THE HISTORY OF PASCHAL TIME
WE give the name of Paschal Time to the period between Easter
Sunday and the Saturday following Whit Sunday. It is the most
sacred portion of the liturgical year, and the one towards which
the whole cycle converges. We shall easily understand how this is,
if we reflect upon the greatness of Easter, which is called the
feast of feasts, and the solemnity of solemnities, in the same
manner, says St. Gregory,1 as the most sacred part of the Temple
was called the Holy of holies and the book of sacred scripture,
wherein are described the espousals between Christ and the Church,
is called the Canticle of Canticles. It is on this day that the
mission of the Word Incarnate attains the object towards which it
has hitherto been tending: man is raised up from his fall and
regains what he had lost by Adam's sin.
Christmas gave us a Man-God; three days have scarcely passed since
we witnessed his infinitely precious Blood shed for our ransom,
but now, on the day of Easter, our Jesus is no longer the victim
of death: He is a conqueror, who destroys death, the child of sin,
and proclaims life, that undying life which he has purchased for
us. The humiliation of his swathing-bands, the sufferings of his
agony and cross, these are passed; all is now glory-glory for
himself, and glory also for us. On the day of Easter, God regains,
by the Resurrection of the Man-God, his creation such as he made
it at the beginning; the only vestige now left of death is sin,
the likeness of which the Lamb of God deigned to take upon
himself. Neither is it Jesus alone that returns to eternal life;
the whole human race also has risen to immortality together with
our Jesus. 'By a man came death,' says the Apostle; 'and by a Man
the Resurrection of the dead, and as in Adam all die so also in
Christ all shall be made alive.'2
The anniversary of this Resurrection is, therefore, the great day,
the day of joy, the day par excellence, the day to which the whole
year looks forward in expectation, and on which its whole economy
is formed. But as it is the holiest of days-since it opens to us
the gate of Heaven, into which we shall enter because we have
risen together with Christ-the Church would have us come to it
well prepared by bodily mortification and by compunction of heart.
It was for this that she instituted the fast of Lent, and that she
bade us, during Septuagesima, look forward to the joy of her
Easter and be filled with sentiments suitable to the approach of
so grand a solemnity. We obeyed; we have gone through the period
of our preparation; and now the Easter sun has risen upon us!
But it was not enough to solemnize the great day when Jesus, our
Light, rose from the darkness of the tomb: there was another
anniversary which claimed our grateful celebration. The Incarnate
Word rose on the first day of the week, that same day whereon,
four thousand years before, he, the uncreated Word of the Father,
had begun the work of creation, by calling forth light, and
separating it from darkness. The first day was thus ennobled by
the creation of light. It received a second consecration by the
Resurrection of Jesus; and from that time forward Sunday, and not
Saturday, was to be the Lord's Day. Yes, our Resurrection in
Jesus, which took place on the Sunday, gave this first day a pre-
eminence above the others of the week: the divine precept of the
Sabbath was abrogated together with the other ordinances of the
Mosaic Law, and the Apostles instructed the faithful to keep holy
the first day of the week, which God had dignified with that
twofold glory, the creation and the regeneration of the world.
Sunday, then, being the day of Jesus' Resurrection, the Church
chose that day, in preference to every other, for its yearly
commemoration. The Pasch of the Jews, in consequence of its being
fixed on the fourteenth of the moon of March (the anniversary of
the going out of Egypt), fell by turns on each day of the week.
The Jewish Pasch was but a figure; ours is the reality, and puts
an end to the figure. The Church, therefore, broke this last tie
with the Synagogue; and proclaimed her emancipation, by fixing the
most solemn of her feasts on a day which should never agree with
that on which the Jews keep their now unmeaning Pasch. The
Apostles decreed that the Christian Pasch should never be
celebrated on the fourteenth of the moon of March, even were that
day to be a Sunday; but that it should be everywhere kept on the
Sunday following the day on which the obsolete calendar of the
Synagogue still marks it.
