June 4th is the great feast of Pentecost! We once again invoke the Holy Spirit by praying “O Heavenly King…”. We stopped this prayer at Pascha and have hungered in anticipation. We begin every Liturgy – apart from this 50-day period – with this prayer and we specifically pray to the Holy Spirt in every Liturgy. Including the 25 times we pray in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, we pray to Him a total of 45 times in each Liturgy.

Since Pascha we have not knelt – we will soon make up for this a little when we pray the kneeling prayers for Pentecost at the end of today’s Liturgy. These 3 long kneeling prayers come to us from St. Basil the great, in the fourth century, and we only get to say them at this Pentecost service once a year.

Excerpt from St. Aidan June Newsletter