Epiphany Proclamation 2025 - Rector's Rambling for January 19, 2025

     

We are now once again into a ‘green’ season as we continue our way through Epiphanytide.  During this time we look at various ways God is made manifest, and it is also a looking forward as we dive into the new church year.  Below is the Epiphany Proclamation, declaring for us the dates of the Church Holy Days upcoming.  Since the date of Easter is set by a lunar calendar, the ‘moveable’ Feasts are set by when Easter is set for the year.  Christmas is always December 25th, but Easter can be anytime between March 22nd and April 25th.  The Prayer Book tells us it “is always the First Sunday after the Full Moon, which happens upon or next after the twenty-first day of March; and if the Full Moon happen upon a Sunday, Easter Day is the Sunday after.” (1928 BCP p. l)

So instead of having to do the math ourselves, figuring out when that Full Moon occurs and then figuring out 9 weeks before Easter is Septuagesima and that Trinity Sunday is 8 weeks after, the Church publishes this time of the year the Epiphany Proclamation of the dates so you can mark your calendar at home. 

The 1928 Book of Common Prayer actually has another index that lists Easter going back to 1786 (when the Episcopal Church was constituted independently of the Church of England after the Revolutionary War) and projected out to 2013.  Newer prayer books project out to 2089.

Of course in our modern day we can just pick up our smart phones and go to google and type “when is Easter this year?” and have the answer at our finger tips!