Nevertheless, out of consideration for the many Jews who had
received baptism, and who formed the nucleus of the early
Christian Church, it was resolved that the law regarding the day
for keeping the new Pasch should be applied prudently and
gradually. Jerusalem was soon to be destroyed by the Romans,
according to our Saviour's prediction; and the new city, which was
to rise up from its ruins and receive the Christian colony, would
also have its Church, but a Church totally free from the Jewish
element, which God had so visibly rejected. In preaching. the
Gospel and founding Churches, even far beyond the limits of the
Roman Empire, the majority of the Apostles had not to contend with
Jewish customs; most of their converts were from among the
Gentiles. St. Peter, who in the Council of Jerusalem had
proclaimed the cessation of the Jewish Law. set up the standard of
emancipation in the city of Rome; so that the Church, which
through him was made the Mother and Mistress of all Churches,
never had any other discipline regarding the observance of Easter
than that laid down by the Apostles, namely, that it should be
kept on a Sunday.
There was, however, one province of the Church which for a long
time stood out against the universal practice: it was Asia Minor.
The Apostle St. John, who lived for many years at Ephesus-where
indeed he died-had thought it prudent to tolerate, in those parts,
the Jewish custom of celebrating the Pasch; for many of the
converts had been members of the Synagogue. But the Gentiles
themselves, who, later on, formed the mass of the faithful, were
strenuous upholders of this custom, which dated from the very
foundation of the Church of Asia Minor. In the course of time,
however, this anomaly became a source of scandal: it savoured of
Judaism, and it prevented unity of religious observance, which is
always desirable, but particularly so in what regards Lent and
Easter.
Pope St. Victor, who governed the Church from the year 193,
endeavoured to put a stop to this abuse; he thought the time had
come for establishing unity in so essential a point of Christian
worship. Already, that is in the year 160, under Pope St.
Anicetus, the Apostolic See had sought, by friendly negotiations,
to induce the Churches of Asia Minor to conform to the universal
practice; but it was difficult to triumph over a prejudice, which
rested on a tradition held sacred in that country. St. Victor,
however, resolved to make another attempt. He would put before
them the unanimous agreement which reigned throughout the rest of
the Church. Accordingly, he gave orders that councils should be
convened in the several countries where the Gospel had been
preached, and that the question of Easter should be examined.
Everywhere there was perfect uniformity of practice; and the
Historian Eusebius, who lived a hundred and fifty years later,
assures us that the people of his day used to quote the decisions
of the Councils of Rome, of Gaul, of Achaia, of Pontus, of
Palestine, and of Osrhoene in Mesopotamia. The Council of Ephesus,
at which Polycrates, the bishop of that city, presided, was the
only one that opposed the Pontiff, and disregarded the practice of
the universal Church.
Deeming it unwise to give further toleration to the opposition,
Victor separated from communion with the Holy See the refractory
Churches of Asia Minor. This severe penalty, which was not
inflicted until Rome had exhausted every other means of removing
the evil, excited the commiseration of several bishops. St.
Irenaeus, who was then governing the see of Lyons, pleaded for
these Churches, which, so it seemed to him, had sinned only
through a want of light; and he obtained from the Pope the
revocation of a measure which seemed too severe. This indulgence
produced the desired effect. In the following century St.
Anatolius, bishop of Laodicea, in his book on the Pasch, written
in 276, tells us that the Churches of Asia Minor had then, for
some time past, conformed to the Roman practice.
About the same time, and by a strange coincidence, the Churches of
Syria, Cilicia, and Mesopotamia gave scandal by again leaving the
Christian and Apostolic observance of Easter, and returning to the
Jewish rite of the fourteenth of the March moon. This schism in
the Liturgy grieved the Church; and one of the points to which the
Council of Nicaea directed its first attention was the
promulgation of the universal obligation to celebrate Easter on
the Sunday. The decree was unanimously passed, and the Fathers of
the Council ordained that 'all controversy being laid aside, the
brethren in the East should solemnize the Pasch on the same day as
the Romans, the Alexandrians, and the rest of the faithful.'3 So
important seemed this question, inasmuch as it affected the very
essence of the Christian Liturgy, that St. Athanasius, assigning
the reasons which had led to the calling of the Council of
Nicaea, mentions these two: the condemnation of the Arian heresy,
and the establishment of uniformity in the observance of
Easter.4The bishop of Alexandria was commissioned by the Council
to see to the drawing up of astronomical tables, whereby the
precise day of Easter might be fixed for each future year. The
reason of this choice was that the astronomers of Alexandria were
looked upon as the most exact in their calculations. These tables
were to be sent to the Pope, and he would address letters to the
several Churches, instructing them as to the uniform celebration
of the great festival of Christendom. Thus was the unity of the
Church made manifest by the unity of the holy Liturgy; and the
Apostolic See, which is the foundation of the first, was likewise
the source of the second. But, even previous to the Council of
Nicaea, the Roman Pontiff had addressed to all the Churches every
year, a Paschal Encyclical, instructing them as to the day on
which the solemnity of the Resurrection was to be kept. This we
learn from the synodical Letter of the Fathers of the great
Council held at Arles in 314. The Letter is addressed to Pope St.
