Astronomy glitch gave us two Easters – Mainline Media News

Most Christians throughout the world already have celebrated Easter. Just as the Gregorian Calendar dictates.

But children of the Eastern Orthodox faith will gleefully scoop up hidden colored eggs, search for a bigger-than-life bunny and attend festive religious services with their families as part of their Happy Easter celebration on Sunday, April 24. Just as the Julian Calendar dictates.

Ironically, this calendar confusion was created by an astronomical miscalculation that occurred more than four centuries ago when Pope Gregory XIII decided to alter the time of Easter!

Let’s start at the historical beginning.

In 325 A.D, the Council of Nicaea decreed that Easter would be observed on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the March (spring) equinox.

According to history.com, “In 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII introduced his Gregorian calendar, Europe adhered to the Julian calendar, first implemented by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C.

“Since the Roman emperor’s system miscalculated the length of the solar year by 11 minutes, the calendar had fallen out of sync with the seasons. This concerned Gregory because it meant that Easter, traditionally observed on March 21, fell further away from the spring equinox with each passing year.”

So, for 440 years, the pomp and circumstance, flowers and trumpets, prayers and praise of Easter has been celebrated on two different Sundays of the same year.

End of history lesson.

While hundreds of millions celebrate the day, many millions of others scoff at the Easter event, proclaiming that mankind’s behavior has not really changed for the better in the 2000 years since “the story was first told about a prophet who was crucified, died, was buried, and rose from the dead on the third day.”

The Rev. Arthur R. Namendorf, a retired pastor of The Baptist Church in the Great Valley, Devon (the congregation celebrates its 311th Anniversary on April 22) is one of the multitudes of ordained religious who straddle the fine line separating doubt and devotion.

“Every year at Easter time, I inevitably surround myself with a host of theological tomes, and, like many ministers, I believe that I find myself in the very same boat,” Rev. Namendorf said. “There is something about Easter that strikes fear into the hearts of many members of the clergy, sending us scrambling for answers to share with the faithful of just how to make sense out of Christ’s resurrection from the dead,” he said.

“Several years ago, I had lunch with an old friend from seminary who said that his Easter message was going to be no more than a few moments of meditation because the surrounding service would be filled with prayers and responses and communion and special anthems. I asked ‘isn’t this your big opportunity, faced with a full house? Shouldn’t you take your best shot and let the chips fall where they may?’  He just grinned and said, ‘my sermon will be as short as possible. After all, there are only so many ways to avoid the issue’.”

“The issue, as my friend so succinctly said, is how does one go about explaining that which is inexplicable? The answer, of course, is that it simply cannot be done…at least not without putting a serious dent in one’s intellectual credibility. Easter, above all, is God’s Day. There is nothing we can prove.

“The significance of the resurrection does not lie in the protection of a certain sequence of events that are deemed sacrosanct. Rather, it is still to be found in the life-changing force that overwhelmed those who were there that first Easter morning.

“The only thing to do today is stand back in awe and bear witness,” Namendorf said.

Therein, dear readers, may be the true essence of Easter regardless of the Sunday on the calendar where it appears.

Shortcuts around town: PECO is in the final stages of installing new gas main along N. Waterloo Rd., Highland Ave., Devonwood Rd., Station Ave., Woodside Ave., First Ave., Berwyn Ave., Main Ave., Knox Ave., Old Lancaster Ave., Aikin Ave., S. Fairfield Rd., and Exeter Rd in Easttown. Weather permitting, the project should be completed by April 30 …  But residents of Waterloo Avenue in the same township appear to have a lengthy period of disruption ahead with watermain work by AQUA planned to begin in late spring and installation of a new forcemain slated to begin in the fall …  People’s Light in Malvern, now presenting “Hold These Truths” a one-man, one-act play through May 1, will open “Bayard Rustin Inside Ashland” on May 18-June 12 … The popular Team Trivia Night will return to St. Monica, Berwyn, on Saturday, May 21 at the parish hall. The following day, the parish will hold a Helping Hands event to pack 10,000 meals for those in need.

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With apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the pock-marked asphalt landscape all around Radnor, Tredyffrin, Easttown and Willistown Townships, to call out but a few local municipalities, prompts me to paraphrase the Rime of the Ancient Mariner’s dilemma to wit: “Potholes, potholes everywhere, and all the tires did shrink. Potholes, potholes everywhere, my sanity’s on the brink!”

Finally, nobody asked me, but have you ever noticed that the severity of an itch is inversely proportional to the reach required to scratch it?

The Last Word:  Good day, good luck, and good news tomorrow.

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