The Catechetical Review - Communicating Christ for a New Evangelization

The Feasts of Israel: Foreshadowing the Messiah Part II—The Fall Festivals

Authored by André Villeneuve in Issue #3.2 of Catechetical Review

In our first article on the Feasts of Israel, we saw how the four spring festivals of Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, and Weeks (Shavuot) foreshadow the mysteries of Christ’s First Coming, namely, his redemptive death, his sinlessness, his resurrection, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. In this second article, we will see how the fall feasts anticipate the events surrounding Christ’s Second Coming at the end of human history.[i] The Feasts of the Seventh Month Just as the Passover season in the first month (March-April) includes three distinct feasts, so the festive season of the seventh month (late September-October) includes three festivals: The Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles. These fall feasts differ from the spring festivals, however, in their messianic fulfillment. Whereas Passover, Unleavened Bread, and Firstfruits are fulfilled in Christ’s Paschal Mystery, and the Feast of Weeks in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, it would appear that the fall feasts have yet to be fulfilled. The Jewish calendar hints at this; while the spring feasts are only seven weeks apart, the fall feasts come much later in the year, after the dry summer months. This long, barren period between the spring and fall festivals foreshadows the history of the Church, whereby the spring feasts mark the initial stages of Christ’s work of redemption and the fall feasts its consummation. In other words, the fall feasts have an eschatological significance.

The rest of this online article is available for current subscribers.

Start your subscription today!


This article is from The Catechetical Review (Online Edition ISSN 2379-6324) and may be copied for catechetical purposes only. It may not be reprinted in another published work without the permission of The Catechetical Review by contacting [email protected]

Articles from the Most Recent Issue

The Spiritual Life— Being Reconciled with God
By Fr. Dominic Scotto, TOR
Christian writings between the apostolic age and the third century are extremely rare. At the turn of the first century AD, both Pope Clement of Rome and St. Ignatius of Antioch underscore the jurisdiction possessed by bishops over the forgiveness of sins. For most in those early years of Christianity, sin and repentance were simply accepted as a... Read more
Teaching Like Jesus: Using Parable to Explain the Faith
By Olivia Spears
My children love stories. Our days are dotted with stories from the Bible, lives of the saints, fairy tales, biographies, Shakespeare, literature, and history. They retell them to their dad around the dinner table, act them out in the backyard, and make connections between the story and their own lives, even weeks later. They ask to read beloved... Read more
“Porn Shows Not Too Much, but Too Little”: Pornography versus Theology of the Body
By Colin and Aimee MacIver
As tears filled his eyes and his voice broke, the 16-year-old sophomore told me, “I just can’t see her the way she deserves to be seen.” He meant his girlfriend, about whom he cared deeply. His compulsion to consume pornography was sabotaging his ability to love her. Once hidden and socially condemned, porn is now ubiquitous and normalized. The... Read more

Pages