Pentecost

On the fiftieth day after Pascha the Church keeps Pentecost — the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles in tongues of fire, the “birthday of the Church,” and the completion of the revelation of the Holy Trinity. Called Trinity Sunday in the Slavic lands, it closes the Paschal season, restores kneeling to the Church’s prayer, and sends the apostles out to preach to all nations.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The event and its name

Pentecost (Greek Pentēkostē, “the fiftieth [day]”; Slavonic Piatidesiatnitsa, and popularly Troitsa, “Trinity”) commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit recorded in Acts 2. On the day of the Jewish feast of Pentecost — itself the fiftieth day after Passover — the apostles were gathered together in one place when “suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind… and there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:2–4). The devout Jews of every nation gathered in Jerusalem each heard the apostles speaking in his own language, and Peter’s sermon that day brought three thousand to baptism (Acts 2:5–41). The Christian feast takes over the name and the fiftieth-day reckoning of the Jewish festival and fills it with new meaning: the giving of the Law on Sinai after the first Passover is answered by the giving of the Spirit after the true Passover of Christ (Ware, in the propers of the Pentecostarion, trans. Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston, 1990; Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology, SVS Press, 1966, on the fifty days).

The birthday of the Church

Pentecost is called the “birthday of the Church” because at the descent of the Spirit the apostolic community is constituted as the Body of Christ, empowered and sent. The Spirit whom Christ had promised — “I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter” (John 14:16); “when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13) — now comes to dwell in the Church and to abide with her forever. What the Ascension made possible, Pentecost accomplishes: the Son having returned to the Father, the Spirit is poured out, and the disciples who had hidden in fear are turned into bold witnesses “to the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8; and see The Ascension). The troparion praises the transformation of the unlearned into teachers of the world: “Blessed art Thou, O Christ our God, who hast revealed the fishermen as most wise by sending down upon them the Holy Spirit, and through them didst draw the world into Thy net” (troparion, Tone 8; Pentecostarion). The confusion of tongues at Babel, where language divided humanity (Genesis 11:1–9), is reversed at Pentecost, where the one Gospel is heard by all in their own tongue — the diversity of nations gathered, not abolished, into the one Church (the kontakion of the feast, which names the reversal of Babel; Pentecostarion).

The completion of the revelation of the Trinity

Pentecost completes the progressive manifestation of the Holy Trinity across the feasts. At Theophany the Trinity was revealed at the Jordan; now, at Pentecost, the Spirit who was shown descending on the Son is sent by the Son from the Father upon the Church, so that the full economy of the three Persons stands revealed — the Father sending, the Son having accomplished, the Spirit poured out (Ware, The Orthodox Way, SVS Press, 1995, on the Trinitarian shape of the feasts; and see Theophany). This is why the Slavic tradition calls the feast Trinity Sunday (Troitsa) and dedicates so many churches to the Holy Trinity under this feast: Pentecost is the day on which the Church confesses the whole mystery of the Triune God as now fully made known in the economy of salvation.

Trinity Sunday and the Monday of the Spirit; the kneeling prayers

The feast is kept over two days. The Sunday itself is Pentecost / Trinity; the Monday following is the Day of the Holy Spirit (Dukhov Den’, the Monday of the Holy Spirit), honoring the Spirit specifically — a doubling like that of Nativity and the Synaxis of the Theotokos (Bulgakov, Nastolnaya Kniga, 1900, on the two days; Pentecostarion). The most striking rite is the Kneeling Vespers served on the evening of Pentecost Sunday, at which the Church kneels for the first time since Pascha. Throughout the fifty days of the Paschal season kneeling has been forbidden, in accordance with Canon 20 of the First Ecumenical Council (Nicaea, 325), which directs that prayer be offered standing, not kneeling, on all Sundays and throughout the days from Pascha to Pentecost, in token of the resurrection (Canon 20, First Ecumenical Council, in The Rudder [Pedalion], trans. D. Cummings; the practice is older, attested by Tertullian, De oratione 23 and De corona 3). At the Kneeling Vespers of Pentecost the long prayers of St Basil are read while the whole assembly kneels — the return to kneeling marking both the end of the Paschal fifty days and the humble reception of the Spirit just given (Bulgakov, Nastolnaya Kniga; Pentecostarion). In Slavic piety the churches and homes are decked with fresh greenery — birch branches, grass, and flowers — a sign of the life-giving Spirit and of the renewal of creation (and see The Feasts across the Orthodox World). The week after Pentecost is fast-free, and the following Sunday is the Sunday of All Saints — the first fruits of the Spirit’s harvest (see Fasting and Feasting).

The icon

The icon of Pentecost, like that of the Ascension, is an image of the Church rather than a snapshot of Acts 2. The twelve apostles are seated in a semicircle (or horseshoe) within an architectural setting representing the “upper room,” with tongues of fire descending on each from a segment of heaven above. Two things are theologically deliberate. First, St Paul is customarily included among the twelve, though he was not present at the historical Pentecost — because the icon depicts the apostolic Church, not the event alone. Second, in the traditional Byzantine icon the Theotokos is absent from the center, and in the lower center, in a dark space beneath the apostles, sits a crowned old man labeled “Cosmos” — the world, personified, in the darkness of ignorance, holding a cloth with twelve scrolls, waiting to receive the apostolic preaching (Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, SVS Press, 1982, on the Pentecost icon; and see The Icon of the Feast). The composition says that the Spirit is given to the apostolic body precisely for the sake of the world sitting in darkness. Icons that instead enthrone the Theotokos at the center among the apostles are a later development, encountered especially under Western influence; the older type deliberately omits her, presenting not the historical company of Acts 1:14 but the icon of the teaching Church sent to the Cosmos (Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, on the two types; the essay this collection expands notes the same, Orthodoxy: The Great Feasts).

References

The Pentecostarion. Trans. Holy Transfiguration Monastery. Boston, 1990. (The propers of Pentecost; the troparion and kontakion; the Kneeling Vespers.)
Schmemann, Alexander. Introduction to Liturgical Theology. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1966. (The fifty days and the shape of the Paschal season.)
Kallistos Ware. The Orthodox Way. Rev. ed. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1995.
The Rudder (Pedalion). Trans. D. Cummings. Chicago, 1957. (Canon 20 of the First Ecumenical Council, on kneeling.)
Tertullian. De oratione 23; De corona 3. Trans. ANF 3–4.
Ouspensky, Leonid, and Vladimir Lossky. The Meaning of Icons. Rev. ed. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1982.
Bulgakov, Sergei V. Nastolnaya Kniga. 2nd ed., 1900.
Scripture: Acts 2:1–41; John 14:16; 16:13; Acts 1:8; Genesis 11:1–9.