Sources of the Whitsunday Readings
& the Baptismal Holy Days of the Ancient Church

I.  Easton's Argument: Whitsunday as the Second Pascha

Burton Scott Easton, sometime Professor of the New Testament at the General Theological Seminary, was among the more careful textual and historical critics whom the American Episcopal Church produced in the generation that prepared the 1928 Book. In The Eternal Word in the Modern World, he turns at page 156 and following to the Whitsuntide propers, and there contends that the readings of the day — their selection, their proximity, the architecture of the Octave that surrounds them — cannot be rightly understood except in their original setting, which was that of a baptismal feast. The Acts of the Apostles, read upon Whitsunday, is no chronicle merely of the descent of the Spirit; it is a baptismal lection, set in a season at which the catechumens were brought to the font.

The witness for this antiquity is plain, and Easton draws upon it with characteristic restraint. Tertullian, writing in North Africa at the close of the second century, names the two seasons in which baptism is most fittingly conferred:

The Pascha provides the most solemn day for baptism … After that, Pentecost is a most joyous space for the conferring of baptisms; for in it both the resurrection of the Lord was repeatedly proved among the disciples, and the grace of the Holy Spirit inaugurated, and the hope of the advent of the Lord indicated. Tertullian, De Baptismo, xix

The Council of Elvira in Spain (c. 305) presupposes the same scheme; the Sacramentary of Gelasius preserves a Whitsun Vigil whose prophetic lessons — the binding of Isaac upon Moriah, the passage of the Red Sea, the dry bones of the prophet Ezekiel, the outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh in Joel — move in deliberate parallel with the Paschal Vigil's prophecies, and stand in their proper place as the catechumens are gathered for the laver of regeneration. The pattern, in other words, is no late development; it is the discipline of the early third century at the latest, and it shapes the lectionary which the Western Church carried forward into the medieval Uses.

If this is the original setting, the lectionary which comes down to us in the Sarum Use, and so into the English Prayer Books, preserves something of the older shape, but only in fragments. The proper Gospel on Whitsunday itself — the promise of the Comforter from the fourteenth chapter of St. John — retains the catechumenal logic at one remove: the Spirit will be given to those who are made disciples through the keeping of Christ's word. The Octave readings, before their abridgment, made this logic explicit:

Read together, these are not a miscellany of pneumatic episodes but a deliberate catechesis: water and the Spirit, the apostolic laying on of hands, the gathering of the Gentiles to the font — the very themes that the early Fathers, in their Whitsuntide mystagogies, expound to the newly baptized. The Octave, that is to say, is not an appendix to the great day; it is the unfolding of the day's own proper meaning, addressed to a congregation that yet contained, in considerable number, those who but eight days before had gone down into the water.

Pentecost is the second Pascha — not in dignity of mystery, but in the discipline of the font.

II.  The 1928 Book: What was Altered, What was Lost

What, then, of the American Book of 1928? The substantial Whitsunday propers — Acts ii.1–11 for the Epistle, St. John xiv.15–31 for the Gospel — are not changed in any radical way from those received from the English Books of 1549 and 1662, and so the older shape, in this respect, is preserved. The losses are quieter, and they lie chiefly in the surrounding architecture.

The first loss is the Whitsun Vigil. In the Sarum Books, the Eve of Pentecost was kept with a vigil of multiple prophetic readings — Genesis xxii, Exodus xiv, Deuteronomy xxxi, Isaiah iv, Baruch iii, Ezekiel xxxvii, Joel ii — in evident parallel with the Paschal Vigil. The 1549 Book reduced these to a single Epistle and Gospel for the Eve, and subsequent revisions have not restored them. The catechumenal logic, which the Vigil bore, is silently absent.

The second loss is the thinning of the Octave. The Sarum Whitsun Octave, with its baptismal Acts and its Johannine pericopes upon water and Spirit, gives place in the Prayer Book tradition to a less elaborate observance; the 1928 American calendar appoints Whitsun Monday and Tuesday with their proper Eucharistic readings, but the Ember Days within the Octave, though kept, do not bring forward the older catechesis with the same explicitness.

The third loss, and that on which Easton bears most pointedly, is the Daily Office lectionary. The 1928 American Book appoints at Mattins on Whitsunday the second chapter of Joel, and at Evensong, in the alternatives provided, lessons from Wisdom and from Ezekiel. These are admirable in themselves, and the Joel reading retains its Pentecost association; but they do not bear the weight of catechumenal preparation that the older Whitsun Vigil prophecies bore, and they do not place the congregation, even by remembrance, at the side of those whom the ancient Church was bringing to the font.

