The Liturgical Year
The Church keeps her own time, and Orthros keeps it with you, shaded day by day in its own light.
Every day of the year
Choose your jurisdiction, then open any day for its saint, its fast, its tone, and the readings appointed for it.
Opening the calendar…
Annual overview: choose its calendar style below. The monthly calendar has a separate parish selection.
- Fasting season
- Great Feast
- Pascha
- Today
New Calendar and Old, chosen once
Orthros is pan-Orthodox. Choose the New Calendar or the Old a single time, and every feast and fast, every tone and saint, follows your choice from then on, no second-guessing, nothing to reconcile.
The Twelve Great Feasts, and Pascha above them
The year turns on the great feasts: the Nativity and Theophany, the Meeting and the Annunciation, the Transfiguration and the Dormition, and the rest, each with its icon and its hymns. And over them all, the Feast of Feasts.
“Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death.”
EACH OF THE GREAT FEASTS ›The fasts, by season and by level
The four fasting seasons and the weekly fast, each day marked with the measure the Church appoints, from the strictest days to the bright weeks when the fast is set aside.
- StrictNo meat, dairy, fish, wine, or oil, the sharpest days.
- Wine & oilThe fast relaxed a little, as the Church appoints.
- FishFish permitted, the great feasts that fall within a fast.
- Fast-freeThe bright weeks, when the Church sets the fast aside entirely.
And always: the measure is yours to receive, ask your priest.
EACH OF THE FASTS ›Your name day
The feast of your patron saint, kept as the Church keeps it, remembered for you each year, quietly, in its place on the calendar.
The tone of the week
The Octoechos turns through its eight tones, week by week, and the calendar tells you which melody the whole Church is singing.
Questions about the Orthodox calendar
When does the Orthodox Church year begin?
On September 1, the Church New Year, called the Indiction. Churches on the Old Calendar keep it on their own September 1, which the civil calendar calls September 14.
Do the New and Old Calendars keep the same feasts?
Yes, the same feasts and fasts. A fixed feast falls thirteen days later by the civil calendar on the Old Calendar: Christmas, December 25 on the New Calendar, is kept on the Old Calendar on what the civil calendar calls January 7. Pascha, and the feasts counted from it, fall on the same day on both, apart from the Church of Finland, which keeps the Western Easter. The Apostles' Fast is the one that differs in length: it ends on June 28 by each calendar's own reckoning, so on the New Calendar it is shorter, and in some years there is none.
Is there an Orthodox calendar app?
Orthros carries the liturgical calendar, New Calendar and Old, with the feasts, fasts, tones, readings, name days and personal commemorations. The calendar, feasts, fasts, tones and the paschalion are free and available offline. Orthros is in public beta on iPhone, iPad and Mac.
The calendar, carried offline
The app carries its calendar and Paschal dates offline. Choose your parish calendar, then check the date and observance. Local commemorations and fasting practice can differ.
A calendar is kept by keeping it.
Orthros marks the feast and the fast, but the feast is celebrated, and the fast is broken, at the table of the Church.
NEXT · THE FAITH THE FEASTS CONFESS ›