Happy Solemnity of Pentecost! Today, we celebrate the fiftieth and final day of the Easter season. It culminates a liturgical journey we’ve been on together, which stretches even further back to Ash Wednesday. On that day, March 5th, we donned violet vestments to inaugurate a deeper discipline of fasting and penance, preparing for the explosion of white on Resurrection Sunday. Now after seven weeks of paschal joy, it all comes to its fulfillment in a blaze of holy red. As far as Sundays go, the crimson hue is as rare as rose! We only see it twice, on Palm Sunday and Pentecost Sunday.
There’s a wonderful parallel today with how we celebrate Pentecost. You may know that before it was a Christian feast day, Pentecost was (and still is) a Jewish feast day. The book of Exodus relates that the Hebrew people arrived at the desert of Sinai in the seventh week after their Passover from Egypt and camped at the foot of its mountain. God summoned Moses to the mountaintop, upon which He descended in fire, and there wrote on tablets of stone the Ten Commandments. God also gave further commandments through Moses to establish specific rules for right living and right worship. This revelation was a foundational moment in the history of Israel because it defined their new identity. They were to be the people of the Law, unique among all nations on earth for their proximity to God and their wisdom in governance. The Jewish feast of Shavuot (also named Pentecost or Feast of Weeks) would later on stand as the yearly commemoration of the giving of the Law, always celebrated fifty days after Passover.
Acts 2 records our Christian Pentecost within the context of Jewish Pentecost. Jerusalem was filled with people to celebrate Shavuot, when on that morning God came down from the heavens in fire and definitively gave a new Law, not written on stone but upon the heart, as prophesied by Ezekiel (36:26) and Jeremiah (31:33). The disciples that gathered in the Upper Room were utterly changed by the Holy Spirit and their identities were redefined by a new relationship with God. Pentecost was the conclusion of an old life and the beginning of a new journey by a re-created people. They were filled in the fire of the same divine love that animated Jesus and made him victor over sin and death. Pentecost for Christians is the birthday of the Church. We commemorate the day that God made us His very dwelling place, and we share with all peoples on earth His divine wisdom.
As for me, personally, I’ve always felt like Advent begins the “Dear Disciple,” of a long liturgical letter, and Pentecost is its “Sincerely Yours”. Making it through this weekend for me kind of feels like completing a school year. Besides a brief P.S. of feasts that follow Pentecost, I know that we’ll have some extended liturgical breathing room as we roll into the summer months. And that feels like an accomplishment. Right around this time of year, I always tend to feel a little bit cooped up, somewhat running ragged, and ready to relax. I’d bet I speak for many of us; it’s just the way the cycle goes. So, when I watch the re-creation of nature in the return of beautiful spring foliage, I gratefully remember an important lesson. Which is that God’s plan for new life and new growth in our souls truly does include recreating. You just have to be like all the re-emerging foliage. Hang around, breathe easy, and bask in the warmth of the day.
Fr. Brian