.
The difference in the celebration of Easter between Orthodox Christians on the one hand, and Roman Catholics and Protestants on the other, is explained by the fact that in determining the date of Easter, Orthodoxy adheres to the Julian calendar. This calendar is currently 13 days behind the modern Gregorian calendar.
Therefore, the spring equinox in Orthodoxy falls on April 3 instead of March 21. Usually, the dates of Easter in the East and West differ, and Orthodox Easter is almost always later.
It is a wonderful coincidence from God that in this year 2025, the Jubilee year of the Council of Nicaea, Christians all over the world celebrate Easter on the same day. This is truly a biblical sign. For the Church, as a Community of Interpreters, this is a great inspiring call to reflection and gratitude.
CHRIST IS RISEN!