Sylvester, and contains the following passage: 'In the first
place, we beg that the observance of the Pasch of the Lord may be
uniform, both as to time and day, in the whole world, and that You
would, according to the custom, address Letters to all concerning
this matter.'5This custom, however, was not kept up for any length
of time after the Council of Nicaea. The want of precision in
astronomical calculations occasioned confusion in the method of
fixing the day of Easter. It is true, this great festival was
always kept on a Sunday; nor did any Church think of celebrating
it on the same day as the Jews; but, since there was no uniform
understanding as to the exact time of the vernal equinox, it
happened some years, that the feast of Easter was not kept, in all
places, on the same day. By degrees, there crept in a deviation
from the rule laid down by the Council, of taking March 21 as the
day of the equinox. A reform in the Calendar was needed, and no
one seemed competent to undertake it. Cycles were drawn up
contradictory to one another; Rome and Alexandria had each its own
system of calculation, so that, some years, Easter was not kept
with that perfect uniformity for which the Nicene Fathers had so
strenuously laboured: and yet this variation was not the result of
anything like party-spirit.The West followed Rome. The Churches of
Ireland and Scotland, which had been misled by faulty cycles, were
at length brought into uniformity. Finally, science was
sufficiently advanced in the sixteenth century for Pope Gregory
XIII to undertake a reform of the Calendar. The equinox had to be
restored to March 21, as the Council of Nicaea had prescribed. The
Pope effected this by publishing a Bull, dated February 24, 1581,
in which he ordered that ten days of the following year, namely
from October 4 to October 15, should be suppressed. He thus
restored the work of Julius Caesar, who had, in his day, turned
his attention to the rectification of the year. Easter was the
great object of the reform, or, as it is called, the New Style,
achieved by Gregory XIII. The principles and regulations of the
Nicene Council were again brought to bear on this the capital
question of the liturgical year; and the Roman Pontiff thus gave
to the whole world the intimation of Easter, not for one year
only, but for centuries. Heretical nations were forced to
acknowledge the divine power of the Church in this solemn act,
which interested both religion and society. They protested against
the Calendar, as they had protested against the Rule of Faith.
England and the Lutheran States of Germany preferred following,
for many years, a Calendar which was evidently at fault, rather
than accept the New Style, which they acknowledged to be
indispensable, because it was the work of a Pope!6
All this shows us how important it was to fix the precise day of
Easter; and God has several times shown by miracles that the date
of so sacred a feast was not a matter of indifference. During the
ages when the confusion of the cycles and the want of correct
astronomical computations occasioned great uncertainty as to the
vernal equinox, miraculous events more than once supplied the
deficiencies of science and authority. In a letter to St. Leo the
Great, in the year 444, Paschasinus, bishop of Lilybaea7 in
Sicily, relates that under the Pontificate of St. Zosimus-Honorius
being consul for the eleventh, and Constantius for the second
time-the real day of Easter was miraculously revealed to the
people of one of the churches there. In the midst of a mountainous
and thickly wooded district of the island was a village called
Meltinas. Its church was of the poorest, but it was dear to God.
