Starting the New Church Year Together

This post comes from an email in the "Walk Through the Church Year" series which goes out to folks who sign up to receive two emails per month about major feasts and selected commemorations in the liturgical calendar. To receive these emails in your inbox, sign up here.

The original email was sent out in September of 2024.

by Brendan Byrd

Happy New Year!

Welcome to the beginning of the nearly two thousandth year celebrated by the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church as established by the Holy Spirit, through the Apostles in Jerusalem, at Pentecost.

Redeeming the Time, Again

So, here we are in September starting a new church year. As an educator in the US I was long accustomed to starting ‘the year’ in the fall. However, as a relatively new convert to Orthodoxy, it has taken time for the newness to become a routine, and for the routine to become an anticipated event. The busyness of starting classes with students has often been my excuse for not giving enough attention to this shift; for others, it is undoubtedly something else. Regardless, time is always moving, and if one is not careful or intentional, the meaning of a day and even a year can be lost without notice. As in so many other things, the Church in her wisdom has provided an additional way to “redeem the time” (Ephesians 5:16) and to orient ourselves to the true nature and opportunity of the year.

Through repeated practice, I am slowly seeing and feeling in my bones the wisdom of starting the year now. Pentecost and Apostle’s Fast and Dormition have all concluded. The Nativity of the Theotokos and even THE Nativity are on the horizon. Today is the time to start anew. All of this points to the essential nature of the year as something much deeper than a random collection of days tracked by astronomical events and calendars. Like all things, the year’s purpose is to point us back to Christ Himself.

Starting now, we begin a year of feasts, great and small, of a series of liturgies, services, and daily opportunities to become more like Christ, to be joined more to Him.

Looking Ahead

Like every other one before it, this church year will be one of the primary ways that Holy Church gives us to grow in communion with Christ, the Theotokos, the angels, and the saints. Each of the Great Feasts themselves–starting with the Nativity of the Theotokos on the 8th of this first month of the new year–provides a succession of opportunities, a path of holiness that every saint before us has trod. It is what we are invited to do and become each new year.

If one is blessed enough to attend a service on September 1st, one will hear the Gospel passage from Luke 4:16-22. This is where Christ reads aloud from Isaiah in his hometown synagogue and declares, “This day this scripture is fulfilled in your ears.”

An Invitation to Begin

At the beginning of this new year, and everyday following, we are invited to be changed by Christ to become more the man or woman, boy or girl, that He created us to be. Unlike the ‘secular’ New Year’s resolutions that are made and typically broken by the end of January, we can, like the “the monk of the Eastern Church” state,

“If at this moment I accept his word, his salvation, everything can become new to me. Today: on the first day of the year this offer is made to me… this year which is starting can still be for me ‘a year of grace of the Lord.” (1)

Together, In Christ

I echo these words with him, as you may, as well. Today is the day of Christ’s salvation. His Grace, His Presence, available to us for each day of the coming year, is exactly what we need. We need Him. And we receive Him through the life of the Church, as lived out through the liturgies, feasts, and daily life choices that follow.

Each of us is invited, either for the first time or for a repetition, to walk with Christ and His saints this year. Our “Walk Through the Church Year” is one additional way to complement and encourage what each individual is doing in his or her own journey. Whether you are already planted in a local parish, considering Orthodoxy, or are just interested in learning more about how the Church truly sees Christ “making all things new,” starting in this life, you are welcome.

As we all begin this new year together, no matter our parish or jurisdiction, we have the opportunity to be one in Christ.

Peace of Christ,

Brendan

Brendan Byrd came into the Orthodox Church with his family in 2018. An educator, husband, and father of five, he lives in the west Michigan woods with his family and precocious cat, surrounded by mountains of books and icons.

(1) The Year of Grace of the Lord, By a Monk of the Eastern Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Press, 1971) pg 5