Last
Wednesday was the MidFeast of Pentecost. Liturgically, the MidFeast points
to the fact that at one time in Orthodoxy, Pascha and Pentecost were treated as one continuous, united Feast of the Lord.
Thus, last Wednesday was MidFeast not Midfeasts –
the middle of one Feast. And the Feast referred to is, perhaps unexpectedly
for us, Pentecost, not Pascha. Note also that the liturgical book governing
the 50 days after Pascha is called the Pentecostarion, not the Paschalion. The
Troparion of Midfeast reminds us we are in the middle of the feast – in the singular, not plural.
It lasts 50 days, but it is one feast:
“In the middle of the feast, O Savior,
Fill
my thirsting soul with the waters of godliness, as Thou didst cry to all:
If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink!
O Christ
God, Fountain of our life,
Glory to Thee.”
Through the centuries the Feasts (Pascha, Ascension,
and Pentecost) became treated as separate historical events rather than as one cosmic event which we have entered into through
faith and baptism. So, unfortunately, we treat Pascha as the much welcomed
end of Great Lent, whereas it is really the beginning of the longest Feast Day of the Year – the Day without end. Pascha begins the Feast of Pentecost, but Pentecost is where we are headed from
our starting point, Pascha.
Sadly, for Orthodox faithful today, we are often exhausted by the many services
of Holy Week and Pascha, and the days and in the days and weeks following Pascha, instead of us continually rejoicing in the
Lord’s salvation, church attendance declines as there is a post-Pascha letdown because we think we have reached the
finish line after a grueling marathon. Pentecost is treated like some unimportant
addition tacked on harmlessly at the end of the Paschal period. But Pentecost
was the goal all along; Pascha is the beginning of the festal celebration.
In a hymn from MidFeast Vespers we sing:
“The middle of the days has come,
Beginning
with the Savior’s Resurrection,
And sealed by the holy Pentecost.
The first and the last glisten with splendor.
We rejoice in the union
of both feasts,
As we draw near to the Lord’s Ascension:
The sign of our coming glorification.”
Scholar
Christopher Lockwood ties together the events of Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well [today’s Gospel reading]
with the living water mentioned in John 7.37-39, [the Gospel reading for the Feast of Pentecost.
Lessons worth considering at the MidFeast:
The connection between the water of life and the regenerative
activity of the Spirit of God becomes even more pronounced, however, in a typological return to the judicial order of the
Old Testament …. This occurs when Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman involved in an illicit relationship who is drawing
water from the well of Jacob [John 4.1-42]. ….. Jesus, just like
the waters of judgment, reveals the truth about the woman; yet he does not impart punishment, instead promising her living
water which will make her never thirst again. The greater significance of
this is then unveiled in John’s Gospel when Jesus attends the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, where, it should be recalled,
water was ritually drawn from the Pool of Siloam and poured out together with wine before the altar in the Temple of Solomon. It is within the backdrop of all this that the meaning of ‘water of life’
is then revealed:
“On the last day of the feast [of Tabernacles], the great day, Jesus stood
up and proclaimed, if anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who
believes in Me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water’.
Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive; for as yet the Spirit had not been
given, because Jesus was not yet glorified” [John 7.37-39].
This living water is again mentioned as “the
water of life’ in the mystic and eschatological vision of the world to come presented in the Book of Revelation:
“Then he showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of
God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with
its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month; and the leaves
of the tree were for the healing of the nations” [Revelation 22.1 cf. Genesis 2.9].
Taken
together with passages that speak of the Spirit being poured out like water, then, living water essentially comes to symbolize
Christian experience of God’s Spirit both now and in the eschatological Kingdom of God to come. [SVTQ, Volume
61, #1, 2017, pp 27-28].
