What Does This Mean?

[Macrina]

Yes, I realize that St Paul was addressing Judaizing. And I understand that it was necessary for the church to make a ecumenical decision regarding Pascha so as not to infringe on the national identity which the religion of Judaism was interwoven in. The Jewish holy days were also their national holidays.

However Orthodox do not celebrate Pascha on the Jewish Passover. This is specifically according to canon. Are the rest of the feast days according to canon?
Show me the canons for all the feast and fast days associated with those feast days.

[Mark Templet]

To what end? I fail to see how this proves your point about anything. How could we celebrate His Arising without acknowledging that He died. To die He had to live. To live He had to be born. Prior to His birth he had to be conceived. ETC. ETC.

The point is not that the Church uses Julian Calendar versus the Chinese Calendar or anything else. The Church has to measure time and she does so with the known calendar at her beginning. Now it is simply her ecclesiastical calendar. There are no reasons to change it. On each day she celebrates the Holy Saints and events of the life of the Church and her husband, Christ.

We didn't invent time, that is God's creation. We are called upon to sanctify time. It makes no difference how we measure it, provided that we do so with catholic unity. The measurement is not a dogma, but the unity of the Church is!

Show me the canon that prohibits the Church defining a given day as holy. Show me a shred of evidence that the early Church Fathers eschewed the observance of holy days.

[Macrina]

Show me the canon that prohibits the Church defining a given day as holy.

I thought everyday is suppose to be a holy day for Christians. Romans 14 comes to mind on this subject. Two examples of flexible areas are given, food restrictions (v2) and observance of liturgical calendars (v5). Scripture seems to show that these things do not compromise doctrine nor moral teachings.

[Mark Templet]

Romans 14:1-11

1 Receive one who is weak in the faith, but not to disputes over doubtful things. 2 For one believes he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats only vegetables. 3 Let not him who eats despise him who does not eat, and let not him who does not eat judge him who eats; for God has received him. 4 Who are you to judge another’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand, for God is able to make him stand.
5 One person esteems one day above another; another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord;[a] and he who does not observe the day, to the Lord he does not observe it. He who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks; and he who does not eat, to the Lord he does not eat, and gives God thanks. 7 For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself. 8 For if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. 9 For to this end Christ died and rose and lived again, that He might be Lord of both the dead and the living. 10 But why do you judge your brother? Or why do you show contempt for your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.[c] 11 For it is written:

I think it is clear that the spirit of this passage is not that Christians should have no holy days or a calendar, rather that we are not to judge those who are weak. In other words, if someone doesn't show up for a service of one of the feast days, then no one who did show up should judge them. If I read this whole thing the way you are interpreting it, I could conclude that we, as Christians, should not eat anything any more than we should have a calendar.

Now, we can accept what St. Paul said to St. Timothy, "the Church is the pillar and ground of truth," which means that if the Church has declared a calendar for use in her cycles of feasts, then that calendar is TRUTH! The alternative is to spend our time combing through the Holy Scriptures looking for loopholes and taking things out of context to prove various things to our liking. This is called Potestantism.

[Macrina]

GOCpriestMark- ""Hence is plain that their teachers were preaching to them not only circumcision, but also the feast-days and new-moons." From this it would seem that St. John is saying that it was the things of The Law, which had passed, that they were observing.

It should be obvious that the Orthodox Church uses a calendar to remember important days and seasons of both repentance and festivity and that this is in no way displeasing to God.

GOCpriestMark, I do not disagree that they were teaching what Israel had always practiced. "The things of the law" are Jewish canons. Israels' religion of Judaism is tied into their national identity. The church of Christ surpasses such things as national identity. Yet we are allowed our cultural differences in our liberty in Christ. Our cultural or national identity is of less importance than our Lord and His Church.
And so, such a thing doesn't just "pass away". To approach the subject with such an understanding is known as "dispensationalism". I believe that is a heresy. I do not believe that God ever wanted His worship tied in with civil governments. They are two different matters.

I do not disagree with the church having festal times. I disagree with Christians fighting over which times are more important. Go on any American Christian forum on the web around Easter and Christmas and you will see how all Christians argue among themselves over such matters. The majority of American Christians believe that their national holidays are also tied to the church. This is not so. National holidays have nothing to do with the church. They are civil holidays. Americans originally fought over national holidays such as Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. These holidays are part of what divided the north from the south in our country at one time.

So this is nothing new. Israel had the same problem with their feast of tabernacles versus Passover. There was division among them over which one began a new year or cycle for them.
As far as I know, Orthodox have not had this problem because they have all agreed that Pascha begins their cycle or yearly celebration of our Lord and the things which pertain to Him.

Perhaps you and Fr Mark Templet have misunderstood me.

Fr Mark Templet- "The Tradition of the Church is quite explicit on the regulation of the Church year and her cycles in her Holy Canons. You should be very careful with a statement like "the scriptures state that Christians aren't suppose to follow calendars." Such a statement is not supported by any early Apostolic understanding or example. Let us recall that Christ was a devout Jew who kept the Jewish holy days and feasts.

Let the Lord be our example. As you have stated, even He observed the Jewish holidays. Isn't this why the Orthodox church doesn't have a problem with it's people observing their national holidays. This leads me to believe that your statement, "I think it is clear that the spirit of this passage is not that Christians should have no holy days or a calendar, rather that we are not to judge those who are weak." , is the other way around. Rather the person who is weak judges others on secondary matters such as this.