Every year, on the night preceding Easter Sunday, as the priest
went to the baptistery to bless the font, it was found to be
miraculously filled with water, for there were no human means
wherewith it could be supplied. As soon as baptism was
administered, the water disappeared of itself, and left the font
perfectly dry. In the year just mentioned, the people, misled by a
wrong calculation assembled for the ceremonies of Easter Eve. The
Prophecies having been read, the priest and his flock repaired to
the baptistery-but the font was empty. They waited, expecting the
miraculous flowing of the water, wherewith the catechumens were to
receive the grace of regeneration: but they waited in vain, and no
baptism was administered. On the following April 22 the font was
found to be filled to the brim, and thereby the people understood
that that was the true Easter for that year.8
Cassiodorus, writing in the name of king Athalaric to a certain
Severus, relates a similar miracle, which happened every year on
Easter Eve, in Lucania, near the small island of Leucothea, at a
place called Marcilianum. There was a large fountain there, whose
water was so clear that the air itself was not more transparent.
It was used as the font for the administration of baptism on
Easter Night. As soon as the priest, standing under the rock
wherewith nature had canopied the fountain, began the prayers of
the blessing, the water, as though taking part in the transports
of the Easter joy, arose in the font; so that, if previously it
was to the level of the fifth step, it was seen to rise up to the
seventh, impatient, as it were, to effect those wonders of grace
whereof it was the chosen instrument. God would show by this, that
even inanimate creatures can share, when he so wills it, in the
holy gladness of the greatest of all days.9
St. Gregory of Tours tells us of a font, which existed even then,
in a church of Andalusia, in a place called Osen, whereby God
miraculously certified to his people the true day of Easter. On
the Maundy Thursday of each year, the bishop, accompanied by the
faithful, repaired to this church. The bed of the font was built
in the form of a cross, and was paved with mosaics. It was
carefully examined, to see that it was perfectly dry, and after
several prayers had been recited, everyone left the church, and
the bishop sealed the door with his seal. On Holy Saturday the
pontiff returned, accompanied by his flock; the seal was examined,
and the door was opened. The font was found to be filled, even
above the level of the floor, and yet the water did not overflow.
The bishop pronounced the exorcisms over the miraculous water, and
poured the chrism into it. The catechumens were then baptized; and
as soon as the sacrament had been administered the water
immediately disappeared, and no one could tell what became of
it.10 Similar miracles were witnessed in several churches in the
East. John Moschus, a writer in the seventh century, speaks of a
baptismal font in Lycia, which was thus filled every Easter Eve,
but the water remained in the font during the whole fifty days,
and suddenly disappeared after the festival of Pentecost.11
We alluded, in our History of Passiontide, to the decrees passed
by the Christian emperors, which forbade all law proceedings
during the fortnight of Easter, that is from Palm Sunday to the
octave day of the Resurrection. St. Augustine, in a sermon he
preached on this octave, exhorts the faithful to extend to the
whole year this suspension of lawsuits, disputes and enmities,
which the civil law interdicted during these fifteen days.
The Church imposes upon all her children the obligation of
receiving holy Communion at Easter. This precept is based upon the
words of our Redeemer, who left it to his Church to determine the
time of the year when Christians should receive the blessed
Sacrament. In the early ages Communion was frequent, and, in some
places, even daily. By degrees the fervour of the faithful grew
cold towards this august mystery, as we gather from a decree of
the Council of Agatha (Agde) held in 506, where it is defined that
those of the laity who shall not approach Communion at Christmas,
Easter, and Pentecost, are to be considered as having ceased to be
Catholics.12 This decree of the Council of Agatha was accepted as
the law of almost the entire Western Church. We find it quoted
among the regulations drawn up by Egbert, Archbishop of York, as
also in the third Council of Tours. In many places, however,
Communion was obligatory for the Sundays of Lent, and for the last
three days of Holy Week, independently of that which was to be
made on the Easter festival.
