March 25

I learned recently that today (the twenty fifth of March) was once held in tradition to be the date on which Jesus died (which we now celebrate according to a lunar calendar on various dates of Good Friday). It also has to do with the reasons of when Christmas would be celebrated.

Apparently people used to think that greatness was determined by the symmetry of one's birth and death- if you died on your birthday it was a good sign somehow. But being killed nine months before one's birthday wasn't really all that hot.  Unless you get Resurrected and redeem the whole universe.  Then you have this whole new dimension of death really being a new kind of beginning of the new birth and this idea in the liturgical year that there's a nine month gestation period between now and Christmas.  Then there's also something special about those three months between Christmas and now because that was that season that overlapped in the first and last years of Jesus' (earthly) life.

Then you get Tolkien, who notices everything and tries to show it to us in hidden little ways.  Go look through the index of your copy of the Lord of the Rings (if you don't have a copy, I don't know what you're doing reading this blog).  The big journey (of the Fellowship anyway) begins on December 25.  And Frodo destroys the Ring on March 25.  It's that fantastic three months of redemption that the liturgical year and Tolkien are trying to remind us of.

And you can even see vestiges of this in our society's traditions when we resolve to change ourselves for the better at New Year's, or commit to love each other better at Valentine's Day, or commit to sacrifice something for Lent.  It's all in that redemptive track reminding us (like every Sunday) that Christ has changed the world and we don't live in the same place anymore.

Now because Easter and such is followed on the lunar calendar, "Holy Week" is yet to come.  Now I don't know how all got decided when to do what, but what is important is that it got decided for very good reasons and those reasons are meant to teach us something, not just to be arbitrary.
 So remember that as we all consider what on earth the word Maunday means on Thursday.


* I learned all of this from these two books: The Liturgical Year and Tolkien: Author of the Century