Why? Since when? And how do we benefit spiritually from them?
Feasts (1)
Why? Since when? And how do we benefit spiritually from them?
Feasts are a divine ordinance, established in God’s Holy Scripture.
God wants His children on earth to rejoice, so He appointed for them feasts in which they may celebrate and be glad. He made for them seasons of joy, lest anyone think that spiritual life is only sorrow, sadness, and weeping for sins. God wants man to be joyful and happy—otherwise, He would not have placed him in a garden when He created him (Genesis 2:15).
The first list of feasts appears in the Book of Leviticus (Leviticus 23).
The first feast commanded by God was the Lord’s Day.
As it was written in the first tablet of the Law: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work—you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates” (Exodus 20:8–10). “That your servant may rest as well as you. And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt…” (Deuteronomy 5:14–15).
The Sabbath was the first of the feasts listed in Leviticus: “These are My appointed feasts… Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation; you shall do no work. It is a Sabbath to the Lord in all your dwellings” (Leviticus 23:2–3).
The Sabbath was not merely a command, but a rest and a feast for man. The Lord said: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).
Why? As one interpreter said: God, who created human nature, knows it needs a day of rest each week. So He granted the Sabbath for man’s rest and joy. Those who exhaust themselves with continuous work burden their nature beyond what it can bear.
The Sabbath was later replaced by Sunday, which became the feast day because on it the Lord rested from completing His work of redemption and conquered death, which is the result of human sin (Romans 6:23). Thus the Sabbath symbolized Sunday, the true Sabbath—the Lord’s Day, called in Greek Kyriaki, meaning “belonging to the Lord.” The Apostle wrote: “Let no one judge you… regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come” (Colossians 2:16–17). Therefore, the Sabbath was a shadow or symbol of Sunday.
The first feast celebrated in the Old Testament was the Passover, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb and marked their doors with its blood to be spared from the destroying angel, as the Lord said: “When I see the blood, I will pass over you” (Exodus 12:13). “This day shall be to you a memorial; you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations by an everlasting ordinance” (Exodus 12:14). The Gospel mentions that “the Passover was a feast of the Jews” (John 6:4).
The Passover symbolized the sacrifice of Christ, by whom we are saved from destruction. The Scripture says, “For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us” (1 Corinthians 5:7). What should we feel on the day the Lord offered Himself as a sacrifice for us, “that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16)? Should it not be a day of joy, a feast, a day of salvation?
Therefore, we say in the Sixth Hour Prayer: “You have wrought salvation in the midst of the earth, O Christ our God, when You stretched Your holy hands upon the Cross.”
The Passover also symbolizes the Sacrament of the Eucharist, of which we say: “Given for us for salvation, remission of sins, and eternal life to those who partake of Him.” Thus, every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we regard it as a feast of salvation. Hence, we say: “This is the day which the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
Therefore, Holy Thursday is considered a Lordly Feast, even though it is a fasting day within Holy Week, because our feasts are spiritual—rejoicing in the salvation granted by the Lord.
We say to the Lord on the day He offered Himself as a sacrifice for us: “The Lord is my strength and my song, and He has become my holy salvation” (Psalm 118:14).
Thus, Sunday is a feast of rest, resurrection, victory over death, and salvation. Do all these meanings cross our minds when we celebrate the Eucharist every Sunday? Or are they lost amid our focus on hymns and rituals—without connecting the Passover, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Sunday, and the Eucharist as a whole?
Another feast connected to the Passover was the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The Lord said: “Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses; for whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel” (Exodus 12:15). Why?
Leaven symbolized evil, while unleavened bread symbolized righteousness—which is tied to eating the Passover lamb that symbolizes redemption. Thus it is written: “They shall eat the flesh on that night, roasted in fire, with unleavened bread” (Exodus 12:8). The Apostle applies this spiritually: “Purge out the old leaven… For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Corinthians 5:7–8).
Therefore, communion with the Passover and the Eucharist is linked to holiness and righteousness. The number seven, connected to the Feast of Unleavened Bread, symbolizes perfection—the perfection of life.
So no one should say, “I am saved because I am within the doors marked with blood—not by my works, but by the sprinkled blood.” That is true, yet remember that inside those doors were people who had removed leaven from their houses, meaning they had removed all evil. Whoever ate leavened bread was cut off from the people, even if their doors were marked with blood. Salvation by the blood is also connected to a life free from leaven—symbolized by the seven days, that is, the whole life—during which one feeds on righteousness.
