Hopefully OPK can give us some background. With the upcoming Pentecost (on Mothers Day this year) I was reading a little of the history. It is said it's related to the Jewish "feast of weeks". I believe this was a harvest festival of sorts but confess I know nothing of it. Do the Jews still celebrate this feast?

The color of the vestments is red, symbolic of the love of the Holy Ghost or of the tongues of fire. Our church requests that the congregation wear red as well. It makes for a very cool Mass. There are different traditions around the world on this day. Unfortunately the Brits let a die a tradition of WhitSun Ales (basically a bunch of partying). The one I like the most is in Italy where they drop rose petals from the top of the church to recall the miracle of the fiery tounges.

Isn't a faith with 2000 years of tradition and history awesome!

[This message has been edited by Beretta O/U (edited 5/8/2008 2:44p).]

In a nutshell.

From Aish.com:

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It is ironic that Shavuot is such a little-known holiday. Because in fact, Shavuot commemorates the single most important event in Jewish history -- the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai.

Shavuot is the culmination of the seven-week-long "counting of the Omer" that occurs following Passover. The very name "Shavuot" means "weeks," in recognition of the weeks of anticipation leading up to the Sinai experience. (Since Shavuot occurs 50 days after the first day of Passover, it is sometimes known as "Pentecost," a Greek word meaning "the holiday of 50 days."

3,300 years ago, after leaving Egypt on the night of Passover, the Jews traveled into the Sinai desert. There, the entire Jewish nation -- 3 million men, women and children -- directly experienced divine revelation:

"God spoke to you from the midst of the fire; you were hearing the sound of words, but you were not seeing a form, only a sound. He told you of His covenant, instructing you to keep the Ten Commandments, and He inscribed them on two stone tablets." (Deut. 4:12-13)

The giving of the Torah was an event of awesome proportions that indelibly stamped the Jewish nation with a unique character, faith and destiny. And in the 3,300 years since this event, Torah ideals - monotheism, justice, responsibility -- have become the moral basis for Western civilization.

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Incidentally, the word shavua is derived from the word shiva, seven, which is also the root of the word shabbat sabbath.

YWIA

The date for Shavuot this year is June 9th.



....just so you would know the right day to celebrate.

Thanks OPK,

Certainly gives me some perspective and I'll reflect on the Jewishness of my Christianity on both days!

The Feast of Weeks is why all those Jews in Acts 2 from all different places were in Jerusalem in the first place.

Beretta, do Catholics celebrate Pentecost on the same day that the Jews and the Eastern Orthodox do?

I ask because we count from Pesach/Pascha.

Primrose,

The date for Catholics and Jews is different. I do not know about the Orthodox Catholics. I'll google it and post back here later.

The date should be the same. But for some reason someone in the Church got the rule mixed up this year IMHO.

In Exodus 12:6 God appointed Passover on the 14th day of the month of Nisan (or Abib), but when is that? The start of the month of Nisan (originally the first of the year) is supposed to begin on the first new moon after the Spring Equinox. So then Passover is the first Full Moon after the Spring Equinox. And Holy Thursday is the celebration of Passover. I don’t know how the Church came up with the date for Holy Thursday this year, but there is a problem trying to sync with a lunar based calandar. It looks like the Jewish calendar is correct.

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don’t know how the Church came up with the date for Holy Thursday this year, but there is a problem trying to sync with a lunar based calandar. It looks like the Jewish calendar is correct.

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Actually you are both wrong

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In Exodus 12:6 God appointed Passover on the 14th day of the month of Nisan (or Abib), but when is that?

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Abib is the Hebrew word for ripened barley. So the first month of the year, or month of Abib, is the month of ripened barley. Now biblical months are lunar and begin with the New Moon. Therefore, the first new moon following the ripening of barley begins the month of Abib. Passover is the 14th day of that 1st month. The biblical calendar is a combination of agricultural and lunar conditions, and nowhere in the Bible is the solar phase used to calculate anything but days.

In addition, most modern Hebrews follow the Hillel 2 calendar, which astronomically calculates the seasons and New Moons. Prior to that, such as when Jesus was living, the priests waited for sightings of the Crescent New Moon and then spread the world throughout Israel. Around 300 AD, the Jewish people were prevented from congregating, and they had to devise a calculated calendar so that everyone would be on the same page and celebrate on the same day regardless of where they were in the world. I am not sure why they haven't gone back to the older, more accurate system yet since the Abib and New Moons are easily communicated from Israel to anywhere in the world now. I also never figured why they moved the 1st day of the year to the fall, when the Bible clearly says it should be just before Passover.

There is also a Biblically unresolvable controversy surrounding the day of the Wave Sheaf and Pentecost/Shavuot which occurs exactly 50 days later, but that is a whole different can of worms.

[This message has been edited by ramblin_ag02 (edited 5/12/2008 2:21p).]