In the Eastern Catholic Churches, the new Church Year starts on September 1st (Gregorian Calendar), ending on August 31st, and starts September 14th (Julian Calendar) and ends September 13th. At the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea held in 325, the Church Fathers accepted these dates as the official beginning of the church year. We find record of this practice being kept from the 8th century on.
The Catholic Churches in the Eastern tradition continue to keep this liturgical tradition alive. Where as our Catholic brethren in the Western or Latin tradition have assigned the first Sunday of Advent as the start of their liturgical year.
What our Catechism teaches us about the Yearly Cycle of the Church:
The Yearly Cycles of Services:
565 - The service of the liturgical year, or Church year, are built upon the immovable and movable cycles. The former is linked to the fixed dates of the year, and the latter – to movable dates of Pascha. The liturgical year is joined to the astronomical year in such a way that the year is crowned with the goodness of God.³⁹³ This is accomplished by commemorating, rendering present, and experiencing all the major events of salvation history in the Divine Services.
566 - The immoveable cycle of the Church Year begins on September 1; according to the Old (Julian) Calendar calculation, this occurs on September 14. The two calculations of the liturgical calendar (new and old) result from the fact that eventually it was noticed that every 128 years the civil calendar (in use since Julius Caesar) differed by one day from the actual astronomical cycles. In 1582, in order to renew the correspondence between the calendar year and the astronomical cycles, Gregory XIII, Pope of Rome, ordered a calendar reform, cancelling ten days from the calendar of the time. The reformed calendar was called the New or Gregorian calendar, while the unreformed remained the Old or Julian calendar. Since the time of the calendar reform, the difference between the two calendars has grown to thirteen days, and will continue to grow. A result of the different calculations is also the different dates for Pascha (Easter) and, consequently, of the feasts of the moveable cycle. Sometimes the date of Pascha coincides, but sometimes the difference between the Gregorian and Julian Calendar dates can reach five weeks.
³⁹³ See Liturgicon, Divine Liturgy of our Holy Father Basil the Great, Anaphora
Catechism of the Ukrainian Catholic Church - Christ Our Pascha (565-566) - pg. 187-188
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