Thought for the Week

by the Rev Paul Summers

St Peter's, Addingham

ISN’T it just amazing that only 47 days ago it was Easter Day and the Christian Church worldwide was celebrating the Resurrection? On Sunday we will be celebrating another major and significant event in the life of the Church, the Feast of Pentecost. You may remember it better as Whit Sunday,

on that day girls would wear their new summer dress and boys their new suit or summer jacket. As young boys, I was one of four and my Father was a clergyman so we’d take it in turns to have a new outfit. I used to love it when it was my turn. The new suit hung in the wardrobe in my bedroom and when there was no one around, before the shout from Mum ‘tea’s ready’ I’d take the suit, look at it and admire it and if there was time I’d try it on, if not I’d just put the jacket on and what a ‘bobby dazzler’ I thought I looked. Then on Sunday, Whit Sunday I’d proudly wear my suit complete with new shirt and tie to church. I was told by by older members that it was customary to put a coin in to the pocket of a new jacket and as they told me this they’d put a shilling or a sixpence in the pocket of my new suit and if I was really lucky they put a coin in each of my jacket pockets. It was always fun to get home, take the coins out and add up my ‘winnings’ I can’t remember the various amounts but I do remember that one year there was, when added up, the grand total of 10 shillings. It was indeed a lucky suit.

After lunch the afternoon was given over to the Whit walk when, resplendent we’d beat the bounds of the parish, in other words we’d walk the boundary of the parish with the processional cross at the front, leading the way and the clergy at the rear in their cassocks and newly washed and ironed surplices. Those of us in our Whitsun finery would be bunched in the middle where the boys would jostle with one another to be near to or next to the girl of their dreams.

But now we now we no longer celebrate Whit Sunday, the Day is called Pentecost, the word Pente is Latin for 50 because on Sunday it will be 50 days from Easter. But is also the celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit, the comforter, the power that would sustain and encourage them, just as Jesus had promised them. In church the colour has changed from the white of Whit Sunday to the red of Pentecost, red symbolising the tongues of fire that

came upon the disciples. Here at St Peter's, Addingham the congregation are encouraged to wear something red and in the last few years they’ve respond and so have the clergy in their red clerical shirts.

It’s a glorious festival Pentecost as we celebrate the occasion on which the Holy Spirit came down on the disciples and we pray for this same Holy Spirit to come down upon us as we sing, Come down O love divine, seek thou this soul of mine, and visit it with thine own ardour glowing. Within my heart appear, and kindle it, thy Holy flame bestowing.