(from the “Atlantis” of February, 1870.)
THE Ordo DE TEMPORE
I DO not know where to find, what doubtless is to be found somewhere, a perfect analysis of the Ordo de Tempore, (that is, the succession of ecclesiastical seasons,) as it stands in the Catholic Calendar. The Ordo has to deal with some considerable difficulties, and its disposal of them is very beautiful. I sometimes fancy I could interest a reader in it, and I will try; and though I must do so in my own way for want of a better, and though in consequence I am obliged to speak under correction of any authoritative exposition of it, if such exists, still I do not think I can be much out in my analysis, even though it be incomplete.
The Ordo de Sanctis is invariable through the year. Each saint has his day, which is never changed year after year, except by an accidental transference or postponement. Here, the only call for arrangement and adjustment in it rises out of the necessity of reconciling this Ordo with the Ordo de Tempore. For the Ordo de Tempore is far from invariable year after year; on the contrary, as I have intimated, it even disturbs the tranquil course of the Ordo de Sanctis. It is on this account especially that the yearly Directory called the “Ordo Recitandi” is necessary; for the Ordo de Tempore is not only variable itself, but it interferes with the harmonious succession of Saints’ Days in the Ordo de Sanctis. If we look at the table of Transferred Saints’ Days in the yearly “Ordo Recitandi,” we shall find that they are all occasioned by the collision between the two Ordines, de Sanctis and de Tempore. For instance, in the present year (1869), St. Thomas was thrown out of his day, March 7, because it was the Fourth Sunday in Lent; and the Seven Dolours lost its Friday because it was the Feast of St. Joseph.
Left to itself, the Ordo de Sanctis is invariable, but the Ordo de Tempore is never the same two years running. Its chief features indeed, viewed relatively to each other, are always the same—Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost come in succession; but these seasons are not fixed to determinate days in the civil year, as the Festivals of the Saints are. Easter Day is in one year upon one day in March or April, in another year on another. The coincidence then of days in the civil year and in the ecclesiastical year has to be reduced to rule; and this is done, I consider, very beautifully by the provisions of the Calendar, as I propose to show in these pages.
1.
The first and chief difficulty in the Ordo de Tempore is obviously this—that Easter Day depends upon, is later than, the full moon in March or in April, and the full moon is not fixed to any certain day in either month. The lunar month is about 29 days, the civil varies from 28 to 31. As the full moon is not constant to one day of either month, neither is the Easter Day. Next, there is this additional disturbance, that Easter Day is always kept on a Sunday, the Sunday after the full moon (mean time) which follows upon March 21. Thus, even were the day of the full moon fixed to a given day of a given month in the civil calendar, say March 22, Easter Day would not on that account be a fixed day, for it must be a Sunday, and the Sunday after that March 22 may be any one of the seven following days. Easter Day then is variable, first, because the full moon may fall on any one day out of 29 civil days, and next because Sunday may fall on any day out of the seven, which follow the full moon.
Nor is this the whole of the difficulty. Easter Day is one great centre of feasts and seasons in the ecclesiastical year; but there is another such centre, and that is Christmas Day. And though Christmas Day is fixed in the civil year, Advent Sunday, which precedes and depends upon it, is not. It is the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day; and since Christmas Day, as being fixed in the month, may be any one of the seven days of the week, it follows that Advent Sunday may be one or other of seven days of the month. When, for instance, Christmas Day is Monday, the fourth Sunday in Advent is the day before, that is, December 24, and the first Sunday in Advent, or Advent Sunday, will be December 3. When Christmas Day is Tuesday, then Advent Sunday will be December 2, and so on through the seven days. The range of Advent Sundays, then, is from November 27 to December 3 inclusive.
Christmas with Advent, then, and Easter, are the two centres of the sacred year, with an assemblage or body of seasons and feasts about each of them, and all inserted and having a place, a shifting place, in the civil year; and the problem to be solved in the Ordo de Tempore is how to overcome the disarrangement caused by the varying distance from each other of these two oscillating bodies, standing in relation, as they do, to the course of weeks and months. When are we to cease, for example, to date with a reference to Christmas? When with a reference to Easter? Were both Christmas with Advent, and Easter, fixed, there would be nothing more to settle; but the interval between Advent Sunday and the following Easter Sunday varies year by year, and also the interval between Easter and Advent; and it has to be determined when the one period is to end and the other to begin. And there is this additional difficulty, that the Easter before a given Advent being always a different day in the year from the Easter after Advent, there are three dates to be taken into account, and reduced to system, one Advent and two Easters.