Monday, May 21, 2018

Photopost Request: Pentecost 2018

Our next major photopost will be for Pentecost; please send your photos to photopost@newliturgicalmovement.org for inclusion. As always, we are glad to receive images of celebrations in both the Ordinary and Extraordinary Form, including the Vigil, as well as any of the Eastern rites, the Ordinariate Use, Vespers and other parts of the Office, and Confirmations. Please be sure to include the name and location of the church, and feel free to add any other information you think important. Evangelize through beauty!

The icons of Pentecost at St Peter Eastern Catholic Church in Ukiah, California, from last year’s Pentecost photopost, for which the Byzantines turned out in force. The one on the left shows the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles; the four Evangelists are included among them, as is St Paul, even though Mark, Luke and Paul were not historically present. This demonstrates that the Holy Spirit continues His mission in the Church even after the day of Pentecost itself. The other Apostles hold scrolls, which represent their role as the Church’s teachers. The figure below, an aged king with a crown, represents the World, grown old in sin and idolatry, and living in darkness. In the cloth in his hands are scrolls, which again represent the teaching of the Apostles, by which he will receive the preaching of the Gospel and be enlightened. On the right is the famous icon of the Trinity by Andrej Rubliev; in the Byzantine Rite, the Pentecost is also the feast of Holy Trinity, when the teaching of it began to be revealed to the world. The drape underneath is green, which the Slavs used as the feasts  liturgical color, to represent the renewal and flourishing of the world at the coming of the Holy Spirit.

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