The great but often neglected feast of Mid-Pentecost (Wednesday of the fourth week after Pascha) brings together with magnificent hymnody the major themes of Pascha, Ascension, and Pentecost: The Resurrection and Christ’s glorification, together with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. On the eve of the feast we read a passage from the prophecy of Isaiah 55, which again focuses on the image of water: “Thus says the Lord, ‘Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters . . . Incline your ear, and come to me; hear that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant’.” As the day of Pentecost draws near, the Holy Spirit Himself is depicted as Living Water, poured out upon believers to fulfill God’s promise made through the prophet Joel: “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.”
Yet the feast of Pentecost—and the entire Pentecostarion—can only be understood if we perceive it “eschatologically,” that is, in light of God’s promise finally, “at the last day,” to bring light out of darkness and life out of death. Just as the feast of Tabernacles became transformed into a living commemoration of Israel’s liberation from Egypt—itself a symbolic image of coming salvation—so Pentecost and all that precedes it commemorates both past and future.
On the one hand, we remember the former outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the Church, recounted in Acts 2, and we celebrate His life among us and within us as we journey toward the kingdom of heaven. At the same time, we celebrate what has not yet occurred, but exists in our collective “memory” in the form of hope. Just as we “remember” during the eucharistic prayer “the second and glorious Coming” of Christ—which has not yet occurred—so we commemorate the final outpouring of Living Water that will bring God’s saving work to its completion.
With the Church of all ages, the living and the departed, we celebrate the great feast of Pentecost with the fervent hope expressed by the prophet John at the close of the Book of Revelation: “The Spirit and the Bride [the Church] say, ‘Come.’ And let him who is thirsty come, let him who desires take the Water of Life without price.”
During those fifty days, we are invited to come to that Living Source, the Fountain of Living Water, who is Christ the Lord. We remember and celebrate His resurrection from the dead, His ascension into glory, and the outpouring of His Spirit. Yet we remember and celebrate as well the hope that is ours, in anticipation of full and perfect sharing in Christ’s life: that hope which the apostle Paul calls “the hope of glory” (Col 1:27).
~John Breck, God with Us: Critical Issues in Christian Life and Faith
