Council Day 5 Reflection

Honorable Emperor Constantine, Ossius, and fellow council members,

Yesterdays council session was both pleasing in one sense and displeasing in the other. For starters, I am highly disappointed with the decision we made regarding Easter. To emphasize once again, we are Christians!! By linking the date of which we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to a Jewish holiday — Passover — we are downplaying our religion. Furthermore, by giving Alexander the authority to “calculate” that actual date is degrading to the Jewish Rabbi. We are a separate religion and should be separate of the Jews. I do agree that Jesus Christ was Jewish, because that is true. However, Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice made it so that we do not have to celebrate the Jewish traditions including Passover or Sabbath. Furthermore, I believe that Theclus and myself were the only one in the whole debate that were willing to compromise for this issue. For starters, I believe that the resurrection should be celebrated on a fixed date since that it the only logical answer in my opinion and we cannot just move the date when our Lord rose too fall on a specific Sunday because that day of the week is more holy than the others. However, I was willing to agree to have the celebration on a Sunday, like the the third Sunday in March, which fell in both the Passover range and the moon phase range. I believe this could have been the largest compromise for all individuals. Ultimately, I believe that we made a poor decision. On the other hand, I was very please with our agreement on the celibacy of the clergy. I believe that it is important to keep the individuals in the clergy to a higher standard than the rest of the Christian community. These bishops and priests are supposed to reflect the work of Jesus Christ himself and therefore they should practice celibacy as Christ himself did. This would ensure that these higher authorities provide all their love and attention equally to the Christian community, without having any distraction. I hope that in the last session we come as prepared as we were today.

 

Yours truly,

Meletius