THE COMING MONTH, 1  

IN MAY, we have two of the most radiant Great Feasts of the Church Year, the Ascension of the Lord, which this year falls on 4th / 17th May, and Pentecost-Trinity, which falls on Sunday 14th / 27th of the month.  These two feasts fall forty and fifty days, respectively, after the Resurrection of the Saviour, and they celebrate events recorded in the New Testament Scriptures (see Mark 16:16-20,  Luke 24:50-53, Acts 1:4-12, Acts 2:1-47).  It was forty days after His Resurrection, that the Lord Jesus Christ ascended into the highest heavens and was seated on the Throne of the Most High.  And fifty days after Pascha, the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples in the Upper Room.  It is because on this day, that the Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity was made clearly manifest, that the day is also kept as the feast of the Trinity, our True God.  This festival is so important to the Orthodox, that the day itself is followed by a fast-free week.

In the Ascension, our Saviour was taken up into heaven, He Who  is One Person but of Two Natures, for He is both God and man.  He sits on the Throne of the Divinity as God, but in doing so seats one of our nature there.  Thus our Saviour becomes a Precursor for us, being the first of our kind to be vouchsafed that honour, as the Blessed Augustine says.  The great nineteenth century Russian teacher, St Philaret of Moscow, writes:  “When you hear that the ascended Lord is ‘seated on the right hand of God,’ you must not represent this mentally as something physical or sensual, but you most only reflect that Christ has almighty power the same as the Father, that He has one glory with Him, and the same governing providence for the whole world, and especially for the Church of those being saved.  In general, do not attempt boldly to allow thoughts of curious probing to fly into those limitless heights wherein is the ‘unapproachable Light.’  Just as before the creation of the light of the visible sun your eye was powerless, so the eye of your mind, as yet uncleansed of its mire, is powerless before the light of the Eternal Sun of the Spirit, before Whom even the highest of the Angels hide their faces.  Even the gaze of the Apostles was unable to follow the ascent of the Lord far; the cloud bore Him up and hid Him Him from them.  So it was that they then ‘worshipped Him,’ and so you also, son of the dust, after humbly glancing towards heaven, fall down humbly to the dust in silent reverence before the inexpressible Majesty.”

The Great Feast of the Pentecost-Trinity brings us again before inexpressible Majesty, that of the Mystery of the Most Holy Trinity itself.  No less a Church Father than Saint John Chrysostom himself says of this celebration, “Great indeed, and beyond the power of man’s tongue to describe, are the gifts this day bestowed on us by a most loving God.”  These, the opening remarks of one of his homilies, should strike the modern, casual Orthodox Christian as odd for two reasons.  Most Orthodox in our day seem to pay scant regard to the feasts, seeing them almost in a Protestant way - just as times and seasons appointed by men of like passions with us to bring certain important events in our spiritual history to mind.  Most modern Orthodox come to church when they feel in the mood or when they have an opportunity, paying little heed to the calendar.  St John Chrysostom evidently does not see things in this way.  He says nothing of the greatness of God or of the feast itself, but speaks first and foremost of the gifts that “on this day” are bestowed, thus he shows us that the cycle of the feasts in the Church calendar are not simply something that we may take or leave, not just the dispositions of men, but are intimately linked with the life of Heaven - they are opportunities for a Loving God to bestow upon us His gifts.  How church attendance figures throughout the Orthodox world would improve if the faithful shared such a view!  People swarm round counters selling lottery tickets on the day of a draw in the largely vain hope that they might win, and here is an opportunity: gifts, and eternal ones, are freely bestowed on all who participate.  How many, even among those who do observe the feasts and attend church, have any concept that they are taking anything away with them?  Many simply come as a form of duty or observance; others having received something during the Divine services immediately forget it, and squander it by turning to gossip and back to the mire of their life in the dust.

Gifts are bestowed on the feasts, gifts unto life eternal, and on this festival, Holy Pentecost, this is made more than abundantly clear by two aspects of the liturgical observance.  First of all, on the day preceding the festival, we have a Soul Sabbath,  when we remember the faithful departed from all ages past, so that they too might be receivers of these gifts, for although they have departed from this life they still live unto God and they should not be dismissed from our love.  And secondly, at Vespers on the evening of the festival we have three prolonged Kneeling Prayers in which we pray earnestly for the bestowal of the gifts of God, upon ourselves and upon others, upon the living and upon the departed.