A Blessed New Ecclesiastical Year

“Creator of creation all and its Savior and Master, by Your authority You fixed times and annual seasons. Therefore we pray You, O loving Lord, that You crown the coming yearly cycle with blessings of goodness, and keep Your people in lasting peace, free of harm and injury, we entreat You, by Your Mother's all-holy prayers and those of holy Angels.” ~Exapostelarion from the Orthros of the New Ecclesiastical Year  

Dearest Spiritual ‘Ohana,

For the Church, September 1st, marks the Celebration of the New Ecclesiastical Year.  It is when we begin a new Liturgical Cycle of both “fixed” and “moveable” Feasts.  It is also a day marked by prayers for the environment, reminding us to be good stewards of the world around us.

I offer some background on the celebration’s significance.  (Information borrowed and edited from St. Elizabeth Convent)

Indiction

The term “indiction” originally referred to a 15-year tax cycle in the Roman Empire, which was often used as a basis for dating legal and financial documents.  Over time, the term became associated with the beginning of the Ecclesiastical Year for Orthodox Christians.

Harvest, Thanksgiving, and Sowing

By marking the start of a new year in September, the Empire—and later, the Orthodox Church—was associating the new year with harvesting crops. As preparations for winter were being made, so too were preparations for the upcoming year.

For Christians, it was a time of thanksgiving, remembering the good weather and abundant rain the Lord provided for that year’s harvest—something we pray for at every Divine Liturgy.

This draws close parallels with the Feast of Trumpets for the pre-Incarnation people of God (Lev. 23:23–25):

And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the children of Israel, saying, ‘The seventh month, on the first of the
month, rest will be yours, a memorial of trumpets; it will be a holy assembly to you. You will not perform any servile work, and you will bring a whole burnt offering to the Lord.”

As the Synaxarion notes, especially in the Orthros Service, this was also the day Christ entered a synagogue and read from the scroll of Isaiah (Luke 4:16–30)

By marking the new year at harvest time, we remind ourselves annually of our dependence on both hard work and the blessings of God. Going beyond material blessings and healthy crops, this applied (as do many of our hymns) to Imperial concerns, including prayers for protection from our enemies.

Ecological Stewardship

And that leads to a final point: the Ecclesiastical New Year is now a day marked by prayers for the care of the environment.

Patriarch Demetrios of Constantinople issued an encyclical on the environment in 1989, calling all Orthodox Christians to both pray for and protect the world around us. His encyclical also established September 1—the beginning of the new Church year—as “a day of prayer for the protection of the environment” for the Ecumenical Patriarchate, something adopted soon after by the rest of the canonical Orthodox churches.

Since his elevation to Ecumenical Patriarch, an encyclical has been issued each year on September 1st, by Patriarch Bartholomew on the environment. Bartholomew is affectionately known as “the Green Patriarch,” and he often speaks on an international stage regarding the protection of Creation.

And this all makes perfect sense.

The beginning of the New Year was for centuries a commemoration of the foundation of the world (Anno Mundi). It is a day for giving thanks to God for plentiful harvest. It is a day that recognizes God’s protection over and providence for the world, along with our responsibility and stewardship towards the same.

We may ask, how does this all apply to me, personally?  It is a reminder and opportunity to discover and renew our purpose as human beings.  Our primary purpose/goal is to continuously get to know God and be in communion with Him, Who is a mystery, in that we continuously discover and grow in Him throughout this life and into eternity.  This is a built-in longing and desire within each one of us, in which we have the free will to accept or reject.  We are called to live with the Presence of God in our lives, not without Him.  Adam sought to live without God.  The temptation for us humans is to do as Adam did.  Let us, therefore, as a remedy give thanksgiving to God for everything He has blessed us with.

When it comes to the environment, we each can do our part to be true stewards of the earth and environment we live in.  Simple acts such as placing rubbish and recyclables in their proper places, rather than throwing them out onto the roads or indiscriminately leaving them for others to clean up after us.  Develop a mindset of stewardship rather than one of consumerism.

Have a Blessed New Ecclesiastical Year! 

With Continued Love and Joy in Christ,

+Fr. Alexander