Izaak Walton recalls how George Herbert summarised the major feasts of the Church year.
From 1630 to his tragically early death just three years later, George Herbert was parish clergyman in Bemerton, Wiltshire. Sensitive and artistic, but stubborn in good principles, he was much loved by his parishioners. Here, Izaak Walton recalls how Herbert expounded the purpose and chief feasts of the Christian calendar, from Christmas to Pentecost.
St Bede explains how the Exodus and the Ten Commandments are related to Easter and Whitsuntide.
Just as the Jewish festival of Passover commemorated the Israelites’ escape from slavery in Egypt, so the Feast of Weeks fifty days later commemorated the giving of the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai. St Bede explains how these two feasts are taken up in the Christian year as Easter and Whit Sunday or Pentecost.
Jesus’s apostles receive the gift of God’s Holy Spirit, and the startling effects quickly draw a crowd.
In Jesus’s day, the Roman Empire did not enforce Jewish law but the authorities in Jerusalem did. They required all Jews to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for certain major feasts, one of which was the Feast of Weeks, fifty days after Passover.
Elfric, Abbot of Eynsham in the reign of Æthelred the Unready, reflects on two appearances of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament.
Elfric was Abbot of Eynsham near Oxford during the reign of Æthelred the Unready. Here, he reflects on the Baptism of Christ and on Pentecost, explaining why the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus as a dove, but on the Apostles as tongues of fire.