Portsmouth Abbey      

Today is one of the more unusual days on the Church calendar because it holds the simultaneous celebration of two different feasts: the third day of the Octave of Christmas, and St. John the Evangelist.

An octave is the continued celebration of a major feast for eight days. Up until 1955, this occurred for many feasts on the calendar, including Epiphany, which ended with the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, and even St. John the Evangelist. Many of these octaves would overlap with other feasts, making it somewhat difficult for the priests to figure out what was going on. For example, if we were in 1954, I would need to find a way to also include the Octave of St. Stephen in this quick explanation of the feast. Out of a desire to simplify the liturgy, Pius XII reduced the number of octaves to the three great octaves: Easter, Pentecost and Christmas. Paul VI, to his apparent surprise according to a famous, possibly apocryphal story, then suppressed the octave of Pentecost, leaving only two: Easter and Christmas, the two hinges of the Church year, where we celebrate the two hinges of our salvation: the coming of Christ into the World and his paschal mystery.

So, all week, in the liturgy, we continue to celebrate Christmas: we sing Vespers for Christmas day all week, in the Roman Canon, Eucharistic Prayer I, we use the proper form of the communicants that makes a direct reference to Christmas with the form “on this day”, and we keep up all of our Christmas decorations.

Simultaneously, we also celebrate St. John the Evangelist, and those who chose the lectionary readings made an interesting choice. The first reading, from one of the Catholic Epistles of St. John, a letter written to the entire Church, refers clearly to the Gospel from Christmas: “What was from the beginning … concerns the Word of life.” However, it is now portrayed from the point of view of the Apostle, writing to remind the people of their duties of love and charity because of the Word: Jesus Christ, and reminding them that joy is the result of that fellowship.

However, the Gospel points us towards the other end of Christ’s life: the empty tomb that Peter and John run to after Mary Magdalene tells them about it. This shows that Christ’s coming, the Word made flesh, necessarily points towards his mission to save humanity from their sins and from death: a mission accomplished in the paschal mystery of his death and resurrection. The joy of Christmas is incomplete without the cross, and the cross is incomplete without the empty tomb.

So, in summary: Merry Christmas, and Happy Feast of St. John the Evangelist!