Pentecost. Why is this day so important and why does it usher in the longest portion of the church year?
Originally, in the Jewish faith, there were three festivals during which all faithful Jews were required to make a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem. The first was the offering of the first barley sheaves during the Feast of the Unleavened Bread, Passover. This festival marked the beginning of the harvest season and remembered the passage of the Israelites out of the Egyptian captivity. The second festival was the Feast of Booths, in which the Jews remembered the time when their ancestors lived in tents, or booths, temporary housing during the Exodus. The third great pilgrimage festival was the Feast of Pentecost. This feast marked the fifty days after the Passover and the beginning of the offering of first fruits. It was the end of the week of weeks, the end of the seven weeks from the Passover. By the time Jesus walked among us, this festival took on a second meaning – the remembrance of God giving the Law to Moses at Sinai. Jewish sources claim that the original pronouncement of the Law was a single sound. As the sound went forth, it was divided into seven voices and then into seventy tongues so that every people received the Law in their own language. The Law was meant to express God’s will and guide the people of Israel. I say originally because, after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, new forms of these festivals were created as there was no longer a place to offer the appropriate sacrifices.
