If you were to rank your "favorite" days of the entire year, how would you do it? Some of you would probably put Christmas first: great presents, no school, Jesus' birthday, etc. The first day of summer vacation would certainly get a lot of votes. Your own birthday would have to be on the list.

Your own personal list may actually include some of the most important church feasts of the year. For example, in a strictly religious sense, the feast of the Nativity, Christmas, is certainly one of the central Christian feast days.

However, if you ranked the feast days in order, Easter would have the most importance. Easter is the day that gives meaning to our faith and distinguishes it from all others. The great joy of Jesus' resurrection translates into the possibility that we, too, will have eternal life. As St. Paul writes, "If Christ has not been raised, then empty is our preaching: empty, too, your faith" (1 Cor 15:14). In other words, your faith is worthless unless you believe Jesus is risen!

What about the second most important feast day? Again, Christmas doesn't necessarily fit in here. Rather, the second most important church feast day is Pentecost. St. John Chrysostom said in the fifth century about Pentecost: "Today we have arrived at the peak of all blessings, we have reached the capital of feasts, we have obtained the very fruit of the Lord's promise."

It was on Pentecost that the Holy Spirit, promised by Jesus, first came to the disciples. It is the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Blessed Trinity and truly God, that helped the early Christians to fearlessly preach the good news.Remember, prior to Jesus' death Peter and the other disciples were quavering in fear; Peter denied that he even knew Jesus. When the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples in the form of wind and fire as they hid in the upper room (the place of the last supper), they were changed into courageous souls who preached the good news strongly, and eventually were put to death for their faith just as Jesus was.

Pentecost is a Greek word that means "fiftieth day." It is celebrated fifty days after Easter. You can relate the root of the word, "pent," to other words you know that have to do with five of fifty, for example, "pentagon." The Jews also marked the fiftieth day after Passover with a feast called the "Feast of the First Fruits" or the "Feast of Weeks." It was for this reason Jews from all over the Roman empire had gathered in Jerusalem, eventually to hear Peter's bold testimony about Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles (2:41) reports that about three thousand persons were baptized on that day.

Pentecost is often known as the "birthday" of the church because it was on this day that God's final convenant with humankind was complete. (A covenant is an agreement between two parties.) Through the coming of the Holy Spirit, the first Christians could look back on the events in the life of Jesus with new insight and see how they fit in with all that had been foretold by the prophets of the Old Testament. Stamped with the Spirit's approval, so to speak, they could now preach confidently that "Jesus is Lord!" and that Jesus was equal with the Father, true God from true God.