le in 1728 and in Russia (by Peter the Great) in 1700, with the Julian calendar still serving as the underlying reckoning of days and months.
While the Anno Mundi calendar is no longer mainstream (or part of the civil calendars of predominately Orthodox nations), it still serves as the basis of our liturgical calendar.
Harvest, Thanksgiving, and Sowing
By marking the start of a new year in September, the Empire—and later, the Orthodox Church—was associating the new year with harvesting crops. As preparations for winter were being made, so too were preparations for the upcoming year.
For Christians, it was a time of thanksgiving, remembering the good weather and abundant rain the Lord provided for that year’s harvest—something we pray for at every Divine Liturgy.
This draws close parallels with the Feast of Trumpets for the pre-Incarnation people of God (Lev. 23:23–25):
And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the children of Israel, saying, ‘The seventh month, on the first of the month, rest will be yours, a memorial of trumpets; it will be a holy assembly to you. You will not perform any servile work, and you will bring a whole burnt offering to the Lord.’”
As the Synaxarion notes, this was also the day Christ entered a synagogue and read from the scroll of Isaiah (cf. Luke 4:16–30).
By marking the new year at harvest time, we remind ourselves annually of our dependence on both hard work and the blessings of God. Going beyond material blessings and healthy crops, this applied (as do many of our hymns) to Imperial concerns, including prayers for protection from our enemies:
Creator of the universe, setting times and seasons by Your sole authority, bless the cycle of the year of Your grace, O Lord, guarding our rulers and Your nation in peace, at the intercession of the Theotokos, and save us.
—Apolytikion (Second Tone)
You who created all things in Your infinite wisdom, and set the times by Your own authority, grant Your Christian people victories. Blessing our comings and goings throughout this year, guide our works according to Your divine will.
—Kontakion (Fourth Tone)
And if one considers the increasing natural disasters, droughts, floods, wildfires (especially here in the Pacific Northwest), hurricanes, and famines, we should be all the more mindful in this modern era of technology and abundance to pray for such things—not less so.
We have not engineered our way out of dependence on God. If anything, the more our abilities increase, the more we have shown need for God’s favor and mercy.
And that leads to my final point: the Ecclesiastical New Year is now a day marked by prayers for the care of the environment.
Patriarch Demetrios of Constantinople issued an encyclical on the environment in 1989, calling all Orthodox Christians to both pray for and protect the world around us. His encyclical also established September 1—the beginning of the new Church year—as “a day of prayer for the protection of the environment” for the Ecumenical Patriarchate, something adopted soon after by the rest of the canonical Orthodox churches. (The Vatican has recently followed suit.)
Since his elevation to Ecumenical Patriarch, an encyclical has been issued each year on September 1 by Patriarch Bartholomew on the environment. Bartholomew is affectionately known as “the Green Patriarch,” and he often speaks on an international stage regarding the protection of Creation.
And this all makes perfect sense.
The beginning of the New Year was for centuries a commemoration of the foundation of the world (Anno Mundi). It is a day for giving thanks to God for plentiful harvest. It is a day that recognizes God’s protection over and providence for the world, along with our responsibility and stewardship towards the same.
This all goes back naturally to the story of Creation itself, and a story where mankind—represented by Adam and Eve—is given the awesome responsibility of caring for every living creature. A restoration of peace between mankind and the created order lies at the heart of redemption and deification, and that is ultimately what t