The Feast of Pentecost

Pentecost

by Father Alexander Schmemann

“The feast of the descent of the Holy Spirit.” I say these words I’ve known since childhood, and all at once they strike me as if I’m hearing them for the first time. Yes, from the time I was a child I knew that ten days following the Ascension, meaning fifty days after Pascha, Christians from time immemorial celebrated and continue to celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit in a feast known by its church name as Pentecost, or more popularly as Troitsa “Trinity,” the day of the Trinity.

For centuries, to prepare for this feast the churches were cleaned and adorned with greenery and branches, and grass was strewn about the floor… On the day of the feast, at the solemn vespers, the faithful stood in church holding flowers in their hands. These customs explain how the feast of Pentecost entered Russian popular consciousness and literature as a kind of sun-filled, bright celebration, the feast of flowering, a kind of joyful encounter between human beings and God’s world in all its beauty and grace.

All religions, including the most ancient and primitive, had a feast of summer flowering, a feast to celebrate the first appearance of shoots, plants, fruit. In ancient Judaism, this was the feast of Pentecost. If in Old Testament religion Passover celebrated spring’s resurrection of the world and nature, then the Jewish Pentecost was the feast of movement from spring to summer, celebrating the victory of sun and light, the feast of cosmic fullness. But in the Jewish tradition, a feast common to all human societies acquired a new meaning: it became the annual commemoration of the ascent of Moses up Mount Sinai, where in an inexpressible mystical encounter God revealed himself, entered into a Covenant, gave commandments, and promised salvation. In other terms, religion ceased being simply nature, and now became the beginning of history: God had revealed his law, his commandments, his plan for humanity, and had shown the way.

All this must be kept in mind in order to grasp how the first Christians experienced, understood, and celebrated their feast of Pentecost, and why it became one of the most important Christian celebrations.

On the other hand, as Henri Nouwen writes: Without Pentecost, the Christ-event — the life, death and resurrection of Jesus—remains in history only as something to remember, think about, and reflect on. The Holy Spirit comes to dwell within us, so that we can become living Christs here and now. Pentecost lifts the whole plan of salvation out of its particularities and makes it into something universal, embracing all peoples, all countries, all seasons, and all eras. Pentecost is also the moment of empowering. Each individual human being can acquire the Holy Spirit as the guiding spirit of his or her life. Without it, we cannot live a “spiritual life.” It is the Holy Spirit of God who offers us the gifts of love, forgiveness, kindness, goodness, gentleness, peace, and joy. It is the Holy Spirit that offers us the life which even death cannot destroy. Come, and abide in us!