Makes bright for me each day.
The soul with spirit power
Gives strength into my limbs.
In sunlight shining clear
I reverence, O God,
The strength of humankind
Which thou, so graciously,
Hast planted in my soul
That I, with all my might,
May love to work and learn
From thee comes light and strength
To thee rise love and thanks.
Whitsun is known also as Pentecost or Shavuot, the latter two being the Greek and Hebrew for the ‘fiftieth day’ or seven weeks (after Passover). The disciples were together on this day and united in heart and mind.
Into the harmony of their thoughts, feelings and common religious practice came the gift of inspiration from the Holy Spirit. In the great rushing flow of joy in their souls they were enlightened with the knowledge that Christ is united with each and every one of us in the deepest way possible; he has not disappeared – he is here. Being thus inspired, the disciples were able to go out and bring about a similar experience in other people, speaking languages that everyone could understand.
Into the harmony of their thoughts, feelings and common religious practice came the gift of inspiration from the Holy Spirit. In the great rushing flow of joy in their souls they were enlightened with the knowledge that Christ is united with each and every one of us in the deepest way possible; he has not disappeared – he is here. Being thus inspired, the disciples were able to go out and bring about a similar experience in other people, speaking languages that everyone could understand.
This festival can be characterised in many ways: the festival of flowers, the festival of awakening, of free individuality, of baptism, of the first fruits of the earth and of the first fruits of the spirit. It is a festival of community.
The Easter experience, the moveable feast, comes to each of us in our own time. Whitsun is both moveable and fixed, in that it follows fifty days after Easter; that is to say, the experience of death and resurrection leads in due course to the experience of understanding oneself as a spiritual being.
As the sprouting grain is a picture of resurrection, so the blossom is the image of the flowering of the spirit of Whitsun:
The heart of the human being may be symbolised by the flower opening itself to the sun; and what pours down from the sun, giving the flower the fertilizing power it needs, may be symbolized by the tongues of fire descending upon the heads of the disciples.
Rudolf Steiner,
‘The Whitsun Mystery and its connection with Ascension’
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