It was in the year 1215, in the fourth General Council Of Lateran,
that the Church, seeing the ever-growing indifference of her
children, decreed with regret that Christians should be strictly
bound to Communion only once in the year, and that that Communion
of obligation should be made at Easter. In order to show the
faithful that this is the uttermost limit of her condescension to
lukewarmness, she declares, in the same council, that he that
shall presume to break this law may be forbidden to enter a church
during life, and be deprived of Christian burial after death, as
he would be if he had, of his own accord, separated himself from
the exterior link of Catholic unity.13 These regulations of a
General Council show how important is the duty of the Easter
Communion, but, at the same time, they make us shudder at the
thought of the millions, throughout the Catholic world, who brave
each year the threats of the Church, by refusing to comply with a
duty, which would both bring life to their souls, and serve as a
profession of their faith. And when we again reflect upon how many
even of those who make their Easter Communion have paid no more
attention to the Lenten penance than if there were no such
obligation in existence, we cannot help feeling sad, and we wonder
within ourselves how long God will bear with such infringements of
the Christian Law.
The fifty days between Easter and Pentecost have ever been
considered by the Church as most holy. The first week, which is
more expressly devoted to celebrating our Lord's Resurrection, is
kept as one continued feast; but the remainder of the fifty days
is also marked with special honours. To say nothing of the joy,
which is the characteristic of this period of the year, and of
which the Alleluia is the expression-Christian tradition has
assigned to Eastertide two practices, which distinguish it from
every other season. The first is, that fasting is not permitted
during the entire interval: it is an extension of the ancient
precept of never fasting on a Sunday, and the whole of Eastertide
is considered as one long Sunday. This practice, which would seem
to have come down from the time of the Apostles, was accepted by
the Religious Rules of both East and West, even by the severest.
The second consists in not kneeling at the Divine Office, from
Easter to Pentecost. The Eastern Churches have faithfully kept up
the practice, even to this day. It was observed for many ages by
the Western Churches also; but now it is little more than a
remnant. The Latin Church has long since admitted genuflexions in
the Mass during Easter time. The few vestiges of the ancient
discipline in this regard which still exist are not noticed by the
faithful, inasmuch as they seldom assist at the Canonical Hours.
Eastertide, then, is like one continued feast. This was remarked
by Tertullian in the third century. He is reproaching those
Christians who regretted having renounced, by their baptism, the
festivities of the pagan year, and thus addresses them: 'If you
love feasts, you will find plenty among us Christians, not merely
feasts that last only for a day, but such as continue for several
days together. The pagans keep each of their feasts once in the
year; but you have to keep each of yours many times over, for you
have the eight days of its celebration. Put all the feasts of the
Gentiles together, and they do not amount to our fifty days of
Pentecost.'14 St. Ambrose, speaking on the same subject, says: 'If
the Jews are not satisfied with the Sabbath of each week, but keep
also one which lasts whole month, and another which lasts a whole
year,- how much more ought not we to honour our Lord's
Resurrection? Hence our ancestors have taught us to celebrate the
fifty days of Pentecost as a continuation of Easter. They are
seven weeks, and the feast of Pentecost commences the eighth.. . .
During these fifty days the Church observes no fast, nor does she
on any Sunday, for it is the day on which our Lord rose: and all
these fifty days are like so many Sundays.'15
ENDNOTES
1 Homilia, xxii.
2 1 Cor. xv 21, 22.
3 Spicilegium Solesmense, t. iv, p. 541.
4 Epist. ad Afros episcopos.
5 Concil Galilae t. i.
6 Great Britain adopted the New Style; by Act of Parliament, in
the year 1752.
7 The modern Marsala.
8 Leonis, Opera, Epist. iii.
9 Cassiodorus, Variarum, lib. vii, epist. xxxiii.
10 De Gloria Martyrum, lib. i cap. xxiv.
11 Pratum spirituale, cap. ccxv.
12 Concil. Agath. Canon xviii.
13 Two centuries after this, Pope Eugenius IV, in the Constitution
Digna Fide, given in the year 1440, allowed this annual Communion
to he made on any day between Palm Sunday and Low Sunday
inclusively. This remains the law of the Church, hut individual
bishops may DOW extend the period from the Fourth Sunday in Lent
until Trinity Sunday inclusively, and in England they may still
use the former permission granted by Holy See for the further
extension from Ash Wednesday to Low Sunday inclusively.
14 De Idololatria, cap. xiv.
15 In Lucam, lib. viii cap. xxv.
(Taken from Volume I of "The Liturgical Year" by Abbot Gueranger
O.S.B. published by Marian House, Powers Lake, ND 58773.)
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