Pentecost is often called the birthday of the Church but why is that? This is the story …
Pentecost
Pentecost Sunday is one of movable feasts in the Church calendar. This is because it depends on the date of Easter. In the Church calendar it falls seven Sundays or 50 days after Easter Sunday.
Pentecost commemorates the coming of the Holy Spirit on Jesus’s disciples. This happened just after his Ascension at the Feast of Pentecost. The event is recorded in the first two chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, which was written by Luke. It is not absolutely sure which year this happened, but most scholars these days think it was AD 33. Others think it was AD 28, 29 or 30.
Origin of the Word
The word ‘Pentecost’ comes from the Greek term for the Jewish holiday of Shavuot. In the Jewish calendar Passover was followed by Shavuot, which was called the Feast of Weeks, and it was the Harvest Festival which celebrated the first fruits of the wheat harvest in the Holy Land.
In Hebrew the words ‘seven’ and ‘week’ are related. The Feast of Weeks was ‘a week of weeks’ or seven weeks. A week of weeks is 49 days. The Sabbath following a week of weeks is the 50th day. The instructions for this in the Bible read: “Count seven full weeks from the day after the Sabbath on which you bring your sheaf of corn to present to the LORD. On the fiftieth day, the day after the seventh Sabbath, present to the LORD another new offering of corn” (Leviticus 23:15-16, GNB). The New Testament was written in Greek and the Greek for ‘50th’ is Πεντηκοστή (Pentēkostē), hence Pentecost.
What happened?
At Pentecost the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples. Peter stood up and preached telling the story of Jesus to the crowds. That Harvest Festival was the first fruits of the great harvest of souls. About three thousand people joined the Church at Pentecost (Acts 2:41). These people were Jews of the Diaspora, and some Gentile converts to Judaism. They returned to their homelands and synagogues with the Gospel message.
According to the list in Acts 2:9-11, the people returned to their places of origin in what are today called Greece and Italy in Europe; the Holy Land, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Arabia in the Middle East; as well as Egypt and Libya in north Africa. Sometimes Jews also come from a bit further afield as well. A bit later we also read in Acts 8:27 of the Ethiopian eunuch who came to Jerusalem to worship. In fact these are the geographical areas where the Early Church was strongest.
St Paul and Pentecost
The word ‘Pentecost’ is found only three times in English versions of the Bible. It is found in Acts 2:1, which is the date when the Holy Spirit came down. Pentecost seems to have been an important festival for St Paul. We read in Acts 20:16 that St Paul tried to get from Ephesus to Jerusalem for Pentecost, and he wrote in 1 Corinthians 16:8 that he wanted to stay in Ephesus for Pentecost.
Date of Pentecost
Eastern and Western Easter Sundays fall on different dates most years, and therefore Pentecost, which is seven Sundays later, also falls on different dates. But in 2025, Easter Sunday and Pentecost Sunday fall on the same date for Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant Christians.
Whitsun
In the UK, Pentecost Sunday was traditionally known as Whitsunday, and the period was known as Whitsun. This word comes from the term White Sunday, because historically people wore white gowns for baptism on Pentecost, which is still the tradition in some countries. The day after Pentecost Sunday was called Whit Monday.
Birth day or Birthday?
Sometimes there is some confusion over whether Pentecost was the birth day (two words) or the birthday (one word) of the Church. In English we say that the day you were born is the day of your birth, and subsequent anniversaries of your birth are your birthdays. A year after you are born you have your first birthday. Christians often see Pentecost as the start of the Church. It is when the Church was birthed, and so the original first Pentecost recorded in Acts 1-2 was the day of birth (birth day) of the Church, and subsequent anniversaries of it are its birthday.
