Editor's note: Western Catholics are often unaware that eastern Catholics exist and are part and parcel of the same Catholic Church. But, as Pope John Paul II was fond of reminding us, the Church breathes with two lungs --- not only the "lung" of familiar western Catholic forms of prayer and thought, but the eastern one which, while equally united to Rome, breathes the air of the many rich cultures of Eastern Christianity. This includes the ancient Christian cultures of Asia Minor, the Middle East, North Africa, Greece and the Slavic lands.
Far beyond mere "ethnic" interest, these communities bear a living witness to early Christianity and a timeless wisdom rooted in the Church Fathers, the genius of monastic prayer, and a vision of the Liturgy as "heaven on earth."
By late spring, most of us, at least in Southern California, have our sights on summer. When I think of the great feast of Pentecost, commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles (Acts chapter 2), celebrated this year on May 31, these associations invariably come to mind: the Church's cycle of the feast of Redemption, begun during Holy Week and Easter, brought to completion at Pentecost, and nature around us brought from the promise of spring into the full bloom of summer.
For many Eastern Catholics, this rich dialogue between liturgy and creation plays out in a very literal way in the Feast of Pentecost --- as it did in the feast's own origins in ancient Jewish practice.
Pentecost (Greek for "50 days") capped the Passover "season" with a feast honoring the giving of the Torah on Sinai; but the Jewish feast originally was an agricultural feast, giving thanks for the first-fruits of the earth and the new harvest (Ex. 23:16, Lev. 23:10-21; Num. 28:26; Dt. 16:9-12).
Similarly, in many Eastern Christian customs related to Pentecost, harvest themes abound: green branches, grasses and wild flowers are brought to decorate the church on the feast, sometimes homes as well --- symbolizing the life-giving power of the Spirit who renews, revives and brings all things, even the world of nature, to fruition. Even the vestments of priests and deacons in the East are green, not red as in western practice.
But the Christian East's particular approach to the Pentecost reality does not stop with a little greenery.
Perhaps the most unique feature of Pentecost in the Byzantine tradition has to do with the so-called "Kneeling Vespers," which, in many churches, is celebrated directly after the Sunday Liturgy (or Eucharist). This service includes a special set of three prayers, attributed to St. Basil the Great, which priest and congregation pray on their knees.
In our tradition, this service marks the first time since Holy Week that we have "bowed the knee" in a liturgical service. (Kneeling is rare in Byzantine practice; prayer is traditionally said standing.) The joy of the resurrection, in many Eastern traditions, rules out penitential gestures such as kneeling and fasting for the 50 days (Pentecost) of the Easter season. Far from an invitation to personal introspection, these "kneeling" prayers are a proper Pentecostal call to action on a universal scale --- the prayers of a newly empowered Church, embracing its all-encompassing mission of mercy and enlightenment --- not only to the living, but even to the dead.
If Eastern Christian theology finds rich expression in its hymns and prayers, the theology of the Christian East takes its clearest and most distinctive form in iconography.
While space permits no more than a few words on a vast topic, the Pentecost icon of the "Descent of the Holy Spirit" shows the Twelve Apostles around a semicircular table above which the radiant "sun" of the Holy Spirit disperses rays or tongues of fire above their heads. An empty seat or "throne" at the head of the table symbolizes the invisible presence of Christ in their midst; in some icons, an altar makes the eucharistic connection even clearer. Mysteriously, in the middle of the icon, a dark cavern opens in which an old man, crowned, cradles a scroll.
While there are a number of possible interpretations of this figure, usually called Cosmos, I prefer the notion that the "Cosmos" figure represents not only the unredeemed human world, but also the "cosmos" of nature, the "new creation" that is transfigured along with us in the Redemption made perfect in Pentecost.
All of which brings us back to summer, to nature in full bloom --- not an unworthy "icon" of Pentecost, surely, or of our own Pentecostal journey to spiritual and human fruition in the care of that Spirit who, as the great Byzantine hymn says, is "the Treasury of Blessings, present in all places, filling all things." Award-winning Catholic journalist Gabriel Meyer has covered Church issues in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He is a member of St. Andrew Russian Greek-Catholic Church in El Segundo. "Looking East" will appear periodically in The Tidings.
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