Eastertide, Ascensiontide, and Pentecost Chronology
This month of May encompasses three distinct seasons in the Church Calendar, so I wanted to take this opportunity to explain to you what these seasons are.
The beginning of the month is the continuation of our celebration of the Lord’s resurrection, which we call Eastertide. This time of feasting spans forty days and ends with Ascension Day. The reason it lasts for forty days is not just because our time of preparation in Lent was forty days, but also because Christ continued to appear to his disciples in his resurrected body for forty days before he ascended into heaven. So just as we fasted with him in the wilderness in real time through the season of Lent, so now we encounter the risen Lord for forty days just as the disciples did in the season of Easter.
In our sermons we have already talked about some of these appearances of his, but let me offer you a quick summary of his resurrection appearances to his disciples to help you get a better sense of what all was happening during these forty days of Eastertide.
1. Early on Easter morning, Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene, who mistakes him for the gardener. She had gone to the tomb earlier with other women, and they are told by the angels that Christ had risen from the dead; so they went and told the Apostles. But Magdalene returns, and this is when Christ calls her “Mary,” and she says, “Rabbouni,” and he says not to cling to him but to tell his brothers. This is the resurrection account which we heard as our gospel on Easter Day. (It seems from Matthew’s gospel that there was another Mary there with her at this appearance, or else that there was a separate appearance of Christ to them both.)
2. On the same day, Christ appears to Simon Peter near Jerusalem. Although the Bible mentions this appearance, we do not have the details of it.
3. Christ appears to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and this was our passage on the Third Sunday of Easter. This story of him making himself known to the disciples in Scripture and in the breaking of bread also took place on Easter Day, in the late afternoon and early evening.
4. That night, Christ appears to all the Apostles except Thomas, when they were gathered together in the upper room. He breathes on them that they might receive the Holy Spirit and gives them the authority to forgive and retain sins. All these appearances took place on Easter Day.
5. The following Sunday, which we call Low Sunday, Jesus appears to the disciples again, with Thomas present this time; and Thomas places his finger in Christ’s side.
6. Jesus appears to seven of his Apostles while they are out fishing on the Sea of Galilee. This is when he tells them to cast their net on the other side of the boat, and they catch 153 fish (representing the multitudes of souls that would be saved by their evangelization) and have breakfast together. It is then that Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me?”
7. Jesus appears to his disciples on a mountain in Galilee, where he gives them the great commission.
8. Jesus appears to over 500 disciples at once. We know of this from 1 Corinthians 15:6, but we do not have the details of this event.
9. He appears to James at some point, which again, we only have a brief reference to.
10. He appears to his disciples when he ascends into heaven. Perhaps this is the same as the account in which he gives the great commission. After having a meal with the Apostles and teaching them, he instructs them “to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high,” and he ascends into heaven.
So that is what we celebrate on Ascension Day, the lifting up of human nature into heaven in the Person of Christ, by whom humanity and divinity are brought together. That was on the fortieth day of his resurrection, and he tells his disciples to wait to receive the Holy Spirit. These days of waiting in between the Ascension and Pentecost are called Ascensiontide.
From that nine-day period of waiting, the Church gets the tradition of the “novena”—nine days of prayer for a specific intention. If you want to pray for a specific request, praying about it for nine days in a row is a helpful way to grow in consistency in the prayer life and to be like the persistent widow that Christ uses as an example of prayer, who did not stop pleading with the judge after the first request.
During Ascensiontide, this nine-day period, the Apostles gather together with many other disciples (120 persons, according to Acts), and during this time Matthias is chosen by lot to replace Judas as an Apostle. On the tenth day, the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit is poured out upon the Apostles, and they speak in tongues; and Peter preaches the sermon in Acts two which we heard read the last several Sundays. From this feast of Pentecost the rest of the Sundays in the Church Year are numbered. We say “The First Sunday after Pentecost,” “The Second Sunday,” and so on. Because we use the “ordinal numbers” to count these Sundays, the season following Pentecost took on the name, “Ordinary Time.”
I hope that this chronology gives you a sense of what all we’re celebrating this month. We have a lot of ground to cover together. It amazes me to see just how much time the Apostles got to spend with the risen Lord and to be instructed by him. It’s no wonder we see such a huge turning-point in their lives from this time forward and that they preach with a new knowledge, power, and courage having encountered and sat at the feet of the risen Lord.
