The New Ecclesiastical Year

            The ecclesiastical year is a time and a space destined to bring us closer to God, to ourselves and to others, to our neighbor. “Time and space - says Father Stăniloae - are given to us as an inevitable path to the eternity and infinity of life in God and therefore we cannot not seeing them as gifts of God.”[1]

            Time and space, the two wings of the ecclesiastical year, have a vocation that is fulfilled in God. The ecclesiastical year is a reality that has its finality in the fullness of our life in God. The vocation of human life is one of participation in the eternity of God and in His infinity.

            Beyond their evolutive appearance, the time and space of the ecclesiastical year are God's gifts to people. They are not elements of a secular, immanent course detached from the work of God's grace. They are the elements of an ensemble that enable the human person to achieve its goal — that is, to bring to fulfilment the image and likeness of God.

            Father Stăniloae says: “Time is ... the vehicle through which the eternal God leads creatures to rest in His eternity”[2] and “space is the form of the relationship between the supraspatial and infinite God and between finite persons, the form that makes possible their movement between them, but thereby also to God, since God cannot be found out of communion with others.”[3] This means that the two - time and space - carry divine meaning. Through them God calls man to work his drawing near to Him and to his neighbor.

            “If time is the duration between God's call to love and the human response, - says Father Staniloae - space is the distance that is related to this duration. Both represent a distance of the world from God, but at the same time both are given to him by God as a distance to be overcome.”[4]

            Time and space are not insignificant realities. They have in their very constitution the dynamic of the fulfillment in God through love. They show us at the same time the beauty and distinction of God's creation as a vis-à-vis in which God contemplates as in a mirror the beauty, the nobility, and the generosity of His creative act.

            The first step is the gesture of love made by God who sends His Son to us for our salvation: “‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captive and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.’ Then He closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, ‘Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.’” (Luke 4: 18-21). The promise of sending the Messiah is fulfilled. The historical foundation of our salvation is being accomplished.

            The second step is man's response by faith to God's love. It is man's loving response to God. This answer is the life of holiness freely assumed by faith in the Church. We are invited to this path at the beginning of every ecclesiastical year, a path that Christ as a man first fulfilled, and we follow Him as disciples like the saints of all times.

            May the New Ecclesiastical Year give grace, blessing and wisdom to all so that through faith and perseverance we may transfigure space and time into signs of God's steps among us.

+Ioan Casian

____________

[1] Rev. Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae. Orthodox Dogmatic Theology (vol. 1). IBMBOR Publishing House: Bucharest 2003, p. 210

[2] Ibidem p. 184

[3] Ibidem p. 205-206

[4] Ibidem p. 208