Pentecost: May 27 2007

Sunday, May 27 2007, is the holiday of Pentecost, also called Whitsunday (Whit Sunday, Whitsun Day) in English. The word Pentecost is Greek, meaning "fiftieth" (you can recognize the "pent" as the root meaning "five" in Pentagon). It is a festival celebrated on the fiftieth day after Easter (counting inclusively). Compare the Jewish festival of Shavuot, which is celebrated fifty days after Passover.

In the Christian Bible, the first Pentecost is marked by the incident of "speaking in tongues" (glossolalia), as described here in the Book of Acts:

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues[a] as the Spirit enabled them. Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. Utterly amazed, they asked: "Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? (read more...)

Peter goes on to explain to the crowd that this is a sign of the Holy Spirit being poured out upon them, and that anyone who is baptized in the name of Jesus Christ can receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Pentecost is observed with local variations in the Catholic and Orthodox churches; you can read about these different observances in the wikipedia article.

The name "Pentecostal" has also been adopted by an evangelical Christian movement which is focused on direct personal experience of God as manifested by the baptism and gifts of the Holy Spirit. (Some Pentecostals baptize in the name of Jesus only, while others baptize in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.) Pentecostal prayer and worship service tends to be highly emotional, demonstrative and enthusiastic. The Pentecostal movement emerged from the revivalist "Holiness movement" in Protestant Christianity, and began to take its distinctive shape in the late 19th century. In 1906, there was a front-page article in the Los Angeles Times which reads as follows: "Weird Babel of Tongues, New Sect of fanatics is breaking loose, Wild scene last night on Azusa Street, gurgle of wordless talk by a sister." You can read more about the teachings and history of Pentecostalism at the wikipedia article. Although it is not one of the historical Protestant churches (Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, etc.), it has a very large membership and is continuing to expand as a world-wide Christian movement.

As for English "WhitSunday," the name is short for "White Sunday" and seems to refer to the fact that those who were baptized at the festival of Pentecost were dressed in all-white robes. The first Sunday after Easter is called "Dominica in albis" ("Sunday in whites") for the same reason. Whitsuntide is a related word that refers to the festival of Whit Sunday plus the days that follow, also known as Whitsun Week.

For an image, here is an image from an illuminated manuscript from the late 15th century showing the first Christian Pentecost:

Ascension Day: May 17 2007

This post contains Unicode Greek text. Internet Explorer will probably choke, so why not switch to Firefox and leave the Microsoft vale of sorrows behind? :-)

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Ascension Day is the Christian holiday that commemorates the ascension of Jesus to heaven. The holiday is celebrated forty days after the day of the resurrection, so it is a movable holiday, changing from year to year in the calendar, although because Easter is always on Sunday, Ascension is always celebrated on a Thursday. In 2007, Ascension is celebrated on May 17, and Sunday May 22 is designated "Ascension Sunday."

Ascension is referred to in several passages in the New Testament, along with allusions in other passages (you can see a complete listing in the wikipedia article).

The verse in Mark (16:19) reads as follows (from the sheer joy of being able to cut and paste Unicode Greek into Blogger, I'll include both the Greek and English): ὁ μὲν οὗν κύριος ἰησοῦς μετὰ τὸ λαλῆσαι αὐτοῖς ἀνελήμφθη εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ ἐκάθισεν ἐκ δεξιῶν τοῦ θεοῦ, "So Lord Jesus, after speaking to them, was received up into the sky (heaven) and he sat to the right of God."

Here is the verse in Luke (24:51): καὶ ἐγένετο ἐν τῶ εὐλογεῖν αὐτὸν αὐτοὺς διέστη ἀπ᾽ αὐτῶν καὶ ἀνεφέρετο εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν, "And it happened as he was blessing them, he stood apart from them and was carried up into the sky (heaven)."

The passage in Acts 1:9-11 provides more detail; here it is in the King James translation: "And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven."

The ascension of Jesus is also a component of the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed.

In the iconographic tradition for the Ascension scene, it is common to see simply the feet of Jesus as he is taken up. Here's an example from an illuminated manuscript from France dating to around the year 1200: