Christians to celebrate Easter 2025 together in a rare alignment of calendars
Once in a while, the Western and Eastern Christian traditions celebrate Easter on the same day, as is the case in 2025. There is a sense of satisfaction when these dates converge, an almost universal sense of sharing one faith within our various traditions and cultures, centred on Christ’s resurrection.
The divergences in dates go back centuries and has been widened by the historical diversity of traditions and the subsequent adoption of the Gregorian calendar the Western Churches whilst the Eastern Churches maintained the Julian calendar. The last few ‘shared Easters” have occurred in 2010, 2011, 2014 and 2017. The next time both traditions celebrate Easter simultaneously will be in 2028.
There are ecumenical efforts afoot to settle on a common date for the Easter celebration. The unanimous wish is to express that the common celebration of Easter by the Eastern and Western Churches should not just be fortunate coincidence, but the beginning of the establishment of a common date for its celebration annually by the Christian world.
These aspirations for a common date are focus on 2033, when the 2000th anniversary of Christ resurrection will be celebrated.
Pope Francis warns against obsessing about calendars and to remember that Easter belongs to Christ. ‘Easter does not take place by our own initiatives or by one calendar or another. Easter occurred because God “so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life”.