Yesterday, Sunday 1st September, was the beginning of the church year for Orthodox Christians. In a happy coincidence*, today’s Gospel reading in the Roman and Anglican daily Eucharistic lectionaries was the same one as heard by our Orthodox fellow Christians yesterday:

So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

Then He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” So all bore witness to Him, and marveled at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth. [S. Luke 4:16-22, NKJV]

What a perfect passage to begin the church year! Christ’s preaching of a gospel to the poor; his announcement of the fulfillment of prophecy in him; the proclamation of ‘the acceptable year of the Lord’.

This last phrase took me back to a book I’ve treasured ever since I got it (October 1990! Sadly, I’ve got out of the habit of dating books when I get them…). It’s Fr Lev Gillet’s ‘The Year of Grace of the Lord’, which is a scriptural and liturgical commentary on the church year in the Eastern Rite. In his introduction, he makes the point – in typically direct Gillet style – that, whether we are considering the paschal cycle or the calendar of saints, ‘The liturgical year has but one and the same object, Jesus Christ; whether we contemplate him directly, or whether we contemplate him through the members of his body.’ He also reminds us that, throughout history, solitaries and ascetics have often either cut down or done without this rich liturgical resource, preferring instead the direct contemplation of Christ. This is a useful reminder of the secondary things on which we can often risk focussing instead of the One to whom they point.

But, using the calendar in the way it is intended allows to say something important at the start of this month:

Jesus, himself, is the embodiment of all deliverance and of all forgiveness. If at this moment I accept his word, his salvation, everything can become new for me. Today: on the first day of the year this offer is made new for me.

*I suspect it’s not really a coincidence – the Gospel reading will always fall close to 1 Sept, but it’s nice that it’s the very next day this year. Next year, the reading will actually be on Monday 1st Sept.