CHAPTER I
THE CHURCH’S YEAR
A. Easter, and the Sacred Seasons connected with Easter
1. Easter, its Name and History
Were it our object to deal with the Church’s year as affording material for a series of doctrinal instructions, we should begin with Christmas, the festival of Christ’s birth, for, so viewed, the ecclesiastical year becomes chiefly a compendium of the chief acts in the drama of our salvation, and recalls in orderly succession the principal events in our Saviour’s life. But if we make the Church’s year in itself the object of our studies, especially if we deal with it historically, we are bound to commence with Easter, because, in order of time, it existed from the first and formed the natural starting-point for all the rest. It did not, as other festivals, come into existence gradually, but formed a connecting link with the Old Testament, and was, in the strictest sense of the words, the appointment of a Higher Power, providentially ordering all things according to Its good pleasure. Easter owes its origin not to human wisdom, or piety: it comes to us with higher sanctions.
Easter is the chief festival of Christendom, the first and oldest of all festivals, the basis on which the Church’s year is built, the connecting link with the festivals of the Old Covenant, and the central point on which depends the date of the other movable feasts. At an early date, the Fathers mention Easter as the most important of the festivals, as, for example, St Leo the Great,[79] on the grounds that the incarnation and birth of the Son of God served as a prelude to the mystery of the Resurrection, and that Christ had no other purpose in being born of a woman than that He should be nailed to the Cross for us.[80] Other Fathers and the Roman martyrology call it the feast of feasts (festum festorum).
With regard to the name, the English word “Easter” comes from Eastre, in German “Ostra,”[81] the goddess of Spring worshipped by the ancient Saxons and Angles, whose name survives in many place-names, such as Osterode, Osterberg, etc. In her honour fires, known as the Easter fires, were kindled in spring. In Latin, we find at first dominica resurrectionis alone used in the liturgy, never Pascha. Pascha has no connection with the Greek πάσχω, but is the Aramaic form of pesach, to pass over, פַּסְחָח for פֶּסַח. In Christian times, the similarity in the sound of the words easily suggested, by a sort of play upon the words, that which to Christians is the chief object of the Easter festival. In the Pentateuch, pascha is only found in the strict sense of transitus, phase.[82]
The points to be dealt with regarding Easter are its antiquity, and its connection, in point of view of time and of signification, with the Jewish Passover, with which it is connected by the death of Christ, as well as by the day on which that death took place. Then, the character and duration of the feast, the preparatory solemnity of Lent, and the subsequent Octave must be dealt with.
With regard to Easter and its antiquity in early ecclesiastical literature, the Apostolic Fathers, owing to the questions dealt with in their writings, do not mention it. Only in the interpolated letter of Ignatius to the Philippians (c. 14) is Easter mentioned. The passage is directed against the Quartodecimans, which of itself is proof of its later date. Nothing is to be found in the Didaché or in the pseudo-Clementine Homilies. When we come to the apologists, we find no reference to Easter in Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho (c. 40), and nothing in either of his Apologies. Clement of Alexandria speaks only of the Jewish passover, without referring to the Christian feast. Melito of Sardis, however, wrote an entire treatise on the festival of Easter, in the year when Servilius Paulus was Pro-Consul of Asia, for at that time a disagreement concerning Easter had broken out in Laodicea. Clement of Alexandria replied to Melito, who had written in defence of the Quartodeciman practice.[83]
In 198, when the difference between Asia and the rest of the Church concerning Easter came under discussion, an exchange of letters took place between the leading authorities of the Church, Pope Victor, Bishop Narcissus of Jerusalem, Polycrates of Ephesus, Bacchylus of Corinth, Irenæus, and others taking part. Irenæus composed a special treatise De Paschate, sometimes called De Schismate, unfortunately lost. In the fragments falsely attributed to him, Easter is referred to in the third and seventh.