True virtue would be to turn each day of the calendar into a remembrance of a saint
Augustine Sokolovski, Doctor of Theology, priest
Within the framework of one single year, several different times filled with theological meaning coexist in the Church. So, the new year, as a principle of counting time, begins on September 1 (14). In the language of the Church, this day is called the church new year. The liturgical texts of this day have many biblical, theological and moral meanings. A liturgical book of 12 volumes for each day of the year, called the Greek word “Menaion”, as well as classical collections of the lives of saints also begin in September. This is an ancient Christian tradition, still preserved not only in Orthodoxy, but also in Catholicism, as well as in other historical confessions, both in the East and in the West. The Church New Year and the time of the Church are a special topic worthy of all attention.
The key hymn of this day, which briefly conveys the essence of the holiday, which in the liturgical use of the Church is called a troparion, is the following appeal to God: “O Creator of all creation, who by Your power has determined the times and seasons, bless the annual circle of Your goodness, preserving Your people and Your city in peace, through the intercession of the Mother of God; and save us.”
The next most important hymn of the day, called the kontakion, addresses God like this: “O King who lives on high, Christ, Creator and Master of all creation, visible and invisible, Who created days and nights, times and years, now bless the annual circle; save and preserve Your city and Your people in peace, O Most Merciful.” These poetic words, and every genuine appeal to God is poetry, speak of the One whom the Faith of the Church calls “Creator of Heaven and Earth,” that is, literally in the Greek original, “Poet” and remind us of the advent of a new period of time.
It is interesting that this day does not in any way affect the general, “global” structure of the divine service and the order of Scripture readings during the liturgy. After all, the reading of Scripture during worship depends on Pentecost. It is from this day that it begins anew every year. Also after Pentecost the sequence of eleven Sunday morning gospel readings begins, as well as the alternation of eight tones in the liturgical books of the Sunday cycle. This period lasts exactly 33 Sundays and ends with the beginning of the preparatory Sundays of Great Lent. According to most ancient exegetes, Jesus’ earthly life lasted thirty-three years. In many details, Orthodox worship is characterized by special, often invisible symbolism.
Pentecost, the Descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles, is the culmination of Holy Pascha. This countdown from Pentecost is very important, since with its help the days of the whole year are read in the light of the event of the Resurrection of Christ. Believers hardly take this into account, which is very regrettable.
Through Easter and Pentecost, a new logic of time is formed, in which each Sunday sets a theme for the coming week for reflection on all the deeds and words of the Savior in the form in which the evangelists and apostles preserved them for believers after His Resurrection. In this theological sense, the entire New Testament is a grand narrative of the appearance of the Risen Savior to the Churches. Because of the cause-and-effect relationship between Easter and Pentecost, Scripture is called inspired. After all, the Holy Spirit Himself became the author of the sacred texts, that is, the guarantor of the correspondence of the narrative to history and the actor of their authenticity in Jesus Christ.
“The Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything that I have told you,” Jesus said about this (John 14:26). It is important that the word “Comforter” from the Gospel, in the biblical understanding, also means “intercessor”, “helper”, “advocate”. The Holy Spirit is the guarantor of the authenticity of Scripture, He is the voice of its living words, that wind and that breath in which, according to the word about the Prophet Elijah, there is God Himself (cf. 1 Kings 19:12).
According to ancient tradition and according to the logic of the sequence of divine services, the church year ends with the Beheading of John the Baptist, which is remembered on August 29 (September 11). Since the church year begins on September 1 (14), between these two days, the end and beginning of the year, a unique intermediate, neutral time, “time of exception” was created, as our contemporary, Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben (b. 1942), names similar phenomena in his works.
In relation to the day of the Beheading of John the Baptist, which marks the end and, at the same time, the abolition of biblical prophecy, the new church year, September 1 (14), begins on the third day. Thus, in the minds of the faithful, the great reminiscent image of the sacred rest of the Lord Jesus in the tomb is recreated. The three days of Jesus from Good Friday to the Resurrection are extremely important to Christian dogma. This “saving sacred three-day period” from the time of Easter is, as it were, reproduced again at the beginning of autumn, turning the latter into a special period of silence and reflection on time.
