St Peter’s Anglican Church

Ascension Day - May 9

Easter as a specific annual festival was celebrated, almost from the beginning, for a period of fifty days. This is attested by writers in the second century. The church marked this period by standing for prayer and by a prohibition of any fasting. It was like a fifty day Sunday. The first week of this Easter period had assumed some importance by the fourth century. The closing of the fifty days of celebration was marked with a feast by the end of the third century. There are various references to the observance of the Day of Pentecost from the early fourth century. By that time, any connection with the Jewish festival of Pentecost, as a celebration of the wheat harvest, had been lost. Later in the fourth century, Egeria tells of the celebrations in Jerusalem to mark the end of the Easter festivities. The account from the Acts of the Apostles of the day of Pentecost was read in the morning, and in the afternoon everyone went to the Mount of Olives, where the story of the ascension was read.