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beyond the cycle, a movement towards the ‘day without evening of the
Kingdom’. And we take that route by denying the cycles of meaninglessness
that are a consequence of the fall; every movement of love, every refusal of
despair, lifts us towards the ‘ring of pure and endless light’. It is not just a
matter of chance that the phrase, ‘the day without evening of the kingdom’,
comes from the Easter Canon, for it is the Resurrection of Christ that sealed
the triumph of love. But closely linked to this there is another way in which the
cycles of time become cycles of meaning rather than despair. This turns on its
head the despairing sense of everything being the same. The same what? we
might ask? As the cycle of the year turns, we celebrate the feasts of the Church:
the feasts of the determining moments of redemption—the Incarnation, the
Death and Resurrection of Christ, and all the events associated with them—as
well as the feasts of the saints, their ‘heavenly birthdays’ on which they were
born into the ‘day without evening of the Kingdom’. We remember, but more
than that we remember as being present, we remember as being there: we
make ἀνάμνησις, to use the Greek word, as we do every time we celebrate the
Divine Liturgy, or the Eucharist—’Remembering therefore this our Saviour’s
command and all that has been done for us: the Cross, the Tomb, the
Resurrection on the third day, the Ascension into heaven, the Second and
Glorious Coming again, Your own of your own we offer you, in all and for all…’
We do not remember the past (we actually remember the ‘Second and Glorious
Coming again’ which is to come!), we are present at the mysteries we celebrate.
So it is that at each of the feasts, we are present there, ‘today’:
At the Entry of the Mother of God: ‘Today is the prelude of the good
pleasure of God… In the Temple of God the Virgin is revealed…’;
At Christmas: ‘Today the Virgin gives birth to him who is above all being,
and the earth offers a cave to him whom no one can approach…’;
At Theophany (in the West, Epiphany): ‘Today you have appeared to the
inhabited world… You have come, you have appeared, the unapproachable
Light’
At the Annunciation: ‘Today is the crowning moment of our salvation,
and the unfolding of the eternal mystery: the Son of God becomes the Son of
the Virgin…’
The cycle is the same, the very same, but we are not trapped in it, it is a
source of the life, the life that flows from the Paschal mystery that is at the
very heart of the Calendar of the Church.
There are two other points I want to touch on: one mundane, the other
fundamental. First, why the Orthodox calendar now differs from the Christian

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