Feast of the Circumcision of Christ Communion and virtually all Lutheran churches. In these latter Western Christian denominations, the Feast of the Naming and Circumcision of Jesus Christ marks the eighth day (octave day) of Christmastide. The feast is celebrated with an All-Night Vigil, beginning the evening of December 31. The hymns of the feast are combined with those for Saint Basil the Great. After the Divine Liturgy the next morning, Russian Orthodox churches often celebrate a New Year Molieben (service of intercession) to pray for God's blessing for the beginning of the civil New Year (Orthodox commemorate the Indiction, or Ecclesiastical New Year, on September
Women in the Catholic Church the early Christian Church as being inclusive of women as opposed to the medieval Church, which she describes as being "based on a gender hierarchy". The historian Geoffrey Blainey, however, writes that women were more prominent in the life of the Church during the Middle Ages than at any previous time in its history, and they initiated a number of church reforms. The Belgian nun, St Juliana of Liège (1193–1252), proposed the Feast of Corpus Christi, celebrating the body of Christ in the Eucharist, which became a major feast throughout the Church. In the 13th century, authors began to write