The church's notation of time centers around the Paschalia, not the Julian or Gregorian. I choose to be not of this world while in it. And, I'm not taking on other nations issues. I'm just following my bishops advice. I think that is all that is necessary for me to do right now.

[Mark Templet]

Let me, once again, confirm that I not passing judgment on anyone's soul, God forbid!

But there is a much deeper over-arching dynamic at work here. We are discussing the calendar issue as if this is as deep as our issue with the World Orthodox extends. The change of the calendar is merely a symptom of an underlying disease among the world religious leadership. Macrina, you are arguing that Christians need not be bound by an earthly calendar, and that such an issue is "secondary," however to tease out aspects of our faith and practice is NOT Orthodox. The Holy Fathers are clear that we take the Christian faith, the Orthodox faith, as a complete therapeutic system; we are not to alter any of it. When we begin to label and categorize things as essential and non-essential where do we draw the line? It is very seductive to begin to reconfigure "secondary" aspects of the faith and fracture the totality of Orthodoxy. What we are supposed to do is receive our faith and practice from our spiritual parents with gladness and obedience. Our teachers deliver that faith to us saying, "Here, this is the known and sure path to salvation. There is nothing you need to figure out or reform. Just do what we tell you and be faithful. That's what we did." How can a bishop say to his predecessors, "I know this has been the path that the Church has walked for nearly two millennium but I want to change it now to suit my wants." We are to take the faith and let it correct our lives from top to bottom. We are not to come to the faith to correct it. How can we assert that the Holy Spirit revealed the truth the Ecumenical Councils and the Holy Fathers who settled our calendar and now say that such a matter is secondary and open for debate?

There are some interesting questions that should be asked:
Q: Can the Church change the calendar?
A: Theoretically, yes. For instance, if something happened to the earth that slowed(or sped up) its revolution or rotation, thus changing the passage of earthly time, the Church would have the ability to address such a problem and alter the calendar as necessary.

Q: What problem does the New Calendar solve?
A: There were no issues such as my above example that we threatening the Church in 1922-23. So what was the motivation behind the parties that wanted to adopt the New Calendar? Understand, this move was coupled with much more "renovation" that was proposed to "modernize" Christ's timeless Church. In fact, as we can clearly see now, this change didn't solve problems-- it created them. It didn't heal schism it created it. It didn't combat heresy it aligned it. It didn't confirm the Orthodox Faith it betrayed it.
Even most of the clergy I come across in the New Calendar churches privately tell me that they think it was a bad idea. It's like putting highly flammable wallpaper in your home. Then you step back and say, "Wow! That was a bad idea." Then you just stand there and do nothing about it.

Q: What other changes coincided with the calendar change?
A: The calendar was changed to more closely conform to heretics! The Patriarch admitted such in his encyclical explaining to his irate faithful why he made such a move. And as thanks they ran him out of Constantinople. Furthermore, the "pan-Orthodox Congress" was not attended by representatives of the whole Church, no one from the Patriarchates of Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, or Moscow was present. This was a movement by the EP to consolidate power and begin to set itself up as the equivalent of the Roman Pontiff of Orthodoxy, i.e., able to make unilateral decisions for the whole Orthodox Church. This was so successful that today there are tons of people who think that you must be in communion with the EP or you can't possibly be Orthodox.

However, in a certain way Macrina is correct: the calendar issue is secondary. The primary motivation behind it is not to change a calendar around, but to provide a template for altering the Orthodox faith. Once the precedent is set, then it becomes that much easier to slowly shift things until we have today people who have absolutely no issues with Patriarch Bartholomew standing and praying with the Pope and saying that we are "sister churches," which I have heard him say with my own ears in person. The calendar change is simply one prototype movement in a much deeper subversion of the True Faith.

[Macrina]

Now I believe you may be understanding.

There is no need to make calendars an issue. The church does not celebrate dates on calendars, it celebrates the Lord our God. For some people in other countries other than mine, because of persecutions, such as the Jesuits in the southern part of Russia for an example, a calendar became a point of contention among them. The deeper issue was not a calendar, but rather socialization. And I for one, agree with my bishop in such foresight as the world succumbing to socialism.

As the militant church in the world we know we are going to face such persecutions from socialism. And if we have read the book, we know that we are going to loose. The church's story ends with only two witnesses left in the whole world. And those two witnesses just may be two Orthodox bishops, who knows.

I am not one who is going down without a fight. I will continue to warn my children and others about the reality of spiritual warfare. To resist such temptation as the evil one's favorite sin, vanity. And to stand firm in their faith, because that is all we really have at the end of the day.

My answers to Fr Mark's questions. "Can the church change the calendar?" What does the church have to do with man's science of calendars. Nothing. The church celebrates cosmology associated with Christ, it' s pinnacle being the Paschalia. Don't matter if it's "scientifically correct" (according to man) or not.
"What problem does a new calendar solve?" None, since there never was a problem. A "calendar" is a device the evil one uses to subvert our attention from Christ.
"What other changes coincided with the calendar change?" Socialism grew and people got angry.

Like I always say, don't outsmart your common sense. God said He has given us all good things. Intellectual speculations was not one of them good things. Just keep the faith. +
God grant us many years
Peace be with you all.
Macrina