Pentecost

In the Old Testament Pentecost was the feast which occurred fifty days after Passover. As the passover feast celebrated the exodus of the Israelites from the slavery of Egypt, so Pentecost celebrated God’s gift of the ten commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai.

In the new covenant of the Messiah, the passover event takes on its new meaning as the celebration of Christ’s death and resurrection, our “exodus” from the slavery to sin to the freedom of God’s Regime. And in the New Testament as well, the pentecostal feast is fulfilled and made new by the coming of the “new law,” the law of the Spirit.

Once again it must be noted that the feast of Pentecost is not simply the celebration of an event which took place centuries ago. It is the celebration of what must happen and does happen to us in the Church today. In baptism we all have died and risen with the Messiah-King. In the sacrament of Chrismation we have received “the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit”. Pentecost has happened to us.

—From your pastor

The feast of Pentecost is the completion of all that Christ accomplished. Christ taught about the Kingdom of God, and here it is, now opened! Christ promised that the Spirit of God would reveal the truth, and now this is fulfilled. The world, history, life, time, are all illumined with the final, transcendent light—all are filled with ultimate meaning. The last and great day of the Lord has begun!

—Fr. Alexander Schmemann

The whole point about Pentecost was that the disciples, up till then hiding away in an upper room, were blown out on to the street by the rushing mighty wind to speak the truth of God in Christ in public… The world of the first Christian centuries was full of competing and clashing cultures, religions and tongues, and the followers of Jesus discovered that the tongues of fire which rested on the apostles enabled them to address these different cultures with a fresh judging and healing word of truth. May it be so again in our day.

—N.T. Wright