Today we celebrate the great holiday of Pentecost, the Day of the Holy Trinity, as well as the birthday of the New Testament Church.
The OCU recalled this in a post on social media.
The Christian Pentecost has its Old Testament prototype – the Jewish holiday of the same name Πεντηκοστή. It is noteworthy that in the canonical Old Testament books and traditional Judaism another name is used – the Feast of Weeks (Hebrew: “Shavuot”), due to the fact that this holiday was celebrated seven weeks after Easter. So Pentecost is the first day after seven weeks.
It was on the 50th day after the Passover of the Old Testament, after the liberation of the people of Israel from Egyptian slavery, that God conveyed the law through the prophet Moses on Mount Sinai. And precisely on the 50th day after his resurrection from the dead, our Lord Jesus Christ, who ascended to heaven, sent the Holy Spirit to his disciples according to the promise given by him from God the Father.
Why did these events happen on the 50th day and not on some other day? It is not known for sure, it is a secret of God’s Providence. However, theologians explain it as follows: calculating the passage of time in weeks comes, as is known, from the revelation of the Old Testament and is connected with the completion of the creation of the world within six days and the Creator’s rest on day 7. The interpretation of this digit, seven, can be seen in the combination of the digits four and three. The digit three is the symbol and image of the Holy Trinity, the Three Divine Persons Who create the world. The digit four symbolizes creation itself, which has four sides, four seasons, four elements – air, earth, fire, and water. Therefore, the digit seven is a symbolic combination of three and four, an image of God’s creative and industrial action in the world. And this image, superimposed on the creative week of days, seven times by seven, is as if a sign of the completeness of the interaction between God and the world, the Creator and His creation. Therefore, the 50th day is, as it were, a sign of overcoming the flow of being, a sign of elevation to a new state.
On the feast of Pentecost, the revelation of God to the world as the Trinity was completed, when the Holy Spirit, the third part of the Holy Trinity, appeared in the world visibly for the eyes (tongues of fire that descended on the apostles) and tangibly for the human soul, with gifts of grace. This is how the New Testament Church is founded – the mysterious Body of Christ, in which the Lord is Head, and all who have believed are members of the Body, merged into one by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the event of the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles is extremely important for the entire Church. The Day of Pentecost is called the birthday of the New Testament Church.
Therefore, cordially congratulating everyone on the feast of Pentecost, on the day of the Holy Trinity, we wish that the grace that is bestowed upon all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, will always be with all of you!
