Pentecost Sunday

Solemnity

Feast Day

May 24

The Solemnity of Pentecost falls fifty days after Easter Sunday and concludes the Easter season. It commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and the Blessed Virgin Mary gathered in the upper room at Jerusalem (Acts 2:1-13), the manifestation of the Church to the world, and the inauguration of the apostolic mission.

The name Pentecost (from the Greek pentekoste, fiftieth) is also the Greek title for the Jewish Feast of Weeks (Shavuot), seven weeks after Passover. The Christian feast is documented from the second century: Tertullian (De Baptismo 19) treats it as a major time for baptism, and Saint Augustine called it the most ancient feast of the Christian year apart from Easter itself.

The Roman Missal provides an Extended Vigil Mass of Pentecost, restored by the Congregation for Divine Worship in 1988, with multiple Old Testament readings recalling the gift of the Spirit at Sinai, on the dry bones (Ezekiel 37), and through the prophet Joel (Joel 3). The proper Sequence Veni, Sancte Spiritus, attributed to Stephen Langton (d. 1228) or to Pope Innocent III, is sung before the Gospel.

Pope Francis instituted the Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, for the Monday after Pentecost by decree of the Congregation for Divine Worship dated February 11, 2018. In 2026, Pentecost falls on May 24.