The celebration of Easter on Sunday.
The celebration of Easter on Sunday.
§ 388. Ninth: “We must believe that, in the New Testament, Easter must be celebrated on Sunday, for the Church considered the Quartodecimans as heretics. Yet there is nothing at all about this in the Holy Scriptures.” We respond. (1) At one time there was a serious controversy in the early Church about the time for celebrating Easter, as is evident from Epiphanius (Haeres. 50). The Eastern churches were celebrating Easter on a day other than Sunday, and they said that in this matter they were following John and Philip. The Western churches were celebrating it on Sunday and said that in this matter they were following Paul and Peter. The Roman Bishop Victor was threatening to excommunicate the Eastern churches because of their practice, but Irenaeus and other bishops of Asia rebuked him, as we find in Eusebius (Histor. eccles., bk. 5, c. 25). The controversy was finally resolved in this way: “Let everyone follow his own custom or his own judgment,” according to Sozomen (Histor. eccles., bk. 7, c. 19). This, then, was a free custom or ceremony, not a necessary article of faith.
(2) In Hist. eccles., bk. 5, c. 22, Socrates reveals in detail that “the apostles did not set a law about feast days but left this to the judgment of each.” Therefore the celebration of Easter on Sunday cannot be considered an apostolic tradition.
(3) The Quartodecimans—that is, those who argued stubbornly that one must celebrate Easter with the Jews on the fourteenth day of the first month—were condemned as heretics because of their corruption of the article on Christian freedom.
(4) It was not the mere tradition that was opposed to them, which indeed was different in the Eastern and Western churches; rather, they were refuted from the Scriptures, which bore witness about the abrogation of the ceremonies of the Law.