Western
The Latin terms used for the feast, ascensio and, occasionally, ascensa, signify that Christ was raised up by his own powers, and it is from these terms that the holy day gets its name. The Book of Common Prayer of the Anglican Church treats "Holy Thursday" as an alternative name for Ascension Day. In Roman Catholicism the Ascension of the Lord is a Holy Day of Obligation. The three days before Ascension Thursday are sometimes referred to as the Rogation days and the previous Sunday, the Sixth Sunday of Easter (or the Fifth Sunday after Easter), as Rogation Sunday. Ascension has a vigil and, since the 15th century, an octave, which is set apart for a novena of preparation for Pentecost, in accordance with the directions of Pope Leo XIII.
In Western Christianity, the earliest possible date is April 30, the latest possible date is June 3.
Read more about this topic: Feast Of The Ascension
Famous quotes containing the word western:
“In everyone’s youthful dreams, philosophy is still vaguely but inseparably, and with singular truth, associated with the East, nor do after years discover its local habitation in the Western world. In comparison with the philosophers of the East, we may say that modern Europe has yet given birth to none.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The Oriental philosophy approaches easily loftier themes than the modern aspires to; and no wonder if it sometimes prattle about them. It only assigns their due rank respectively to Action and Contemplation, or rather does full justice to the latter. Western philosophers have not conceived of the significance of Contemplation in their sense.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Christianity as an organized religion has not always had a harmonious relationship with the family. Unlike Judaism, it kept almost no rituals that took place in private homes. The esteem that monasticism and priestly celibacy enjoyed implied a denigration of marriage and parenthood.”
—Beatrice Gottlieb, U.S. historian. The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age, ch. 12, Oxford University Press (1993)