Pentecost: Not one but 50 days

Author: Jenny O'Brien

If you look in your Sunday Missal you will find an interesting fact: the weeks following Easter Sunday are not called the Sundays after Easter, but the Sundays of Easter.  This is for a very good reason. The fifty days between Easter Sunday and Pentecost Sunday were viewed by the Early Church as a single great celebration of Jesus’ resurrection, like a “Great Sunday” that extended for a week of Sundays! Indeed the word “Pentecost” actually means “50 days” and it was the late fourth century before this title referred only to the fiftieth day.

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