Thus, when the Prophet Samuel invited Jesse’s house to the sacrifice, he said: “Consecrate yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice” (1 Samuel 16:5). “He consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.” Here, participation in the sacrifice is linked to holiness—to being worthy to partake.
Feasts in the Old Testament involved sacrifices, holy assemblies, and were sacred days (Leviticus 23). They were not days of worldly pleasure, but “holy convocations.” They were days of rest from labor—but holy rest. The English word Holiday means “Holy Day,” but sadly, it has been replaced with “Weekend,” losing the sense of holiness and becoming a mere break—perhaps even far from God.
Rest does not mean idleness—it is rest from worldly work so that we may devote ourselves to God’s work. The body rests so that the spirit may labor.
This was the issue between the Lord and the Pharisees, whom He convinced with many examples that “it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath” (Matthew 12:10–12). Holy convocations are indeed work—offering sacrifices, incense, and the Eucharist are all sacred works.
Thus, Sunday, besides being a feast of rest, resurrection, and victory over death, is also a feast of salvation and holiness, symbolized by the unleavened bread associated with the Passover. Let us remember all this.
In the Old Testament, there was also the Feast of Tabernacles (Leviticus 23:34; John 7:2), a seven-day feast of the Lord. The people dwelt in tents to remember how the Lord made them dwell in booths when He brought them out of Egypt (Leviticus 23:42–43), and more deeply, to remind them of their sojourn on earth.
A stranger dwells in tents—pitching and removing them from place to place—while the settled man dwells in a house. It is written that Abraham “dwelt in tents with Isaac and Jacob…” (Hebrews 11:9), and the righteous “confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth… they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country” (Hebrews 11:13,16).
The outward celebration was dwelling in tents; the inward celebration was faith in our pilgrimage on earth and longing for the heavenly homeland.
Thus, in every feast, we must seek the deep spiritual meaning.
Another Jewish feast was the Feast of Harvest (Exodus 23:16). They counted seven full weeks from the first sheaf of harvest—fifty days—to offer the Lord’s offering (Leviticus 23:15–16).
We call this in Christianity Pentecost, the Feast of the Holy Spirit—the foundation of the Church—when the true harvest began, the “firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” on the day of Resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:20). We rejoice in this great harvest through which the world became the Lord’s. “And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47). At the same time, we heed the Lord’s words: “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest” (Matthew 9:38).
Yes, Lord, send laborers, for “the fields are white for harvest… that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together” (John 4:35–36).
Yes, Lord, You have sent us to reap what we did not labor for—others have labored, and we have entered into their labors (John 4:38). Our apostolic fathers sowed the seeds of faith; others watered them with sweat and tears; You gave the growth (1 Corinthians 3:7). Then martyrs watered the plants with their blood; champions of faith removed the thorns of heresy, and the holy work continued. We, upon whom the ends of the ages have come (1 Corinthians 10:11), now reap the fruits of faith that we did not labor for.
Let us rejoice, then, in the Feast of Harvest whenever a new soul joins the Church. Let us pray, as the Church grows and spreads, that the Lord may send laborers into His harvest. Truly, the harvest is His, the fields are His, and we are all laborers with Him, as St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “We are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field” (1 Corinthians 3:9). “Each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor” (1 Corinthians 3:8).
If we view the feasts of the Old Testament in this spiritual depth, let us also look at the feasts of the New Testament in the same way.
For example, Christmas is the feast when God visited His people (Luke 1:68), reconciled earth with heaven, and blessed our nature through His Incarnation—as we say in the Divine Liturgy—so we rejoice in His coming to us. He whom we could not ascend to, descended to us.
Christmas, then, is the feast of divine love—God visiting His people. The Feast of Theophany (Epiphany) is the feast of divine humility, when the great High Priest, after the order of Melchizedek, received from one of His servants—a son of Aaron—the baptism of repentance, which He did not need, yet humbly accepted it on our behalf, saying to John the Baptist: “Permit it to be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15).
The Feast of Resurrection is the feast of victory over death and everything leading to death—and we cannot conquer death unless we first conquer sin, for “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).
Every feast has its meaning and contemplation, which cannot all be detailed here. What matters is that we meditate deeply on each feast and ask ourselves:
What impact have the feasts had in our lives?
What feelings have they planted in us? What change have they brought toward the better? How have they drawn us closer to God? How have they deepened our understanding of the purpose of the feast and led us into its depths?
I say this as I congratulate you on this feast and every feast.
May every feast bring you joy and blessing.
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A sermon by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III, published in Watani newspaper, January 19, 1997.
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