The Creed confesses the belief that the Lord “rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures.” This means that the meaning of this faith and this testimony must be sought in the sacred texts. According to the Gospel, Jesus was crucified on Friday evening and rose from the dead on the night from Saturday to Sunday. Thus, approximately a day and a half passed between death and Resurrection. Interpreters of the sacred texts have offered various explanations for this apparent discrepancy in timing. To properly understand the meaning of this discrepancy, it is necessary to turn to the concept of the “third day” in the Bible in order to restore its true biblical and theological sense.
According to the Bible, the third day is the day, or better, the period when, according to the people of biblical times, the deceased was finally and irrevocably dead. Antiquity did not possess precise medical knowledge. The cause-and-effect relationships between life and death, illness and old age were not clear. Therefore, the third day was prophetically identified as the most important criterion for determining the time of death. On the third day it became clear that this was death, and not, for example, lethargic sleep. The third day is the advent of irreversibility, the period when life has left the body forever and will never return.
The third day, according to Scripture, is the moment in time when all human hope for salvation is lost. No personal effort, external circumstances, or other intervention can change the course of events. The third day is the time when God Himself begins to act.
A careful reading of biblical texts, the most obvious of which on this topic is the prophecy of Jonah, will allow us to identify the special place that the third day has in Scripture. Jonah was thrown into the sea by the pagans, swallowed up by a huge fish; and for three days and three nights he was on the verge of death. Jonah was delivered by the Lord. Other similar evidence of God’s intervention in the course of human biography and history on the third day is contained in other sacred texts and prophecies. The story of the prophet Jonah is described in the book of the same name in the Bible. It contains only four chapters, but its significance in the formation of our civilization is colossal.
Secular things often have a special theological tectonics. It is able to be present and act, even when theologians themselves begin to forget about it. Thus, it is unlikely that every believer remembers that the church New Year falls on September 1, but in many countries, albeit for different reasons, the school year begins on this day. This is far from the only example of such a hidden “church etymology” in our everyday life.
The liturgical service on September 1 (14) is a composite one. It is a combination of the commemoration of the saints of the day and texts dedicated to the coming of the new year. The biblical basis for the latter is the coming of the Lord Jesus to the synagogue, which is narrated in the 4th chapter of the Gospel of Luke, verses 16–22. According to this reading, Jesus in the synagogue read a passage from the prophecy of Isaiah, where the prophet, called the “Old Testament evangelist” for the clarity of his predictions about the Messiah, announced the coming of a new, “favourable time of the Lord”. “And Jesus came to Nazareth, where he was raised, and, as usual, entered the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read,” the Gospel reading begins. The word “Sabbath” is extremely important here.
The three days between the Beheading of John the Baptist and the onset of the church new year are an amazing and unique time. It’s sabbatical time. It is this that allows chronology to stop; it gives believers the opportunity to reflect on the meaning of the Sabbath biblical rest. The third day is the time of the Lord’s action. God’s action is preceded by His rest. This is the inaction of God, with which the Book of Genesis marks the completion of the creation of the world. This is the Lord’s Rest, which in ancient biblical piety was celebrated on the Sabbath day. This is a time of inaction, a mysterious biblical prohibition on any activity. This is a time of inaction, when the mysterious biblical prohibition on any activity is in force.
This sacred causality, that is, the cause-and-effect relationship between the absolute and incessant prohibition on activity, which gives rise to inaction, and this inaction itself, under the name of “Law”, in its various modifications, was the focus of attention of the writer Franz Kafka (1883–1924) in his works. This is another example of the theological tectonics of secular, cultural, literary phenomena and factors.
