Octave of Pentecost

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Anyone have any thoughts as to why the Octave of Pentecost was cut from the OF? It feels odd to me that yesterday we celebrated this great feast of Pentecost, this great celebration of the gift of the Holy Spirit, and suddenly it is over. Forgetting the fact that Pentecost is a particularly important feast, even with a regular Sunday the “theme” of the Sunday continues throughout the following week.

Of course if you worship according to the EF we are in the Pentecost Octave.
 
twf said:
Anyone have any thoughts as to why the Octave of Pentecost was cut from the OF? It feels odd to me that yesterday we celebrated this great feast of Pentecost, this great celebration of the gift of the Holy Spirit, and suddenly it is over. Forgetting the fact that Pentecost is a particularly important feast, even with a regular Sunday the “theme” of the Sunday continues throughout the following week.

Of course if you worship according to the EF we are in the Pentecost Octave.
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Octaves were reduced to just two. The trend started before Vatican II: Pius XII reduced the number of Octaves from something like 18 to 3 (Christmas, Easter and Pentecost).

Why Pentecost was removed, I don’t know. In a way a vestige of it still exists, Trinity Sunday on the Sunday following Pentecost.

Clearly 18 octaves was too much (one on average every 3 weeks?). Whether 2 is too few… who am I to judge 🤷

I personally don’t like them myself. I recite the LOTH daily and I find the Easter Octave, in particular, dreary with the same psalms and antiphons every single day. At least the Christmas Octave has few feasts thrown in to break the monotony at least for Lauds. But then I keep saying that the liturgy is “not all about me” so I suck it up.

On the other hand the Vigil of Pentecost still, theoretically, exists in the OF.
 
And my birthday gets an octave 🙂 But that is on a lower level and not of the Churches calendar …
 
OraLabora said:
Octaves were reduced to just two. The trend started before Vatican II: Pius XII reduced the number of Octaves from something like 18 to 3 (Christmas, Easter and Pentecost).

Why Pentecost was removed, I don’t know. In a way a vestige of it still exists, Trinity Sunday on the Sunday following Pentecost.

Clearly 18 octaves was too much (one on average every 3 weeks?). Whether 2 is too few… who am I to judge 🤷

I personally don’t like them myself. I recite the LOTH daily and I find the Easter Octave, in particular, dreary with the same psalms and antiphons every single day. At least the Christmas Octave has few feasts thrown in to break the monotony at least for Lauds. But then I keep saying that the liturgy is “not all about me” so I suck it up.

On the other hand the Vigil of Pentecost still, theoretically, exists in the OF.
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Hmm. That’s useful, though personally I would have kept the three remaining Octaves. I think the repetition during Octaves is appropriate…there are certain things, such as the Incarnation and the Paschal mystery, which we should meditate on repetitively :P.

Wasn’t the Vigil of Pentecost originally cut but then reintroduced with the Third Edition of the Roman Missal? I suppose for the Liturgy of the Hours you could have always said a vigil office of Pentecost on Saturday regardless.
 
twf said:
Hmm. That’s useful, though personally I would have kept the three remaining Octaves. I think the repetition during Octaves is appropriate…there are certain things, such as the Incarnation and the Paschal mystery, which we should meditate on repetitively :P.
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I don’t disagree. Like I said, “it isn’t all about me”. I just find the liturgy tedious. Although (since I chant the LOTH), by the end of the Octave, one finally starts to get the antiphons down pat, and the antiphons for big solemnities can be a challenge!
twf said:
Wasn’t the Vigil of Pentecost originally cut but then reintroduced with the Third Edition of the Roman Missal? I suppose for the Liturgy of the Hours you could have always said a vigil office of Pentecost on Saturday regardless.
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The Pentecost Vigil Mass is in the 1974 Graduale Romanum which would be based on the First Editions. It’s also in my 1997 French missal based on the Second Edition of the Roman Missal, so I think it’s been around since 1970… but perhaps someone else has the definitive answer, perhaps it was discontinued for a brief time; all my texts show continuity since at least 1974.
 
OraLabora said:
I don’t disagree. Like I said, “it isn’t all about me”. I just find the liturgy tedious. Although (since I chant the LOTH), by the end of the Octave, one finally starts to get the antiphons down pat, and the antiphons for big solemnities can be a challenge!

The Pentecost Vigil Mass is in the 1974 Graduale Romanum which would be based on the First Editions. It’s also in my 1997 French missal based on the Second Edition of the Roman Missal, so I think it’s been around since 1970… but perhaps someone else has the definitive answer, perhaps it was discontinued for a brief time; all my texts show continuity since at least 1974.
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Hmm, perhaps it was cut from the original English texts and reintroduced with the revised English missal.
 
ProVobis said:
Not theoretically but really. It sort of confused me at the Spanish Mass I attended Saturday night.
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The reason I said “theoretically” is because you’d be hard pressed to find a parish around here that celebrates it!

However it is celebrated at the local abbey.

But “officially” it’s on the books 🙂
 
Another “sort of” an octave would be the Assumption/Queenship of Mary from August 15 through August 22.
 
I personally would like to see both Pentecost and Epiphany have their Octaves restored, they would both complement well the respective Solemnities that preceded them.
 
:bighanky:As others have pointed out, the number of octaves had increased over the centuries, and there were solemn and simply octaves, and the Church’s two kalendar systems, the proper of saints and the proper of seasons, both became quite full, and they were bumping up against each other. The system of ranking feasts also had become increasingly complex. Revisions by Ven. Pius XII in 1955 and St. John XXIII in 1960 greatly simplified this system, and reduced the number of octaves to three, including the Whitsun octave. Another reform taken up during these years involved the suppression of multiple feasts of the same saints. Other than Our Lady, St. John the Baptist, St. Joseph and to a lesser degree, Sts. Peter and Paul, all second feasts of a saint were dropped.

The 1970 missal and kalendar continued these revisions, though in a larger and more sweeping way. Entire seasons were suppressed and many saints’ feast days were changed, to correspond with their dates of death, and also moved out of Lent and late Advent. The Pentecost Octave was suppressed because the new kalendar viewed Easter as the swing date of the proper of seasons (which it obviously is), and wished to emphasize the Easter season as being the fifty-day period from Easter Day through Whitsunday. Thus, the day of Pentecost was seen as the conclusion the Easter season. Christmas was seen as the anchor for the proper of saints, and its own octave was shifted from the proper of seasons, where it had previously been listed, to the proper of saints. The renumbering of Sundays after Epiphany and Pentecost as Sundays “of the ordinal time” in Latin (sadly mistranslated as “ordinary time” in English) underscored the pre-eminence of this scheme.

While Pentecost remains a solemnity, the suppression of its octave seems, on a practical level, to have devalued its observance as a feast of the magnitude of Easter and Christmas, which it is. To me, having the Easter cycle begin and end with an octave underscores the importance of the Easter season, as well as the day Pentecost, even more. Now, it just becomes another Sunday, slightly more festive because red, and not green, is worn. :bighanky:
 
I think the Vigil was meant to reinforce or underscore that Pentecost is not just another Sunday. Alas, I don’t think it worked. The only place I know of that celebrates it, is the local Benedictine abbey.

Incidentally on the Monastic Calendar, St. Benedict is a two-feast saint (March 21 and July 11).
 
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