Sunday of the World Church (Green Sunday)

This is a uniquely Armenian feast, celebrating the one holy apostolic catholic church—as we say in the Nicene Creed (Havadamk) at each Soorp Badarak—“We believe also in only one universal and apostolic Church.”

Held the second Sunday after Easter, the Sunday of the World Church commemorates the founding in Jerusalem of the first Christian Church—established in the Upper Room in the Chapel on Zion, where our Lord shared the first sacrament of Holy Communion. (Some historians say this took place in the Cathedral of the Holy Sepulcher.)

The Armenian Church is Apostolic (arakelagan) because it was founded by two of Christ’s Apostles, St. Thaddeus and St. Bartholomew. If you trace back the origins of the current Catholicos of All Armenians in Etchmiadzin, you can go all the way back to these two saints who themselves received their authority from Jesus Christ (Matt. 28:16-20) and, in turn, ordained others to continue their work.

The Armenian Church is also called The Holy Catholic Church. This doesn’t mean we belong to the Catholic Church of Rome headquartered in the Vatican. Catholic is a Greek word meaning universal. The Church of Rome began to use the term catholic to identify itself and it became known as the Catholic Church. Like the Armenian Church and other ancient churches of apostolic origin, it, too, is part of the catholic, meaning universal, church. Jesus Christ founded one church, and this term catholic emphasizes the universality and oneness of the church for all Christians. This is what is being remembered today.

The Upper Room, where Jesus shared the bread and wine with his disciples, is believed to belong to Mary, the mother of John Mark, maybe the author of the second Gospel, and has but a single reference, in the New Testament. It appears in Acts 12:12 where a number of the Jerusalem brethren gathered at her house for a prayer vigil on Peter’s behalf (he had been jailed).

Today is also called Green Sunday (Ashkharamatran Giragi). Ashkharh means world and matoor means chapel, meaning the first church established in the Christian world. Green is the symbolic color for fertility in the purest, most Christian sense, as we believe that it is the Holy Spirit that came down at Pentecost to establish the Christian church, to breathe life into it. We refer in the Creed to the Holy Spirit as the Lord and Giver of Life.