Little Denis and the Mighty Mathematical Error

Midnight Mass 2025
When peaceful silence lay over all, and night was in the midst of her swift course: from your royal throne, O God, down from the heavens, leapt your almighty Word. Wisdom 18.14f.: Magnificat Antiphon, Christmastide
Let me tell you about Little Denis – or Dionysius Exiguus, as he was known in his native Roman Empire in the sixth century. An exemplary monk, about whom our own St Bede wrote in glowing terms, Little Denis, or Denis the Humble as it might be kinder to translate, was best known for having done the calculations to compute when the years BC – before Christ – crossed an equator in time to turn them into the years AD – years ‘of the Lord’ or Anno Domini. When exactly in real time was that magical midnight hour when the two hands of the clock met and offered a greeting of shalom to the new-born Messiah?
We know, of course, that it was two thousand and twenty-five years ago that Jesus the Christ was born. All that was past was simply prologue to that moment, and to this new Christian Era. Then, just then, in the middle of the night while the angels were tuning their harps, and the shepherds were watching their flocks, as a deep silence enveloped the city and the world, then the almighty Word of God leapt down from the heavens, and pitched his tent of flesh and blood, so that he could live a human life among us.
Only Denis got his sums wrong, and ended up in quite the wrong year, so that all those godly souls who began the pious practice of celebrating a Eucharist at midnight on Christmas Eve to mark in bread and wine the exact moment when God was made man, and BC became AD … Well, it was all a bit of a disappointment really, especially when it had to be acknowledged that Christ had probably been born in about the year 5 before Christ. Not many years out, it’s true. But for it all to work there would ideally have been no error at all.
But, I’m not so sure that it’s such a problem! Whatever the Church is, it is certainly not a Historical Re-enactment Society. We are not like those enormous bearded men who dress in chainmail and go off to fight again the battles of Bosworth Field or Bannockburn. The important fact of Christ’s birth, celebrated on this holy night, is not that it takes us from one dating-system into another, but that it invites us to renew our way of life, from one less Christlike way of living, to one that is more recognisably Christian. This is, for us, our BC and AD. It’s not about times and places that are of historic or geographic interest to us. Rather, our lives of joyful obedience to the Lord are lived at all times and in all places.
Whether peaceful night or brutal noise predominates; at dawn or dusk, at dark midnight or in the bright midday sun, the Word of God is present to us, leaping from the heavens; in Spirit, Scripture, Sacrament; in the world’s beauty, and the silence of our prayerful hearts. God-with-us comes to be with us, to abide in us for ever.
Let us, this night and every day, respond to that Word in faith and hope. And look to that Word to carry us from all the imperfections and compromises of our time Before Christ, so that we shelter in the shadow of his royal throne, and live every day, and every year, as a year of our Lord.