When is pascha

In , the vernal equinox was on 20 March in the Julian calendar, and this is the date used to calculate Pascha. However, 20 March in the Julian calendar is currently 3 April in the Gregorian calendar, due to drift which has occurred due to the imprecision of the Julian calendar.

As a result, Pascha and Easter fall on different days, although sometimes they may coincide. Pascha will never happen earlier than 3 April, and as time goes on, the festival will drift even further, ultimately being celebrated in the winter. Pascha celebrations begin with a midnight service commemorating the resurrection of Christ, and follow with a large feast on the day of Pascha itself. Many nations have unique culinary traditions for Pascha. To maintain unity within the entire church, all Orthodox celebrate the feast of feasts on the same day throughout the world.

While Pascha normally falls either one or five weeks later than Easter, on occasion they can be four weeks apart and on some years the dates of Pascha and Easter coincide. The dates coincided most recently in and the next coincidence will be in According to the New Testament, Christ was crucified on the eve of the Jewish Passover See John and then shortly afterwards He rose from the dead.

But, from the earliest days, there were differences in exactly how this was done. By their reckoning, Pascha fell on the same date every year, but different days of the week This is the same as it is for Christians today celebrating Christmas; it is always celebrated on December 25th, regardless of which day of the week it falls on. Christians of Gentile origin, descendants of the Greco-Roman civilisation, however, wished to always commemorate the resurrection of Jesus Christ on a Sunday, the day of the original resurrection and the first day of the week.

According to their method, Pascha occurred on the same day of the week every year, always a Sunday, but from year to year it fell on different dates Like today. One of the decisions made by the Council was that all Christians should celebrate Pascha on a common day. Vernal is from the Latin for spring so the vernal equinox refers to the March date of the equinox in the northern hemisphere. It is sometimes referred to as the March equinox. It was also stated that should the full moon fall on a Sunday, thereby coinciding with the Jewish Passover festival, Easter Sunday would be delayed until the following Sunday.

In this way it was planned that the feasts of Christian Pascha and Jewish Passover would never coincide. Unfortunately, the Council of Nicaea made few decisions that were of practical use as guidelines for the calculation of Easter Sunday, and it took several centuries before a common method was accepted throughout Christianity. The main problem facing the church in its calculations was a gradually increasing gap between the true astronomical year and the Julian calendar in use at the time. The Julian calendar is a solar calendar in which the day is determined by the rotation of the earth with respect to the direction of the sun, and the year is determined by the rotation of the earth around the sun.

Not all calendars are based on the sun. For example the Muslim calendar is moon-based, whilst the Babylonians based their calendar on a combination of the sun and moon. It was quite accurate for its time, but was in fact 11 minutes and 14 seconds longer than the actual solar year. This meant that the Julian calendar year developed a gap between itself and the true astronomical calendar of one day for every years. Because of these problems the Church devised a method for the calculation of Easter that did not depend on astronomical accuracy.

The idea was that the date of Easter could be worked out without astronomical knowledge. The Church decided to define Easter with respect to an imaginary moon - known as the Ecclesiastic Moon. Also the date of the equinox was fixed at March 21st, even though it can vary slightly from this date. With this definition the date of Easter can be determined in advance without further astronomical knowledge.

Even this method was not without problems, sometimes resulting in Easter being celebrated at different times in different parts of the world.

In its attempt to find a solution to these problems, in AD the church adopted another system of calculation proposed by the astronomer Victorinus, who had been commissioned by Pope Hilarius Pope from AD to reform the calendar and fix the date of Easter. Elements of his method are still in use today. Refusal of the British and Celtic Christian churches to adopt the proposed changes led to a bitter dispute between them and Rome in the 7th century.

Disagreements about the date of Easter are nothing new! The new system however, did not eliminate the ever-growing gap between the Julian calendar and the true astrological year caused by the addition of an extra 11 minutes and 14 seconds each year. However, the Western Churches use the Gregorian calendar a much more accurate calendar—although not perfect and a more generally accurate scientific calculation of the vernal equinox and the vernal full moon which results in a calculation of Easter that better corresponds with the actual astronomical phenomena and that is typically more accurate.

In this year of , for example, Western Easter and Orthodox Pascha have very different dates of celebration. However, a quick look at the actual astronomical data quickly demonstrates the problems with the current Orthodox calculation of Pascha.

According to the U. Naval Observatory, the vernal equinox occurred on March 20 th at a. It is important to remember that the date and time of the vernal equinox depend on the meridian used for calculation the position on earth used as the reference point.

Thus, the vernal equinox occurred in Jerusalem on March 20 th at a. Moreover, according to the U. Naval Observatory, the first full moon after the vernal equinox in occurred on March 23 rd at p. UTC , and in Jerusalem at p. Since the vernal full moon that occurred on March 23 rd , in Jerusalem at p. It was widely understood by ancient Christians that the vernal full moon could not be determined reliably by observation since what sometimes appears to the eye as a full moon may not, in fact, be one.

However, scientific methods have advanced significantly since the time of antiquity, as has our ability to reliably know the dates of the vernal equinox and the vernal full moon for any given year. In , the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople raised the issue of all Churches employing a common calendar so that Eastern and Western Churches could celebrate major Christian feast days together throughout each year.

Moreover, in a Pan-Orthodox Congress under the leadership of the Ecumenical Patriarchate advocated using a Revised Julian Calendar very similar to the Gregorian Calendar while also returning to the actual astronomical phenomena of the vernal equinox and the vernal full moon for the calculation of Pascha.

However, divisive reactions against adoption of a new calendar and new Paschal calculations resulted in a compromise that allowed autocephalous Orthodox Churches to choose the Old Julian Calendar or the New Revised Julian Calendar to regulate the ecclesiastical year, but maintained the Old Julian Calendar and the scientific calculations based on it for the determination of Paschal dates.

Nicaea issued its formula for the calculation of Pascha so that Christians everywhere would celebrate the most important Christian feast together in unity as a common witness to the world. Nicaea did not precisely regulate the technical details, methods, or calendar by which the vernal equinox and the vernal full moon should be determined, but expected the best available science to be used for the calculation of Pascha.