Inter Gravissimas

Ever feel like you’ve wasted a year or two of your life? More than 400 years ago, 15 days disappeared — forever. In this prophetic text, the question is raised as to whether the years “that the locusts ate” can ever be recovered.

We are now in our last week of Daylight Saving Time which comes to an end next Sunday. So if you don't set your clock back next Saturday night, you'll be an hour early and wonder where the congregation is.

But now go back a couple of weeks and imagine going to bed on Friday, October 4, and waking up the next morning to discover that it is now October 15!

Something like this actually happened 431 years ago. Your ancestors in England, France, Italy, Germany or any place which followed the Julian calendar, went to bed on October 4, 1582, and got up to smell the coffee on October 15.

Actually, no days were lopped off anybody's lifespan, but the date gap occurred nonetheless. The loss of days was the result of a papal bull issued by Pope Gregory XIII to reform the Julian calendar then in use. His goal was to make the calendar match events of the solar and lunar cycles necessary for calculating the date of Easter each year. Gregory accomplished that primarily by setting the calendar so that ...