WORDS TO THE WHYS

The truth will make you odd. Flannery O’Connor

Octave of Pentecost

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OLW Cathedral Houston, The Vigil of Pentecost (Whitsun Eve) 2020

We in the Ordinariate are so very blessed to have retained the Octave of Pentecost, which we are currently enjoying.

[...]
“The Pentecost octave is extremely ancient — developed in the first millennium — and was always seen as ranking beside Christmas and Easter as one of the three great octaves of the liturgical year,” said (Dr) Peter Kwasniewski(.)
Pentecost used to be particularly well known for being one of the times in the liturgical year for Christian Initiation, based on Acts 2:38-41, and the octave was significant as the neonati appropriately wore white robes (hence the alternative name for Pentecost of ‘White Sunday’, or Whitsun, until the following Saturday. [...] 
The Pentecost octave continues to be celebrated in the Extraordinary form of the Roman Rite and in the liturgy of the (...) Ordinariate.
At Gippsland Ordinariate News we read:

Pentecost is foundational for the Church, and just as important as the Christmas and Easter Octaves. Having the Octave gives us time to reflect on what Pentecost is, the role of the Holy Ghost in our mission, and His ongoing leadership of the Church, and its members to the Truth, who is Christ. Every day of the Octave is a Pentecost Day, except for Mary, Help of Christians, Patroness of Australia, which is a Solemnity here. 
… the character of Pentecost as a consummation and fulfillment of the Paschal Mystery suggests that it is fitting to celebrate it with an Octave similar in character and rank to that of Easter. Easter looks both backwards to Our Lord’s Passion as His “passing to the Father” and forwards to Eastertide as the season in which the resurrection and its meaning for our eternal life is unfolded for us. In a parallel way Pentecost looks both backwards to the promise of the gift of the Paraclete made at Easter and forwards to “Tempus post Pentecosten”, representing the life of the Church under the Holy Spirit’s constant guidance and enriched with His lifegiving sacraments. (Fr Guy Nicholls, Pentecost: The Grandest Octave)

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