Commentaria in Leviticum
Fifthly, because immediately from this its institution the Christian pentecost began to be kept by Christians, as I shall presently show: therefore Luke treats of it, not of the Jewish.
The foundation of all these things is that Christ by the new law willed to abolish the old law with its sacred rites and feasts, and to substitute new and Christian ones in their place. Hence he willed that the first Christian pentecost should follow on the next day after the Jewish, when he himself would institute and ordain the new one. For on the first pentecost, namely the fiftieth day from the resurrection of Christ, he sent the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles, and by them on the same day promulgated his evangelical law, that, namely, the law of Moses being now abolished, the evangelical law should from then on be accepted and kept by all. Wherefore then likewise, the pasch, pentecost and other feasts of the Jews being abolished, he tacitly instituted his own pasch, pentecost and feasts, and soon after willed that the same should be ordained and established everywhere in the world by the Apostles, particularly and expressly.
Moreover, that Christians from the very beginning, namely from this first Christian pentecost, began every year to keep and name it, not the Jewish one, as Luke here names it, saying: “When the days of pentecost were accomplished,” is proved: first, because on this first pentecost the abrogation of the old law and of all its sacred rites and feasts took place, and the public promulgation of the new law and its sacred rites, and consequently of its feasts: therefore the Apostles and Christians, obeying this promulgation, thereafter kept the pasch and pentecost Christian, not Jewish; for otherwise they would have sinned against the Evangelical law. In like manner, in the same year in which on the fiftieth day from the pasch the law was first given by God to the Hebrews on Sinai, by the command of God set forth in this place of Leviticus, pentecost was ordained and thenceforth kept by the Jews. For this precept of this chapter was issued in the same year in which the law was given, as is plain from what was said on Exod. 19, at the beginning of the chapter, and from the preface to Leviticus. Secondly, because the Apostles, going to preach to the Gentiles, soon after their conversion instituted and handed on to them the sacred rites and feasts of Christ (for the Christian religion, like any other, cannot be without feasts and sacred rites); for they could not hand on to them the pasch and pentecost of the Jews. For so they would have compelled the Gentiles to judaize, and instead of Christianity would have handed on to them Judaism; which would have been a grievous sin, in direct conflict with their office, for which they were sent as envoys and legates by Christ. Again, who can doubt that the Apostles and first Christians, fervent with love of Christ, recalled by yearly memorial the day of his resurrection, ascension and the sending of the Holy Ghost, and his so great merits and benefits to the Church? They kept therefore the pasch and pentecost Christian, not Jewish. Thirdly, because the Apostles soon after the ascension of Christ changed the sabbath into the Lord’s day, and began to keep it in honour of the resurrection of Christ (for Christ rose on a Sunday): therefore much more did they at once transfer the pasch of Moses into the pasch of Christ, that is, into the Lord’s day; for the Christian pasch is properly the day of the resurrection of Christ, rather than the Lord’s day: if they transferred the pasch, therefore also pentecost; for this follows that, and is to be reckoned from it. The antecedent is proved first from Apoc. 1:10, where John says: “I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day”; therefore the Lord’s day, not the sabbath, was then kept by Christians. Secondly, the Apostle, 1 Cor. 16:2, commands collections of alms to be made “on the first day of the week,” that is, the first day of the week, namely the Lord’s day: therefore ecclesiastical assemblies were then held on the Lord’s day. Moreover the Apostle speaks of this day, not as new or lately instituted by himself, but as usual and celebrated among Christians: therefore long before Christians had begun to keep the Lord’s day in place of the sabbath; and the first Epistle to the Corinthians was written in the year of Christ 57, that is, 23 years after the death of Christ. Therefore soon after Christ Christians celebrated the Lord’s day in place of the sabbath. So also Acts 20:7, it is said that on the first day of the week, that is, the Lord’s day, Paul held a great assembly of Christians, in which, prolonging his discourse, he recalled to life the young man who fell asleep and fell down lifeless. Finally St. Paul inveighs against the new moon, the sabbath and the other Jewish feasts, Gal. 4:9, saying: “How turn you again to the weak and needy elements, which you desire to serve again? You observe days (Jewish),” and Coloss. 