All Priests Day

[Love365]

There is All Saints Day
and All Souls Day

Should there be a
All Priests Day ?

 

[Paidiske]

Nope. Let's not encourage clericalism.

 

[Love365]

Nope. Let's not encourage clericalism.

The word ”All” would include women priests.

 

[Paidiske]

Yeah, I get that. My answer is the same.

 

[Love365]

Nope. Let's not encourage clericalism.

What should the 3rd day be?

 

[Paidiske]

I don't feel the need to add anything to the liturgical calendar as it stands.

 

[RileyG]

I don't feel the need to add anything to the liturgical calendar as it stands.

Yup, that’s fair.

 

[RileyG]

I wouldn’t call Thursday “all priests day” but it’s when the Church prays for vocations to the priesthood.

Holy Thursday also celebrates the last supper as well as the institution of the Eucharist and priesthood.

But no, there should be no particular feast day.

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

There is All Saints Day
and All Souls Day

Should there be a
All Priests Day ?

Sure, why not!

 

[The Liturgist]

There is All Saints Day
and All Souls Day

Should there be a
All Priests Day ?

No, for the reason expressed by @Paidiske, in the sense that you mean - as clergy, we sacrifice ourselves willingly and I would not desire a holy day set aside on the religious calendar to commemorate us.

The closest thing to this that exists, but which is rather different, is in the Armenian Apostolic Church, and that is that on the feast of St. Stephen the Illustrious Protomartyr, who was a Deacon, to celebrate his martyrdom, and the contributions made by himself and other good deacons throughout history, the Armenian church has the lovely custom of having their deacons wear crowns, that reflect the crown of martyrdom throughout history.

This is not clericalism in my opinion, because, while deacons are clergy, they are not presiding clergy, indeed the word Diakonos means “Servant.” So the servants are celebrated, because of their service and sacrifice, and I think it’s very charming and decent. It is also specific to the Armenian liturgical heritage, as our friend @Tigran1245 can verify (as far as I know, and @dzheremi would know this, it is not used elsewhere in the Oriental Orthodox liturgical rites.

Now, additionally, there is the issue of the Priesthood of all Believers. Because it is the case that all Christians have a sacerdotal, hieratic status as a Royal Priesthood - all Christians are superior to the Kohanim of Judaism in this respect. But only some Christians are called to be Presbyters, the word originally Anglicized as Priest, and this causes some degree of confusion.

 

[The Liturgist]

Sure, why not!

Well I can give a number of compelling reasons:

- It’s not a part of the liturgical heritage of any church.
- It would promote a self-congratulatory clericalism among clergy. I would particularly hate to see what an All Priests Day or All Pastors Day would look like in some churches which take an approach which is particularly condescending and modernist.
- It confuses the issue of the priesthood of all believers.
- It celebrates the status of people according to station, rather than eschatological condition (All Saints Day and All Souls Day are distinct in this regard - in Orthodox Christianity we do not have All Souls Day per se, and we do not believe in Purgatory as such, but we do have Soul Saturdays in the Eastern Orthodox tradition where the departed are prayed for, so I do not regard All Souls Day as being without merit, but rather quite a good idea).

Insofar as any presbyters are worthy of veneration, they are already venerated on All Saints Day, which is either November 1st or in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and Byzantine Rite Catholicism, the first Sunday after Pentecost (which serves the role of being both a feast of the Holy Spirit and a feast of the Trinity in the Byzantine Rite).

I myself am not happy about the idea of venerating presbyters according to station, on a special holy day, because some of the worst people in the history of Christianity have been presbyters, for example, Arius. And in Orthodoxy and traditional Roman Catholicism, presbyters are already venerated by the laity specifically in several respects which I feel are not Clericalist, but which I feel are appropriate.

Meanwhile, there are a number of feasts which were very important and quite justified, commemorating various martyrs, such as the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, which were deleted from the Roman liturgical calendar in the 1961, or de-emphasized, as was the case with St. Christopher and several others, and these same saints are highly important in Orthodoxy, and thus those feasts ought to be re-instated in the context of the Western Rite, in my view.

It is worth noting that in the Byzantine Rite, all Lenten Sundays are specific commemorations: the first Sunday, the Triumph of Orthodoxy, celebrates the Seventh Ecumenical Synod having suppressed iconoclasm, the second Sunday commemorates St. Gregory Palamas, the Third Sunday of the Holy Cross, one of two holy days of the Cross along with the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on September 14th, which we are looking forward to now, and the fourth and fifth Sundays are dedicated to St. John Climacus and St. Mary of Egypt respectively. So the idea of replacing a feast day such as that of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste with a feria seems quite alien from a Byzantine liturgical perspective.

 

[The Liturgist]

Nope. Let's not encourage clericalism.

Indeed, if we did have this, I think it would turn into a massive festival of smug self-congratulation between the clergy that would be profoundly off-putting to the laity, particularly in places where clergy are distrusted, for example, the very unpleasant situation you have described to me in much of Australia, which I have heard is also the case in Ireland and certain other places.

 

[RileyG]

Nope. Let's not encourage clericalism.

Agreed.

 

[Love365]

If you can celebrate the Pope,
then why not celebrate priests ?

