The Paschal cycle is how the Church organizes the year around Pascha, the Resurrection of Christ. It’s not just Easter Sunday. It’s the whole rhythm of preparation, celebration, and living in the Resurrection that shapes most of our liturgical year.
Think of it this way. The Church has two calendars running at once. One stays put: Christmas comes December 25 every year, the Theotokos’s Dormition on August 15, and so on. But the other calendar moves. Pascha falls on a different Sunday each spring, and everything else shifts with it. Great Lent starts earlier or later. Pentecost moves. Even the Apostles’ Fast changes length depending on when Pascha lands. That moving calendar is the Paschal cycle, and it governs about two-thirds of the year.
We calculate Pascha’s date the way the Church has since the First Ecumenical Council in 325. It’s the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox. Sounds simple, but there’s a catch. We use the Julian calendar and the original Nicene calculations, while Western Christians switched to the Gregorian calendar in 1582. That’s why Orthodox Pascha sometimes matches Western Easter and sometimes doesn’t. Most years we’re a week apart. Some years it’s five weeks. This year they coincide, which happens every few years.
The cycle starts long before Pascha itself. We begin with preparatory Sundays, Zacchaeus, the Publican and Pharisee, the Prodigal Son. Then Meatfare Sunday (last day for meat), then Cheesefare (last day for dairy and eggs). After that comes Clean Monday and the start of Great Lent. These weeks use the Triodion, the service book filled with penitential hymns that prepare us for the Resurrection. You can’t appreciate Pascha without the journey through Lent. The Church knows this. She makes us walk through the desert before we get to the empty tomb.
Holy Week intensifies everything. By the time we reach Holy Friday and Saturday, we’ve been fasting for weeks, attending extra services, and entering deeply into Christ’s Passion. Then Saturday night arrives. The church goes dark. We wait. At midnight the priest emerges with the Paschal flame, and we process outside singing “Thy Resurrection, O Christ our Savior, the angels in heaven sing.” Everything changes. The fast breaks. We feast. We greet each other with “Christ is risen!” for forty days straight.
But the cycle doesn’t end on Pascha morning. The fifty days from Pascha to Pentecost are called the Pentecostarion, and they’re a continuous celebration. We don’t fast at all during this period. Not even Wednesdays and Fridays. The services overflow with Resurrection hymns. We’re living in the joy of the empty tomb, and the Church won’t let us forget it. Forty days in, we celebrate the Ascension. Then comes Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles. After Pentecost the Apostles’ Fast begins, running until the feast of Saints Peter and Paul on June 29. How long that fast lasts depends entirely on when Pascha fell.
For folks working rotating shifts at the refineries or offshore, this moving calendar can be tricky to track. You can’t just mark “Easter” on your calendar in January and be done with it. You’ve got to check when Pascha falls that year, then count backward to know when Lent starts, forward to know when Pentecost comes. Most Orthodox calendars and parish websites list the whole cycle each year. St. Michael’s publishes ours so you can plan ahead.
The Paschal cycle also affects how we read Scripture. During the Pentecostarion we read from Acts at the Liturgy instead of the Old Testament. We’re hearing about the early Church living in the power of the Resurrection. The Gospel readings follow a pattern tied to Pascha’s date. It all fits together, but you’ve got to live it a few years before the rhythm becomes second nature.
Metropolitan Kallistos Ware once wrote that the Orthodox year is essentially Paschal. He’s right. Even when we’re celebrating the Nativity or the Dormition, we’re still a Paschal people. But the Paschal cycle makes that explicit. For these months we’re consciously preparing for, celebrating, or living out the Resurrection. It’s the heartbeat of Orthodox life.
If you’re new to Orthodoxy, don’t worry about mastering all this immediately. Just show up. Follow the services. Let the cycle carry you. One year of living through the Triodion’s penitence and the Pentecostarion’s joy will teach you more than any explanation can.
