The Marcionite Church is pleased to announce the establishment of the Menologion, the official liturgical calendar of the Marcionite Church.
The Menologion consists of several Holy Days, which are categorized into Holy Week and Holy Feasts. Holy Feasts are further divided into Major Feasts and Minor Feasts.
On Holy Days, Marcionite Christians are expected to attend Divine Liturgy and refrain from work and recreation.
Each Holy Day in the Marcionite Church corresponds to an actual historical event. No date is arbitrary; every observance must have a foundation in either Sacred Scripture or Sacred Tradition.
Holy Week
Marcionite Holy Week consists of moveable feasts and fasts, in contrast to the fixed dates of the Holy Feasts.
Marcionite Christians observe Good Friday on the first Friday of April. This date is historically anchored to April 3rd, 33 C.E.—the day Jesus was crucified. In the Jewish reckoning of that year, April 3rd falls within the Passover observance, and this Passover dating aligns perfectly with the chronological order of the passion events as recorded in the Gospel.
Later Christian chronographers report that the pagan historian Thallus attempted to explain the darkness of the crucifixion as an “eclipse of the sun,” treating the event as a natural phenomenon rather than a confession of faith.
Origen further appeals to the pagan chronicler Phlegon, stating that Phlegon wrote of an “eclipse” and major earthquakes in the reign of Tiberius Caesar—again, not as Christian testimony, but as an external chronicle invoked for corroboration.
A fuller fragment attributed to Phlegon, as preserved in Jerome’s rendering of Eusebius’ Chronicle, describes an extraordinary eclipse “at the sixth hour,” accompanied by a great earthquake, with damage reported in Bithynia and Nicaea—an entry frequently connected, in later Christian argument, to the Gospel’s three-hour darkness.
“And it was about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the sanctuary was rent in the midst. And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.’ And having said this, he expired.”
Evangelicon 22:59–61
Using this date as a reference point, Marcionite Christians can determine the precise dates of Holy Week each year, beginning with the first Friday of April:
- Holy Sunday – Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem (Sunday, March 29th, 33 C.E)
- Holy Monday – The Parable of the Minas (Monday, March 30th, 33 C.E)
- Holy Tuesday – The cleansing of the Temple and Jesus’ response to the questioning of His authority (Tuesday, March 31st, 33 C.E)
- Spy Wednesday – The betrayal of Jesus by Judas (Wednesday, April 1st, 33 C.E.)
- Holy Thursday – The Last Supper (Thursday, April 2nd, 33 C.E)
- Good Friday – The Crucifixion of Jesus (Friday, April 3rd, 33 C.E)
- Black Saturday – Jesus laid in the sepulcher (Saturday, April 4th, 33 C.E)
- Easter Sunday – The Resurrection (Sunday, April 5th, 33 C.E)
- Ascension Monday – Jesus’ Ascension (Monday, April 6th, 33 C.E)
Both Spy Wednesday and Good Friday are designated fast days.
Marcionite Christians were the first Christian group to oppose celebrating Easter on the same day as the Jewish Passover.
Holy Feasts
The Marcionite liturgical calendar includes two Major Feasts and two Minor Feasts:
Major Feasts
Christmas – Moveable Feast
Marcionite Christians observe Christmas, also known as the Feast of the Descent, as a movable feast kept on the Saturday nearest to New Year’s Day. It therefore falls either in the last week of December or the first week of January, depending on which Saturday lies closest to January 1.
This dating reflects the ancient Marcionite conviction—drawn from the received chronology of the Evangelicon—that Christ’s descent into Capernaum occurred at the beginning of the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar and that His first public appearing was bound to the Jewish Sabbath, for He went directly to the synagogue of Capernaum.
“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituraea and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene, Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness. Jesus descended out of heaven into the Galilean city of Capernaum, a city near the sea, in the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim. Having taken on the appearance of a man, he appeared thirty years of age and was teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath days.”
Evangelicon 2:1-4
Even Tertullian, while disputing Marcion, preserves this Marcionite sequence with the striking phrase: “From heaven straightway into the synagogue” (Latin: De caelo statim ad synagogam; Tertullian, Against Marcion IV.7).
In civil-calendar terms, the threshold dates December 31, 28 C.E. (Friday) and January 1, 29 C.E. (Saturday) align naturally with the Sabbath boundary: the Jewish Sabbath begins at sundown on Friday and continues through Saturday. Thus, either a Friday-evening descent (already Sabbath) or a Saturday descent coheres with the Marcionite insistence that Christ appeared on the Sabbath and went “straightway” to the synagogue. For that reason, Marcionite Christians commemorate the Descent on the nearest Jewish Sabbath to New Year’s Day, preserving both the event’s historic calendrical roots and its placement at the turning of the year.
This practice also finds a notable historical echo in the Paulician adjurations, which include the explicit condemnation: “[Anathema] to those who on the first of January assemble, as they say for a feast …” Anathema 7). Many have regarded the Paulicians as Neo-Marcionites or at least as inheritors of Marcionite-adjacent traditions; on that reading, a New-Year feast is plausibly a late survival or distortion of an earlier Descent commemoration.
Ironically, this Marcionite moveable feast typically falls between the dominant ecclesiastical calendars: the Western Church’s fixed December 25 (a later convention often explained in relation to the Roman midwinter calendrical milieu), and the cluster of Orthodox and Oriental observances in early January—most prominently January 6 in the Armenian tradition (Nativity and Theophany together), January 7 for churches following the Julian-calendar December 25, and the wider Theophany season that, in many Orthodox usages, culminates on January 19.
Hallowmas – January 10
Hallowmas, also known as the Feast of the Martyrs, is observed on January 10 in honor of Asclepius, the Marcionite bishop of Eleutheropolis, who was burned alive in Caesarea during the Diocletianic Persecution in 310 C.E.
This is the only recorded date of a Marcionite Christian martyrdom that is historically verified.
Marcionite Hallowmas commemorates all Marcionite Christian martyrs, both known and unknown.
Minor Feasts
Feast of Marcion – July 15
The Feast of Marcion celebrates the life and contributions of Marcion of Sinope and is observed on July 15, the Ides of July. This date is derived from an early Marcionite phrase:
“One hundred fifteen years and six and a half months between Christ and Marcion.”
Tertullian also cites this phrase, which refers to the period from Jesus’ descent to Earth in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar (29 C.E.) to the excommunication of Marcion by the Roman ecclesia and the founding of his new Pauline church, the Marcionite Church, in July 144 C.E.
Marcion of Sinope’s unwavering courage, strengthened by the Holy Spirit, enabled him to reveal that the true Christian God was made known only through Jesus Christ.
On this day, Marcion of Sinope’s Homily to Diognetus should be read as the homily during Divine Liturgy.
Feast of the Cross – September 14
The Feast of the Cross is observed on September 14. According to Christian tradition, the True Cross was discovered on this date in 326 C.E. by Helena of Constantinople, mother of Emperor Constantine the Great, during her pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
Following the discovery, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built at the site under Helena and Constantine’s direction. The church was dedicated nine years later, with a portion of the True Cross enshrined within it.