2:16: “Let no man therefore judge you in meat or in drink (from which the Jews by the law abstain), or in respect of a festival day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ.” Therefore he willed that not Jewish but Christian feasts be celebrated by Christians from the very beginning of Christianity. Finally, that the pasch was from the beginning transferred by the Apostles to the Lord’s day, and consequently pentecost also, is plain from the heresy of the Quartodecimans, who wished the pasch to be kept with the Jews on the fourteenth moon, or day of the first month, and not on the Lord’s day. These the Church condemned, and Pope Victor, defining from apostolic tradition that the pasch is to be celebrated by Christians not on the fourteenth moon, but on the Sunday following it, as Christians and the Apostles first celebrated it, Eusebius being witness, book 5 Hist. chap. 22. So also that the pasch is to be celebrated on the Lord’s day St. Peter taught at Rome, and that the same, received from him, St. Mark handed on to the Egyptians, Protherius testifies in Bede, book On the Reckoning of Time, chap. 12; and St. Ignatius, who lived in the time of the Apostles, epist. to the Magnesians, says, “the Lord’s day is to be kept, as the chief of days, and consecrated to the resurrection of the Lord.” And epist. to the Philippians: “If anyone,” he says, “celebrates the pasch with the Jews, he is a partaker with those who killed the Lord and his Apostles.” Since, therefore, it is established that the Christian pentecost was kept from the beginning by Christians, who can doubt that St. Luke speaks of it, not of the Jewish? Thus St. Luke, in naming pentecost, looks not only to the time at which he was himself writing this (for it is not doubtful that then the Christian pentecost, not the Jewish, was kept and named), but also properly looks to the very time in which these things which he writes and relates happened, as if he said: “When the day of pentecost was accomplished,” that is, the fiftieth day from the resurrection of Christ and the first Christian pasch, on which, in place of the old, the new pentecost was to be instituted and ordained by Christ, and so to be named, whose origin and institution I here relate, which was to be the beginning, exemplar and cause of the other following, and to give them its name, so that from it likewise it should be called pentecost, that is, the fiftieth day from the day of the resurrection of Christ. Finally, if anyone wholly wishes St. Luke to have looked also to the pentecost of the Jews, which then flourished and was in common use, I answer that this very thing can be admitted in this sense, as if St. Luke said: “While it was being accomplished,” that is, while on the previous day the pentecost of the Jews had been completed and passed, so that it was accomplished, that is, there began to be accomplished the pentecost of the Christians succeeding it. For the word “was accomplished,” so far as it looks to the pentecost of the Jews, is to be taken in the perfect act; but so far as it looks to the pentecost of Christians, in which it ends and terminates, it is to be taken in the act begun. For St. Luke hints at both and touches on them in passing, and therefore embraces and wraps both in one word; and this sense seems fuller, as if he said: “When the days of pentecost were accomplished,” as well of the old as of the new, so that the old being completed and passed on the previous day, the new began to be accomplished on the day after. For the old and the new pentecost were as it were one and the same; for that ended and passed into this, as the type ends and passes into the antitype, and is therefore reckoned one and the same with it. This is my opinion concerning pentecost, saving a better; for I do not see what can be said more probably or solidly. For what Gabriel Vasquez, part 3, tom. 3, disput. 172, chap. 12, with Radulphus and Ribera, takes as “from the morrow of the sabbath” exclusively, not inclusively, plainly conflicts with the reckoning of Moses and of all the Hebrews, as I showed a little before; and the phrase itself sufficiently hints it: “from the morrow.” For when we wish to describe a time exclusively, we are not wont to say: From the next day (for this itself is the exclusion of the preceding day), but, from such a day, e.g. the first, second, third, etc. The matter itself therefore teaches that the fifty days of pentecost were to be begun not exclusively from the first day of the pasch, but inclusively from the second day.