As you may have heard, this week Patriarch Sviatoslav announced the transition of the UGCC church in Ukraine to to the Revised Julian Calendar. Along with Ukraine, a number of countries with UGCC Eparchies have already announced that they too will follow.
What does this mean for our Parish? We already follow the Revised Julian Calendar therefore everything remains status quo. How this will affect other parishes in this Eparchy is yet to be determined. Stay tuned for local info and communication from the chancery. Below is some catechesis written on the matter of calendar. We urge you to read it. Other videos and such may also be useful to you.
A calendar for parish use (service schedule is for Saint Elias) is available to download here
A general calendar for feast days (Sept ‘23-Dec’23formatted for Revised Julian use is available to download here.
THE REVISED JULIAN CALENDAR
Nearly 8 years ago our parish transitioned to the “Revised Julian” style calendar. We welcome the decision of the Synod of Bishops in Ukraine, who will adopt the same calendar beginning in September, 2023. These sorts of changes are never easy and require much education, catechesis, and prayer.
A brief history of the Revised Julian calendar:
"The Revised Julian calendar is a calendar that was considered for adoption by the Eastern Orthodox churches at a synod in Constantinople (Istanbul) in May 1923. The synod synchronized the new calendar with the Gregorian calendar by specifying that 1 October 1923 in the Julian calendar will be 14 October in the Revised Julian calendar, thus dropping thirteen days. It then adopted a leap year rule that differs from that of the Gregorian calendar: Years evenly divisible by four are leap years, except that years evenly divisible by 100 are not leap years, unless they leave a remainder of 200 or 600 when divided by 900, then they are leap years. This means that the two calendars will first differ in 2800, which will be a leap year in the Gregorian calendar, but a common year in the Revised Julian calendar. This leap year rule was proposed by Milutin Milankovic, an astronomical delegate to the synod representing the governments of the Serbs, Croatians, and Slovenes.
Milankovic selected this rule, which produces an average year length of 365.242222… days, because it was within two seconds of the then current length of the mean tropical year. However, the vernal equinox year is slightly longer, so for a few thousand years the Revised Julian calendar doesn't do as good a job as the Gregorian calendar at keeping the vernal equinox on or close to March 21. But the length of a day is increasing by about 1.7 milliseconds per century (see tidal acceleration), so the number of days per year decreases by about 0.0001 each millennium. This means that in the long run, the Revised Julian calendar will also be inaccurate even if the mean tropical year is the basis.
The Revised Julian calendar was adopted by the Orthodox Churches of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Poland, and Bulgaria (the last in 1963), called the New calendarists. It was rejected by the Orthodox Churches of Jerusalem, Russia, Serbia, and the Greek Old Calendarists. Despite the fact that the Russian Orthodox Church continues to use the Julian calendar for both its fixed festivals and for Easter, Milankovic stated that it had already adopted the new calendar by October 1923! It must have repudiated its decision shortly thereafter.
The synod also adopted an astronomical rule for Easter: Easter is the Sunday after the midnight-to-midnight day at the meridian of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalemduring which the first full moon after the vernal equinox occurs. Although the instant of the full moon must occur after the instant of the vernal equinox, it may occur on the same day. If the full moon occurs on a Sunday, Easter is the following Sunday. However, all Eastern Orthodox churches rejected this rule and continue to use the Julian calendar to determine the date of Easter (except for the Finnish Orthodox Church, which now uses the Gregorian Easter).”
Reference: Miriam Nancy Shields, "The new calendar of the Eastern churches", Popular Astronomy32 (1924) 407-411. This is a translation of M. Milankovitch, "The end of the Julian calendar and the new calendar of the Eastern churches", Astronomische Nachrichten No. 5279 (1924).de:Griechisch-Orthodoxer Kalender
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