The Jewish feast of Pentecost was originally one of three great agricultural celebrations marking gratitude to Almighty God for successful harvests. These three farming festivals later evolved into religious pilgrimage celebrations beckoning the Jewish people to the Temple in Jerusalem for solemn festivities. The first feast, Pasch or Passover, was originally an early spring celebration giving thanks to God for the barley harvest, a crop most often used as nourishment for the many farm animals. Under later religious guidance, the Pasch or Passover focused intently on the night of the Israelites’ hasty Exodus from slavery in Egypt.
Exactly fifty days after Passover, Shavout or Pentecost originally celebrated the important gathering of the wheat harvest, a staple crop vital for human consumption and community well-being. Guided by later rabbinic direction, Jews celebrated the giving of the Ten Commandments to Moses at Sinai on this day. The revered Mosaic Law was hence annually and fittingly commemorated. The third pilgrimage feast, Sokkot, also known as Tabernacles or Booths, is celebrated usually in September, marking the conclusion of the fruit harvest and the agricultural year. The joyous mood of this feast eventually recalled the forty years spent on Sinai’s desert sands between the Jew’s release from Egypt and their arrival at the Jordan. Sometimes a makeshift hut is built in one’s yard and lived in for seven days recalling the primitive desert life.
Christians may readily see a parallel between the three ancient agricultural Jewish feasts — Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles — and the Christian calendar feasts of Easter, Pentecost and the Ascension. The Christian Easter, recalling the death and resurrection of Christ, indeed began the release of all believers from the original sin of Adam and Eve as well as from the effects of personal sins bearing on every life. While the Jews recalled their release from Egyptian slavery at Passover; Christians recall our release from sin’s bondage through the new Paschal events of Holy Week and Easter.
The Christian Pentecost next celebrates not the giving of the Old Law on tablets at Sinai but happily the bestowal of the New Commandment of love on all believing hearts signaled by the powerful arrival of the Holy Spirit at Jerusalem. And certainly the Ascension of Christ into the heavens might well bring images, not of the completion of an earthly harvest, but rather the completion of the whole Christian life into the next world when all will rise to a final, heavenly harvest with and through the Risen Christ.
The Jewish Pentecost festival recalled Moses’ initial reception of the Law from God at Sinai. The Christian Pentecost now happily and deliberately stresses the continuity between the giving of the old Mosaic Law on the mountain with the arrival of the Holy Spirit’s New Commandment of loving service that burst upon the Apostolic church in the upper room and later was spread throughout the whole believing world. The traditional Jewish faith which was grounded in the Torah; this Mosaic Law was a preparation for the New Law of fraternal charity grounded in Christ and his Spirit.
It was no accident that the ancient Shavuot or Pentecost, as one of these three Jewish pilgrimage festivals laid out in the Torah for observant Jews, drew a huge gathering of Jewish believers into Jerusalem on that festival day. Yes, thousands of Jews were in Jerusalem to celebrate Shavuot. They heard Peter and the disciples speaking in their own many languages, touching all hearts, and then, by a miracle of grace, three thousand souls were formed into the first Christian community that very day! A truly universal festival day! Now as a Christian feast, Pentecost rightly recalls that same birth of the universal Church community and rightly renews the believing Church’s commitment to extend the fullness of faith to men and women everywhere.
The happy effect of the new Pentecost and the arrival of the Spirit was a marvelous demonstration of the universality of salvation. The many diverse tongues of the Jewish pilgrims were no obstacle to the unity that the Presence of the Holy Spirit intensely announced and actually commenced on this festive day. St. Paul would later observe: “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons, and we were all given to drink of one Spirit”(1Cor12:13). The new Christian community — today the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church — signifies the fulfillment of all that the ancient Jewish writings and celebrations had so long anticipated.