The case for restoration, as Easton makes it, is therefore less an argument for changing the Eucharistic Epistle and Gospel of the day — which are venerable and which are, in their pneumatic richness, well-chosen — than an argument for recovering the surrounding furniture: the Vigil with its prophecies, the Octave with its baptismal Acts, and a calendar that makes Whitsuntide once again a season for the conferring of the sacrament. The Prayer Book is to be enlarged in its observance, not amended in its words.

III.  The Other Baptismal Holy Days of the Ancient Church

The wider question, which Easton's discussion opens but does not exhaustively pursue, is that of the further baptismal Holy Days which the ancient Church received and which the modern parish has, by and large, forgotten. They admit of straightforward enumeration.

Pascha and Pentecost

In the Roman use, the two seasons were Pascha and Pentecost; this was the universal Western discipline, and Leo the Great, in his Letter XVI to Decentius of Eugubium (A.D. 416), forbids the conferring of the sacrament upon any other days, save in the necessity of grave illness. The principle is plain: baptism belongs not to the private or domestic occasion, but to the great moments of the Lord's redeeming work — to his death and resurrection at Pascha, and to his sending of the Spirit at Pentecost.

The Theophany

In the East, the discipline differed: to Pascha and Pentecost was added the Theophany of the Lord upon the sixth of January, by reason of its commemoration of the Lord's own baptism in Jordan. The Greek Fathers preach upon the day with this connection plainly in view; the office of the Great Blessing of the Waters, which still descends to us in the Byzantine rite, is the liturgical witness that survives to this day. In Spain, in Gaul, and at Milan, the Theophany was likewise honoured as a baptismal feast, and the western Church remembered the Lord's baptism upon the Octave of the Epiphany even after the discipline of conferring baptism upon the day itself had given way.

The Nativity of St. John Baptist

In some local uses, particularly the Spanish and the Gallican, the Nativity of St. John Baptist upon the twenty-fourth of June was kept with baptismal associations, the Forerunner being patron of catechumens by reason of his preaching of repentance and his baptism in Jordan. Augustine preaches upon the day with the catechumens in view, and the Sacramentary of Bobbio preserves propers consistent with that discipline. The custom did not become universal, and was not received in the Roman Use, but it survives as a witness to the breadth of the principle: the great events of salvation are the proper occasions of the laver.

The Apostolic Vigils

Some scholars — Frere among them, and after him Dix — would extend the list further to the Vigils of the Apostles Peter and Paul (the twenty-eighth of June) and to certain other martyrial commemorations in the Spanish use. These were not principal baptismal seasons in the Roman discipline, but they bear witness to a wider sense in which the Church saw the conferring of baptism as belonging to the public solemnities of the Christian year, and not to the convenience of the household.

IV.  Of the Fruitfulness of Recovery for Modern Liturgies

Whether such a pattern is fruitful for the modern Church is, in my judgement, beyond reasonable dispute — though the manner of its recovery requires care. Three considerations commend it, and three cautions must be observed in the application.

What commends the recovery

The first commendation is theological. The ancient discipline binds the doctrine of baptism to the central mysteries of redemption, and so preserves the sacrament from the privatization which has been its chief modern peril. When the font is brought forward only at Pascha and at Pentecost, the congregation sees in fact what it confesses in word: that to be made a Christian is to be incorporated into the death and resurrection of the Lord and to be filled with his Spirit. The accidents of family convenience give place to the solemnities of the saving work.

The second is catechetical. A baptismal calendar, set within Lent and Eastertide and renewed at Whitsuntide, supplies the formation cycle which the ancient catechumenate possessed and which the modern parish, by and large, lacks. Lent becomes again, in some real sense, a period of scrutiny and preparation; Eastertide becomes a period of mystagogy; Whitsuntide becomes a second season of formation, gathering up what the Paschal sacrament inaugurated. The lectionary itself supplies the catechesis, if only the year is observed in this way.

The third is liturgical. The lectionary, reread in this light, reveals its own coherence: the prophetic Vigils, the mystagogical Octaves, the seasonal Collects, the very texture of the propers, are the formation of a baptized people, and not a series of self-contained Sundays. Whitsuntide ceases to be a single day of pneumatic enthusiasm and resumes its proper place as the second pillar of the Christian year.

The cautions

The cautions are these. First, no novelty is to be introduced by liturgical reform; the recovery is a recovery of observance within the Prayer Book, not an alteration of its received propers. Second, the rubrical liberty of conferring baptism in the necessity of grave illness, or upon the desire of the parents in pastoral circumstances that warrant it, must not be diminished; the ancient discipline was a norm, not an exclusion. Third, the recovery is to be teaching as well as ordering: the people are to be brought to understand why the font is brought forward at Pascha and at Pentecost, lest the seasonal discipline appear to them an inconvenience rather than a glory.

