The Feasts of the Church

There are seven principal feasts in the Church calendar: Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, Christmas, Epiphany, and All Saints’ Day. Three of these—Easter, Pentecost, and Trinity—always occur on a Sunday, which means we mark them in worship at church. Our new practice of having a church birthday dinner on Epiphany means that it is marked by celebration together. And even when it doesn’t occur on Sunday, no one skips Christmas! But Ascension and All Saints’ Day frequently go unnoticed.

The ideal for all of these feast days is both worship and celebration, but we only hit the ideal on Christmas and Easter. Most of us have probably never thought about having a feast on Pentecost or Trinity Sunday (If we feast to celebrate the incarnation or resurrection, why wouldn’t we feast to celebrate the giving of the Spirit?), and most of us probably don’t even remember when All Saints’ Day or Ascension Day happens.

The staff at Incarnation has been talking about beginning to mark each of these feasts in some fashion. We are creatures of days, seasons, and time who are shaped by our practices and habits. Each season of the year shapes our hearts and our minds. Our holidays both reveal what we value and transform us over time. This is why worship and celebration are the ideal practices for Christian feast days. Our hearts are revealed and shaped by what we choose to do on the days that commemorate what God has done for us.

Next week, on November 1, we will worship on All Saints’ Day for the first time. Our first step will be incredibly modest—a short Eucharist service at noon. But this simple step is a decision to mark this day with worship.

All Saints’ is the feast day that celebrates what God has done in the lives of those who have gone before us. Each of us has people in our families whose testimony has shaped us. Each of us likely has saints from ages past whom we admire. We need a day devoted to remembering what God did in their lives, and the appropriate first step is to gather and worship that day.

Because this feast day doesn’t usually occur on Sunday, we recognize that most people won’t be able to come. If you can’t come to the church, spend time in prayer at some point during the day thanking God for those who have gone before you in the faith. And if you can come, join us at noon on Tuesday for a short service!

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