50 Joyous Days between Resurrection and Pentecost are about Transformation.

In Resurrection, we are reborn; we die and are resurrected with Christ. This new resurrected nature is then shaped and molded by the Holy Church and it is filled with the Holy Spirit. The Pentecost is demonstration of the Holy Trinity and the indwelling and cleansing by the Holy Spirit. This is the feast of Pentecost, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and the transformation which was begun at Holy Resurrection is further fulfilled and perfected, in the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. And the Holy Spirit within us, Himself, has the effect of transforming and shaping the soul into more perfectly taking on His own image and likeness.

Without the Holy Spirit we have no life in us, with the Holy Spirit we have the life of Jesus.
Without the Holy Spirit we return to the Upper Room in fear and anxiety but with the Holy Spirit we leave the Upper Room and witness to Jesus to the ends of the earth.

Feast of Resurrection of our Lord, set forth a new season – the joyous period from Kymtho till Feast of Pentecost.

Let us pray for ourselves and the entire Church, that we may all be renewed by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Let us ask Him to guide us into all truth and to help us grow in Close companionship with Christ through daily prayer, reading of the Holy Scriptures and partaking of the Holy Sacraments.
O Holy Spirit, Convict us, sanctify us, guide us, comforts us, renews us, and make us fruitful.

“Not fasting during the fifty days from Resurrection to Feast of Pentecost is one thing.

But eating without restraint is something else.

Since these fifty days are a celebration period, neither fasting nor prostrations in prayer are allowed. However the faithful should not lose his self-control, that bring spiritually and bodily harm, lest may the spiritual benefits and disciplines of the Lenten fast and the Holy Week.” No prostrations (Malayalam: ‘kumbideel’) during the days from ‘Uyirpu’/Kymtho/Feast of Resurrection till the Feast of Pentecost!

Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!

The Holy Scripture states that there is time and season for everything (Ecclesiastes 3: 1). The liturgical calendar of the Indian Orthodox Church observes a new season/a new period now: from Kymtho- Pentecost.

During the Great Lent we expressed our penitence and repentance through a beautiful expression- prostrations/kumbideel (Malayalam). And by Lord’s mercy we could participate in the joyous proclamation of our Lord’s Resurrection. In the days following from Feast of Resurrection (Uyippu/Kymtho) till the Feast of Pentecost, the joyous commemoration by the Church takes a precedence over the repentant expression of prostrations. Hence in the Orthodox Church, no prostrations/ ‘kumbideel’ is allowed during this period.

We will see through some examples of the early Christian witnesses and Church fathers attesting this tradition:

1) Tertullian (~160 AD-220 AD)

For those who look for ‘where is this in the Holy Scripture’, Tertullian provides an explanation that certain traditions have come about in the Church because they were ‘handed down’. He then speaks of the tradition of not kneeling/prostration on Sundays and the period from Easter to Pentecost:

“If no passage of Scripture has prescribed it, assuredly custom, which without doubt flowed from tradition, has confirmed it. For how can anything come into use, if it has not first been handed down? …..We count fasting or kneeling in worship on the Lord’s day to be unlawful. We rejoice in the same privilege also from Resurrection to Whitsunday”. (Chapter III, The Chaplet or de Corona, Ante Nicene Fathers- Volume III)

2) Council of Nicea:

“Forasmuch as there are certain persons who kneel on the Lord’s Day and in the days of Pentecost, therefore, to the intent that all things may be uniformly observed everywhere (in every parish), it seems good to the holy Synod that prayer be made to God standing.” (Canon XX, Council of Nicea, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Volume XIV)

3) St Basil (~AD329-AD379)

St Basil also affirms that certain aspects of faith, we have received from written teaching (i.e. the Holy Scripture) and some ‘handed down’ by the oral traditions. St Basil, then explains that we do not do prostration (and we pray only standing) on Sundays/ on the days from Easter till Pentecost because those days remind us that we have ‘rose’ with Christ and called to look heavenwards in prayer:

“Of the beliefs and practices whether generally accepted or publicly enjoined which are preserved in the Church some we possess derived from written teaching; others we have received delivered to us “in a mystery” by the tradition of the apostles; and both of these in relation to true religion have the same force……..

..We pray standing, on the first day of the week, but we do not all know the reason. On the day of the resurrection (or “standing again”) we remind ourselves of the grace given to us by standing at prayer, not only because we rose with Christ, and are bound to “seek those things which are above,” but because the day seems to us to be in some sense an image of the age which we expect…

Of necessity, then, the church teaches her own foster children to offer their prayers on that day standing, to the end that through continual reminder of the endless life we may not neglect to make provision for our removal thither. Moreover all Pentecost is a reminder of the resurrection expected in the age to come… On this day the rules of the church have educated us to prefer the upright attitude of prayer, for by their plain reminder they, as it were, make our mind to dwell no longer in the present but in the future.” (De Spirito Sancto; Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II ,Volume VIII)