News | The Anglican Priest

In the days when few people had calendars, it was customary at the Liturgy on Epiphany to proclaim the date of Easter for the coming year, along with other major feasts that hinge on the date of Easter. We revive that custom here at St. Augustine’s.

“Dear brothers and sisters, the glory of the Lord has shone upon us and shall ever be manifest among us, until the day of his return.

“Let us recall the year’s central feast, the Easter Triduum of the Lord: His last supper, his crucifixion, his burial, and his rising, celebrated between the evening of the 9th day of April and the evening of the 11th day of April, Easter Sunday being on the 12th day of April. Each Easter—as on each Sunday—the Holy Church makes present the great and saving deed by which Christ has forever conquered sin and death.

“From Easter are reckoned all the days we keep holy. Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, will occur on the 26th day of February. Pentecost, the joyful conclusion of the season of Easter, will be celebrated on the 31st day of May. And this year the First Sunday of Advent will be on the 29th day of November.

“To Jesus Christ, who was, who is, and who is to come, Lord of time and history, be endless praise, forever and ever. Amen.”

Anglican leaders meeting in Canterbury this week have agreed for the first time to work with Orthodox Christian leaders to move towards a fixed date for Easter.

Helping negotiate an agreement between Christian churches to fix Easter to a set Sunday in April would end centuries of disruption around the date and endear the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby to schools, businesses, holiday companies and millions more individuals in the UK and abroad, throughout the world.

Although there have been unsuccessful attempts to do this before, the latest initiative is the brainchild of Patriarch Tawadros II, Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church.

Archbishop Welby said in Canterbury today: “Pope Tawadros has suggested that Easter is fixed around the second or third Sunday in April and the Primates agreed that they support that.” He added: “I would love see it before I retire. The first attempt to do this was in the tenth century so it may take some time.”

He predicted it could be done in five to ten years, because all sorts of things such as school holiday dates for some years ahead had already been settled.

Few people grasp the maths behind Easter, although this writer explains that it is calculated using both the Sun and Moon and is on the first Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon. It changes each year according to the Julian calendar used by Eastern churches and the Gregorian calendar used in the West, and only occasionally falls on the same date for both East and West.