It is extremely important to remember and understand that the celebration of the Sabbath was not abolished either in the New Testament or in the Church, and the commandment to honor the Sabbath continues to apply. The meaning and power of Sunday, as the day of the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus from the dead, acquired special significance in Christianity, and therefore the Sabbath seemed to fade into the shadows, but was not abolished. After all, Sunday, in its original sense, and in Muslim countries even today, remains the first day of the week, from which the other days of the week begin.
The Sabbath, in its Christian understanding, retains its enduring significance. Thus, prayer and communion during the liturgy on the Sabbath day are extremely important. They contribute to the proper perception of Sunday itself. Saturday remains the primary day of rest. This is a time of peace, rest and idleness for the living and a time of prayer for peace for those who have rested from their deeds, for they have left this world. The special dialectic here lies in the fact that “our departed” have rested from their deeds, but have not yet achieved “eternal rest,” which, in the special semantics of sacred, liturgical and church texts, means the bliss of the saints.
The prayer for eternal memory and peace needs clarification. After all, the wish for eternal memory, these two words that are proclaimed during the service of remembrance, is one of the shortest, and at the same time, the most significant prayers. It means a prayer for the fullness of the blessing addressed by God to those who have already left this world. But on especially solemn days, such as the Triumph of Orthodoxy on the first Sunday of Great Lent, eternal memory is proclaimed even to the Fathers of the Church and other revered saints. This is perhaps the only case when this wish relates to earthly chronology, when the Church, as a Society of Believers, prays and desires that the memory of the founding fathers of the Orthodox Tradition be passed down through the centuries.
At the same time, it is extremely important to avoid understanding words about eternal memory as simply a wish to remain in the memory of the living people as long as possible, that is, to be in their hearts, thoughts, and words. After all, in the same way, or even more intensely, people remember evil deeds. The memory of villains and evil geniuses is extremely strong. If such memory did not exist “in advance,” perhaps they would not have done much of what they did. But many of them sought through glory in atrocities. Thus, the thirst for long human memory encouraged the sin and malice of evil people. The biblical Ecclesiastes wrote about this with philosophical bewilderment in his book, and it was revealed in remarkable detail in the work “On the City of God” by the Father of the Church, Saint Augustine (354–430); Dostoevsky saw this in his modernity. The memory of the wicked and the memory of the righteous come into contact in history in a strange, tragic way. But eternal memory and eternal peace are the joy of fellowship of righteousness with Christ.
In contrast, the absence of such memory is synonymous with condemnation. As the Lord Jesus Himself once said in the Gospel: “Depart from me, I do not know you” (Matthew 7:23). Oblivion in the sight of God in the Holy Books is described in very simple words.
The prayer for the Sabbatical rest of the departed is a wish for them to unite with the righteous, to share that eternal memory, which forever is the property of many saints. The wish for eternal memory is combined with the remembrance of the great saints of Christian antiquity, whose names are preciously preserved in the memory of the Church, and whose souls live in the memory of God through the Holy Spirit, while their bodies await the general resurrection. “I believe in the One God <….> I await the resurrection of the flesh,” the ancient Apostolic Creed says about this with special “corporeal realism”.
Saints remember those who remember them. It is important to try to make friends in this holy assembly. As the Apostles’ Creed says: “I believe in the Communion of Saints.” True virtue would be to turn each day of the calendar into a remembrance of a saint. So that instead of abstract numbers and days of the week, which knows no rest in commercial modernity, at dawn and dusk of each day, believers remember the name of the saint who is celebrated. As we age, time passes faster, and the days become more and more similar to each other. Knowledge about the circumstances of life and the essence of the holiness of this or that saint can return uniqueness to the days and slow down the slipping time.
In search of lost time, as Marcel Proust once titled his masterpiece, God helps the Church, this Society of Believers wandering the path of history, through the remembrance of saints and thoughtful biblical discernment of days. So, the autumn melancholy time will become not just the beginning of “Autumn Sadness,” but the beginning of the New Year of God’s days.
