Help with Byzantine Liturgical Calendar

  • Thread starter Thread starter TypicalYoungConvert
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
T

TypicalYoungConvert

Guest
Hello all,

I am a Latin Catholic, and I have recently developed a website that produces on-screen and printed liturgical calendars and orders for both forms of the Roman Rite, with various proper calendars, like so:

See www.calendarialiturgica.co.uk (the picture below shows the Extraordinary form with the proper calendar of the Diocese of Plymouth, UK).

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

Lately I have also tried to branch out into the Byzantine Rite, but I’m afraid I don’t have a very good understanding of it. Here’s what I’ve got so far, nominally based on the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church since that’s the biggest by membership:

www.calendarialiturgica.co.uk/byz

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

I would be most grateful for the comments of any Byzantine Catholics who feel like inspecting the link. My main questions would be as follows:
  1. I understand that the Byzantine Rite doesn’t transfer important days that fall on other important days, as the Roman Rite does; instead, if an important feast of the fixed cycle happens to fall on an important day of the Paschal cycle, both celebrations happen that day. Is that correct? (If so, it’s a relief: it makes programming the calendar much easier!)
  2. Does it make sense to think of there being one main liturgical colour for any given day, despite the above? The visual interest of my calendar, as you can see, rather relies on this.
  3. It seems that there are ‘seasonal’ liturgical colours (e.g. red for the Apostles’ Fast, white for Pascha), and also ‘sanctoral’ liturgical colours (e.g. green for Monastic saints, archangels). If this isn’t an overly Latin question, how high-ranking does a feast have to be for its colour to be used? E.g., does a Great doxology class feast of a monastic in Pascha get celebrated in green or in white?
  4. Do post-feasts and forefeasts tend to carry the colour of the main feast (e.g. are the postfeasts of the Dormition celebrated in Blue?).
  5. The website of the UGCC Eparchy of Winnipeg tells me that there are the follow main kinds of feast: Feasts with Vigils and Aftefeasts, Feasts with Vigils, Polyeleos-class Feasts, Great doxology class feasts, and ordinary feasts. I have included the matching symbols in my calendar. Does this division provide all the main liturgically relevant information?
  6. Are the any other things it would be useful for to include? (Within reason: probably my site won’t be used by experienced Byzantines: the Byzantine calendar will be there to be of interest to the Latins that will be using my site for the more detailed Roman-rite information),
Thank you very much in advance to any Byzantines kind enough to indulge my interest!
 
TypicalYoungConvert said:
…
Click to expand...
There is a lot of information here for the Ruthenian (Byzantine USA) church: https://mci.archpitt.org/

The Typikon is followed. There is more than one Byzantine calendar, note that there are fourteen eastern Catholic sui iuris churches in the tradition of Constantinople.

Types of feasts in the Ruthenian calendar are either relative to Pascha, or are fixed. Fixed feasts for the weekdays are in the Menaion. Rules exist for when to have Royal Hours before Nativity and Theophany so that only a weekday (Monday-Friday) is used. There are rules for when to use the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil, based upon the day of the week and the solemnity. Greek-Melkites will celebrate with the Divine Liturgy of St. James on October 23 and Sunday after Nativity.

The Gospel series may have zero (e.g. 2008) to five (e.g. 2011, 2015) Sundays between Theophany and the Triodion. The movable feasts in the Triodion begin with Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee. The movable feasts in the Pentecostarion begins with Pascha.

The vestment colors used is variable based upon the sui iuris church.

Each year, there is an adjustment of the readings, called the Lukan jump.

The Calendar of Saints have four symbols with five types:
Great Feast of our Lord or of the Theotokos
Feast with All-night Vigil
Feast with the Polyeleos at Matins
Feast with the Great Doxology at Matins
Feast with Six Stichera at Vespers
Some of the feasts are marked as major holidays.
Click to expand...
The calendar that is published has indications for solemn and simple feasts as well as obligation.
 
Last edited:
Thank you very much for your help! Yes I do hope to include as many of the Sui Iuris Churches’ calendars as possible (I understand that all the Byzantine-rite ones are fairly similar).
 
Royal Doors is a Canadian UGCC website as well:


Fr. Michael Winn posts the liturgical propers here:


It’s very detailed. This is what I use for Divine Liturgy.

The ECPubs app is from Eastern Christian Publications and is available through Google Play.

Re q. 1: In the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, we celebrate both. A few years ago, the Feast of the Annunciation fell on Palm Sunday. This is what Royal Doors Liturgical Texts & Music had:


And one year the Annunciation fell on Good Friday. The Archeparchy of Philadelphia issued a special booklet for Vespers with Divine Liturgy (which is NEVER done on Good Friday - this is the ONLY exception). Reason: Our Lord couldn’t be crucified if He didn’t have a human nature. He assumed human nature in the immaculate womb of the Ever-Virgin Mary. In the divine nature He cannot suffer; in his human nature He could suffer and die to redeem us, which He did.

Re q. 4: Post-feasts do carry the liturgical color of the feast. Example: The Exaltation of the Holy Cross (Sept. 14), the Third Sunday of the Great Fast and the week after each all have red vestments. Pentecost and the week after (to Saturday) are in green vestments. Great Fast weekdays (except after the Third Sunday of the Great Fast as mentioned above) are in purple or dark vestments.

Generally, joy takes precedence over sorrow except for Nativity Eve, Theophany Eve (coming up this Sunday!), the Exaltation of the Holy Cross and the Beheading of St. John the Baptist. Traditionally, these are strict fast days even if they fall on Sunday.
 
Last edited:
I use Royal Doors all the time, it is an invaluable resource for me. I highly recommend it also for articles and news releases and such.

