Pentecost, a celebration closely knit with spiritual mystery, occupies a curious place in the liturgical calendar. While many of our Christian celebrations centre on martyrdom, sacrifice, and solemnity — times overcast with a kind of darkness that gives way to the sombre depths of reflection — Pentecost arrives like a sudden summer storm. Instead of marking death, Pentecost marks the birth of discipleship. This is an intensely joyful and energetic moment in the liturgical calendar that seeks to shake the trees of their dead leaves, encouraging pollination so that we might see other trees begin to blossom. It is a festival of sorts that commands a reaction rather than reflection. You are asked to embrace life, look at the trees with the growing blossom, and feel the energy of that growth: this feast is not just a memory, but an invitation to be open and energised by that same Spirit.
The Dove, a symbol of the Holy Spirit, here hand-embroidered in Japanese Gold thread.
The response to this celebration goes back centuries. Early Christians used local colours and whatever fabrics were available. However, by the twelfth century, Pope Innocent III sought to impose order, specifying four main liturgical colours: white for feasts, red for Pentecost and martyrs, black for penitential seasons, and green for ordinary time. It is Innocent's framework that quietly shaped the medieval European worship that we have long since shaped and adapted. However, despite this strictly imposed order, Pentecost's red remained distinctive for its meaning. Tradition calls it a “happy red feast,” and this label matters. The red worn on this day is not Good Friday’s deep crimson or the dark, blood-stained robes of martyrdom; these reds speak of blood willingly shed. On the contrary, Pentecost, despite being the same colour, uses a brighter shade to signal something else: the fierce charity of the Holy Spirit, fiery tongues settling on the apostles in the Upper Room. It is the bright red of flames burning, representing the tongues of fire and the dynamic presence of the Spirit ready to inspire a new generation.
Indeed, the etymology of “inspire” perfectly encapsulates the mood of Pentecost’s red. Originating from the Latin inspirare, it means “to breathe or blow into.” As we breathe, the Spirit — or the ruach, Hebrew for breath/wind/spirit — meets us in this exchange, and we exhale to fan these Pentecostal flames. The Holy Spirit is understood as an inward grace of an outward divine love, but on this day, love is not tame or comfortable. It comes as rushing wind, as flame, as the upending of our safe assumptions.
The tongues of flame, hand-embroidered in Japanese Gold thread.
The medieval Church felt this disruptive power deeply. The Pentecost octave in the old Roman liturgy was no afterthought; each day had its own prayers, readings, and chants, with red vestments flaming at the altar. The Ember Days — Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday — were repurposed to mark the seasons and pray for vocations and the Spirit's outpouring. The Ember Wednesday Mass paired the story of the three young men in the furnace with the Spirit’s descent from Acts: trial and divine power, fire that destroys and fire that gives life. Today, the formal observance of the Pentecost octave has faded in the Roman rite, and Ember Days are no longer universal. Yet in some communities, Ember Days persist as reminders to mark the seasons and pray for vocations. Even without official status, these traditions can still inspire us: to reflect, observe the year's cycles, and invite the Spirit with renewed attention and hope.
There is a poem that captures this double-edged nature of Pentecostal fire, and it comes from an unexpected source. T.S. Eliot, writing while London burned around him during the Second World War, composed the fourth section of the poem 'Little Gidding' as a meditation on Whitsun—the old English name for Pentecost. In it, he writes:
The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre—
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.
Eliot's dove is not the gentle bird of peace we might expect. It is a presence both awe-inspiring and unsettling, a dark dove with a flickering tongue, bringing both judgment and redemption. Eliot uses the image of the dove descending not just to symbolise comfort, but to suggest that the coming of the Holy Spirit is unsettling, even fearsome — a fire that can both destroy and heal. The poem asks us to consider that the same Spirit who redeems can also purify with pain, and that being transformed by love is often uncomfortable or overwhelming. The poet grasped what the medieval liturgists understood: Pentecost, like the shade of red chosen to celebrate it, is not safe. The Spirit that descends in fire does not come to preserve our complacencies but to burn them clean away. And yet, and this is the heart of the “happy red feast,” this consuming fire is ultimately the fire of love. “Who then devised the torment? Love.” The same flame that terrifies is the flame that saves.
The Holy Spirit of the 'Sacramental Life of the Church' banner. Hand-embroidered with a mixture of techniques including silk shading and appliqué, and ornamented with spangles.
This is why Pentecost resists the martyr-focus found in much of our liturgical imagination. Martyrs die; the Spirit makes alive. Martyrs shed blood; the Spirit pours out energy and life. Martyrs witness Christ's sacrifice; the Spirit witnesses Christ's ongoing, living presence.
In the older English tradition — the Sarum Use shaping Salisbury and beyond — red was the ordinary Sunday colour. This suggests something profound: our ancestors saw the Spirit's fire not as rare, but as the normal pulse of Christian life. The “happy red feast” was a reminder that worship should be an encounter with the living God — burning, rushing, uncontainable. We come to Pentecost without a neat focal point or single theme, because Pentecost resists being pinned down. It is wind, flame, and many tongues. It reverses Babel and births the Church. It is terrifying and joyful, destructive and creative — the fire that consumes, the fire that warms. Medieval liturgists dressed it in red not to remember death, but to celebrate divine love that will not rest until it sets the world ablaze.
Our Sarum Red 'Gothic' silk damask.
And perhaps that is enough. Perhaps the character of Pentecost — this happy red feast, this dangerous joy, this unfamiliar Name called Love — is exactly where we are meant to linger, breathless, in the rush of the Spirit's wind.
0 comments