Bulletins
October 22, 2017
Download the Bulletin as a PDFThis Sunday, the 22nd of October, is the Feast Day of Pope Saint John Paul II. Is that the day he died and went to heaven? Not exactly.
We usually observe a saints’ feast days on the day they entered into their eternal reward. Some good parishioners pointed out to me last week that St. Teresa of Avila died either just before midnight on October 4, 1582 or just after midnight on October 15, 1582. I should have known that already. The days October 5 through October 14 never took place in the year 1582. Pope Gregory XIII instituted a correction of the Julian Calendar.
The Julian calendar has 365 days in a year but every fourth day has 366 days. It turns out that it takes the earth a little less than 365.25 days to orbit the sun, approximately 11 minutes and 14 seconds less than three hundred sixty five and a quarter days. The difference accumulated over the centuries since the Julian calendar was devised in the first century Before Christ. 674 seconds adds up year after year. In fact, the first day of Spring, which ought to occur on or about March 20, was falling over a million seconds late (the equivalent of ten days) by the 1580s.
The Gregorian calendar corrected the problem by skipping a leap day three times every four hundred years. Years divisible by 100 have a leap year only if they are also divisible by 400. For example, the year 2000 was a leap year but the year 1900 was not. You can check Google Calendar if you are willing to click the left arrow 1412 times so that your mini-calendar month displays February 1900.
With the length of the calendar corrected, the timing of the calendar had to be readjusted. In order for March 20 or 21 to be once again the vernal equinox 10 days had to be skipped. Pope Gregory XIII decreed in the papal bull Inter Gravissimas, which unlike Pope Pius XII’s Gravissimum Educationis is not available on the Vatican website, that Oct. 5 -Oct. 14 be dropped from the calendar in 1582. The new “Gregorian Calendar” took effect in the Catholic world at the stroke of midnight at the end of Monday, October 4 in 1582. England caught up in 1751.
I digress.
Pope John Paul II died on April 2, 2004. But that is not the day we observe as his Feast Day. He was elected pope on the 16th of October. On what would have been called his coronation but by then had become the papal inauguration, Pope John Paul assumed the papal throne and received the obeisance of the College of Cardinals. That day was October 22. It was in effect the beginning of his long white martyrdom.
Pope Saint John Paul II, pray for us.
God bless you.
Fr. Christopher J. Pollard