@TypicalYoungConvert - this seems a Herculean task you are undertaking, congratulations to you.

Fr. Deacon Christopher
 
Thank you very much for your extensive answer, which is very helpful and interesting. As a former classicist I’m always interested in learning about Greek/Greek-derived liturgies as well Latin ones: indeed I think we all ought to know a little about the richness of our Church! Here, by the way, is how the page is looking now:

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
 
Thank you Fr Deacon Christopher: yes I will certainly look at Royal Doors in more detail. I’m grateful for your (name removed by moderator)ut.

I should say that I can’t promise that I will make my Byzantine calendar very sophisticated at this stage: for now I’ll mostly be just trying to list what is celebrated each day, not so much how it is celebrated. Fortunately the ‘what’ doesn’t seem too difficult for the Byzantine rite; whereas tranferences complicate the ‘what’ of the Roman Rite: tables like the below were tricky to program! (The ‘how’ of the Byzantine Rite, on the other hand, seems rather more complicated than the ‘how’ of the Roman Rite).

The Roman-rite project is something I have been adding to in spare moments since 2016 (the original version was Anglican…), but it’s essentially complete now, save that I can always add more regional propers. (There has been less data-(name removed by moderator)ut work than one would think: there are ways of analyzing patterns in basic textual data and turning them into databases very easily).

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
picture courtesy of DivinumOfficium.com
 
TypicalYoungConvert said:
Thank you very much for your extensive answer, which is very helpful and interesting. As a former classicist I’m always interested in learning about Greek/Greek-derived liturgies as well Latin ones: indeed I think we all ought to know a little about the richness of our Church! Here, by the way, is how the page is looking now:
…
Click to expand...
Why is June 30 red? The solemnity of the Holy Pre-eminent Apostles Peter and Paul is on June 29 so the Apostles Fast ends June 28.
 
Last edited:
I thought perhaps that the Synaxis of the Twelve Apostles, and, for that matter, St Peter and St Paul’s day, would use red, just as the Roman Rite does for apostles and martyrs?
 
TypicalYoungConvert said:
I thought perhaps that the Synaxis of the Twelve Apostles, and, for that matter, St Peter and St Paul’s day, would use red, just as the Roman Rite does for apostles and martyrs?
Click to expand...
There is variable practice in the Byzantine Catholic Church which has used red for the martyrs but gold for the Apostles. The Solemnity of Peter and Paul could use Red.

Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday use bright vestments, instead of the dark vestments used during the Great Fast, and Great and Holy Week.

Details from the Eparchy of Parma, for Lenten vestments:
Vestments worn on Sundays during the Great Fast are to be bright or white; dark vestments are to be worn on All Souls Saturdays and on the third Sunday of the Great Fast (the Sunday of the Veneration of the Holy Cross and on weekdays). This rule applies to liturgies celebrated in anticipation of Sunday as well. After the prokeimenon at Sunday evening Vespers, dark vestments are to be worn.
Click to expand...
 
Thank you! Of course, I have to be a bit careful here: I could end up in a bit of a tangle if I try to follow the rubrics of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Byzantine/Ruthenian Catholic Church at the same time. Once I’ve gathered more information I hope to split the calendar into versions for different Byzantine-rite sui iuris Churches.
 
And don’t forget some Parishes will be celebrating according to the Julian Calendar - and others will not
 
eagerbeaver said:
And don’t forget some Parishes will be celebrating according to the Julian Calendar - and others will not
Click to expand...
Yes. I visited a Ukrainian Catholic parish and the cantor there told me that there are essentially two parishes, the English speak on the Gregorian Calendar and the Ukrainian speaking on the Julian Calendar. It can really wear the priest out.
 
Margaret_Ann said:
And one year the Annunciation fell on Good Friday. The Archeparchy of Philadelphia issued a special booklet for Vespers with Divine Liturgy
Click to expand...
Yess, this is the Big One 🙂 🤣

Normally, we have black vestments over white during Holy Week, with the black stripped during the Saturday vigil.

For this rare occurrence (it won’t happen in our lifetimes, those of our children, nor most of their children.), we had Blue over Black over White that day!

During the “peculiar” liturgy (and I use “peculiar” formally, and not in a derogatory manner), we start with blue, and switch not just the coverings of the Holy Table and preparation table to black, but also the Priest and servers switch from blue (or light) to dark vestments mid liturgy!

And, even though it doesn’t happen again for something like 130 years, our parish kept the pamphlets we printed . . . :roll_eyes:

[and on such esoteric calendar topics, I believe last year (or was it 2018?) was the rare year in which both the old and new calendars missed the correct date for Pascha . . . but there are other threads for that, too.]
TypicalYoungConvert said:
As a former classicist
Click to expand...
We had one of those in our department when I was getting my Ph.D.

He was ABD with two small children when he realized that finishing would mean spending the next several years in one-year $30k/year jobs, basically waiting for someone in the department to die while he was there. 😱 🤯 So he took some math and got a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics . . .
TypicalYoungConvert said:
I should say that I can’t promise that I will make my Byzantine calendar very sophisticated at this stage: for now I’ll mostly be just trying to list what is celebrated each day, not so much how it is celebrated.
Click to expand...
For that matter, have you checked the calendars at byzcath.org? I think they largely do this already, although it may be manual.
 
Thank you. Yes, I know others exist: I thought mine would be a nice complement to my more detailed Roman one, though; the style gives one a good sense of the shape of the liturgical year, I think. Re classics, I simply meant I did my degree in it, so I have Greek as well as Latin. But my Greek is rusty, so I’d like to whet it on some of the Christian Greek tradition.
 
Gosh that must be awful—a real disruption of one’s liturgical sensibility.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top