Feb. 22 is the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter

 

[The Liturgist]

If you can celebrate the Pope,
then why not celebrate priests ?

Feb. 22 is the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter

We don’t celebrate that feast in the Orthodox church. There are no feasts that merely commemorate an ecclesiastical office. Likewise the Anglicans such as our friend @Paidiske do not have in their traditional calendar any kind of generic commemoration of all Archbishops of Canterbury or all Archbishops of York.

I am strongly opposed to the idea of any feast day that commemorates the Presbyters apart from the Laity. It would be divisive, and it would turn into a clericalist self-congratulatory event.

 

[RileyG]

If you can celebrate the Pope,
then why not celebrate priests ?

Feb. 22 is the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter

They essentially are asking St. Peter for his intercession and remembering him. I don't think they are "celebrating" him in the same sense you are thinking. ???

 

[RileyG]

We don’t celebrate that feast in the Orthodox church. There are no feasts that merely commemorate an ecclesiastical office. Likewise the Anglicans such as our friend @Paidiske do not have in their traditional calendar any kind of generic commemoration of all Archbishops of Canterbury or all Archbishops of York.

I am strongly opposed to the idea of any feast day that commemorates the Presbyters apart from the Laity. It would be divisive, and it would turn into a clericalist self-congratulatory event.

There are no feasts for Patriarchs or Bishops in the EO Church? Really? I didn't know that.

 

[The Liturgist]

There are no feasts for Patriarchs or Bishops in the EO Church? Really? I didn't know that.

It is customary for bishops and priests to celebrate the anniversary of their ordination, and sometimes a bishop will visit a parish on the anniversary of a priest’s ordination, but people are ordained on holy days anyway.

However, strictly speaking, the Feast of St. Peter’s Chair is not supposed to be for the current Pope, but rather they are Petrine feasts and are also equivalent to the Feast of the Dedication of the Church and the Feast of the Renewal of the Church in the Syriac Orthodox liturgy (which are held in late fall, for two consecutive Sundays around the time of All Saints Day in the West, shortly before the six-day Nativity fast begins).

So if we understand it correctly, then yes, there are feasts for bishops and priests in the Orthodox church, who happen to be saints, for example, the Feast of the Three Holy Hierarchs (St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian and St. John Chrysostom).

By the way, the Roman Rite and its derivatives are the only rites I am aware of where Advent lasts only four weeks instead of six. In the Ambrosian Rite celebrated in Milan, for example, there are six Sundays of the Nativity Fast, just like in the Byzantine Rite.

 

[RileyG]

It is customary for bishops and priests to celebrate the anniversary of their ordination, and sometimes a bishop will visit a parish on the anniversary of a priest’s ordination, but people are ordained on holy days anyway.

However, strictly speaking, the Feast of St. Peter’s Chair is not supposed to be for the current Pope, but rather they are Petrine feasts and are also equivalent to the Feast of the Dedication of the Church and the Feast of the Renewal of the Church in the Syriac Orthodox liturgy (which are held in late fall, for two consecutive Sundays around the time of All Saints Day in the West, shortly before the six-day Nativity fast begins).

So if we understand it correctly, then yes, there are feasts for bishops and priests in the Orthodox church, who happen to be saints, for example, the Feast of the Three Holy Hierarchs (St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian and St. John Chrysostom).

By the way, the Roman Rite and its derivatives are the only rites I am aware of where Advent lasts only four weeks instead of six. In the Ambrosian Rite celebrated in Milan, for example, there are six Sundays of the Nativity Fast, just like in the Byzantine Rite.

Thanks for your answer.

I assumed in those rites Christmas is celebrated on January 6th instead of December 25th? Please enlighten me.

 

[The Liturgist]

Thanks for your answer.

I assumed in those rites Christmas is celebrated on January 6th instead of December 25th? Please enlighten me.

Nope, actually only the Armenians celebrate Christmas on January the 6th, and that’s on the Gregorian calendar (so for the Armenians in Jerusalem, who use the Julian calendar, they are the last church in Jerusalem to celebrate the Nativity, after the other Orthodox churches and the Roman Catholics, because, using Gregorian dates, the Roman Catholics and Protestants celebrate it on December 25th, the other Orthodox churches, who all use the Julian calendar in Jerusalem, even if they use a different calendar elsewhere, celebrate Christmas on January 7th, and the Armenians on January 18th).

But rather, whether the church uses the Gregorian Calendar or the Julian Calendar for the date of Christmas, in all of the liturgical rites except the Roman Rite and its various derivatives, such as the majority of Protestant liturgical rites, the Nativity Fast, or Advent, lasts for six weeks, which means that it starts in November and usually overlaps with American thanksgiving. But since they don’t celebrate that in Milan it’s not a problem, but for the Orthodox in the US it can be a bit frustrating - I wish we would move thanksgiving forward a couple of weeks to make it more inclusive, perhaps adopt a treaty with Canada to split the change with them and celebrate it in between the current dates for Canadian thanksgiving and American thanksgiving, as part of a Fall vacation that would also ideally overlap with All Saints Day for Western Christians (and it would thus include Halloween, which would be beneficial in terms of safety for the children, I think).