V.  A Modest Proposal: What May Be Recovered

Where, then, ought a parish minded to follow Easton's argument begin? Not, I think, by altering the Prayer Book Eucharistic propers, which are received and which carry with them the consensus of the English Use. Rather, by three quieter restorations, each of them within the rubrical liberty already given:

1. The Whitsun Vigil at Evensong on the Eve of Pentecost. The Sarum prophecies (Genesis xxii, Exodus xiv, Ezekiel xxxvii, Joel ii, with Isaiah iv as may be selected) appointed in place of the ordinary lessons, with the Whitsunday Collect said in addition; the office concluded, as the Sarum directs, with the singing of Veni Creator Spiritus.
2. The Whitsun Octave observed in the Daily Office. The Acts and Gospels of the Sarum Octave appointed at Mattins and Evensong from Whitsun Monday through the Ember Saturday, in place of the lectionary's continuous reading, so that the catechumenal logic of the season may be heard.
3. The reservation of Holy Baptism, where pastoral circumstances permit, to Easter Even, Whitsun Eve, and the Octave of the Epiphany. The rubrical liberty of baptism at any time when need arises is, of course, retained; but the ordinary occasions are restored to their ancient places.

So done, no novelty is introduced; the Prayer Book pattern is not disturbed; and yet the ancient shape, which the early Fathers so carefully constructed and which the Reformers in their abridgments did not always preserve, is recovered for the formation of the Christian people. Easton's argument, advanced in 1937 within the constraints of the recently completed 1928 Book, becomes in our own day not less applicable but more: for the privatization of the sacrament against which he warned has, in the ninety years since, only deepened, and the recovery he proposed remains as quiet, as unobjectionable, and as fruitful as it ever was.

The Prayer Book is to be enlarged in its observance, not amended in its words.

VI.  Concluding Reflection

The lectionary of the Christian year is not a calendar of biblical convenience; it is the formation of a people who have been buried with Christ in baptism and raised with him in newness of life. When the Whitsun Acts is read in our parish churches, it is read among congregations of whom many were once, and some still are, catechumens; when the Promise of the Comforter is proclaimed from St. John's fourteenth chapter, it is proclaimed to those who have received the Comforter in the very season in which they were baptized. To remember this — to order the parish year so as to remember it — is to recover not an antiquarian custom, but the lectionary's own meaning. Easton perceived this rightly. It remains for us, who have the Prayer Book before us and the rubrical liberty within it, to take up what he proposed and to make it again the shape of our common life in Christ.

VII.  An Appendix: Two Forms for the Vigil of Whitsun

What follows are two practical forms for the keeping of Whitsun Eve at Evensong, the first after the manner of the Roman Missal — drawing upon the Sarum Prophecies, the structure of Exciting Holiness (first edition, ed. Br. Tristam SSF, Canterbury Press, 1997), and the renewed Western Vigil — the second a straightforward 1928 American Evensong with its proper lessons, suitable for ordinary parochial use. Either form may be observed in a domestic chapel, a parish church, or by a small fellowship gathered before the principal Whitsunday liturgy.

A.  The Vigil of Whitsun: A Missal-Type Evensong

This form is drawn from the Sarum Use, as preserved in the pre-1955 Roman Missal, and from the modern Anglican recovery of the Pentecost Vigil represented in Exciting Holiness and the renewed Office books. It supposes a sung Evensong with prophecies and the renewal of baptismal vows. It runs to perhaps an hour with full music and a brief homily. Where pastoral circumstances limit the time, the rubrics indicate which prophecies may be omitted.

B.  The Vigil of Whitsun: A Straight 1928 Evensong

This second form is for those parishes and small fellowships which would keep Whitsun Eve in plain Prayer Book order, without prophetic readings or the larger ceremonial of the missal type. It is simply Evening Prayer from the 1928 American Book, with appropriate proper appointments. The Whitsun Collect is said in addition to the Collect of the Day from the morrow, and Veni Creator may be sung as the anthem in its proper place.

A note on the relation of the two forms

The first form is the older and more elaborate; the second, the plainer and more domestically usable. They are not in competition. A parish minded to recover the discipline that Easton commends might well employ the missal-type Vigil at the parish church on the eve, and the 1928 form at home as a household preparation; or the 1928 form for ordinary years and the missal-type Vigil for those years in which baptisms are to be conferred. In either case, what is recovered is not novelty but observance: the Whitsun Eve, kept as the Church through fifteen centuries kept it, with prophets and the Spirit and (where God wills) the laver of regeneration.