The Feast Day in the early Church was eschatological because it was the manifestation and actualization of the Church herself, as the new life, as an anticipation of the unending day of the Kingdom…. But to the extent that such a day was eschatological it was connected also with the real time of “this world,” since it was only for the sake of this world “which God so loved” that the Church was created…. Hence the significance of the early Church of a “reckoning of time,” a calendar, a correspondence between the liturgical year and the “cosmic” year….
These words, from Father Alexander Schmemann in Introduction to Liturgical Theology (SVS Press, 1986, pp. 181-82), have bearing on the long-standing question of which calendar—the Old Calendar (the Julian), or the New Calendar (the Revised Julian)—is most appropriate for use in the Orthodox Church.
A fanciful scenario may be helpful to consider as we ask this question. Imagine you have been given a watch by someone you consider to be especially holy. You cherish the watch both for its usefulness and for the associations it holds for you with this saintly person. One day you notice that, when the watch says 12 noon, the sun is actually past its zenith. Do you adjust the watch, to bring it back into correspondence with the course of the sun? Or, do you refrain from doing so, believing that this would be disrespectful to the person who gave it to you? Do you imagine that this person, being holy, surely anticipated the watch’s eventual lapse in accuracy, but intended that you should continue to govern your activities by what it says, anyway? Considering this latter approach, you realize it entails that your daily routine—your sleeping, waking, and eating—will progressively fall out out of sync with the day, as it is indicated by sunrise and sunset. Incrementally, you will go to bed earlier and earlier, until sleep occurs during daylight, and waking life occurs at night. What do you do? Do you adjust the watch or not? Read More
