Pentecost is a Christian holiday which takes place on the 50th day after Easter Sunday. It commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Mary, mother of Jesus and the Apostles of Jesus while they were in Jerusalem celebrating the Feast of Weeks, as described in the Acts of the Apostles. While the Catholic Church believes the Holy Spirit descended upon Mary, this is not recorded in the New Testament.
A Paschal candle is a large, white candle used in liturgies in Western Christianity. A new Paschal candle is blessed and lit every year at Easter, and is used throughout the Paschal season which is during Easter and then throughout the year on special occasions, such as baptisms and funerals.
An agape feast or lovefeast is a term used for various communal meals shared among Christians. The name comes from the Greek word ἀγάπη (agape), which implies love in the sense of brotherly or familial affection.
Holy Week is the most sacred week in the liturgical year in Christianity. For all Christian traditions, it is a moveable observance. In Eastern Christianity, which also calls it Great Week, it is the week following Great Lent and Lazarus Saturday, starting on the evening of Palm Sunday and concluding on the evening of Great Saturday. In Western Christianity, Holy Week is the sixth and last week of Lent, beginning with Palm Sunday and concluding on Holy Saturday.
Holy Saturday, also known as Great and Holy Saturday, Low Saturday, the Great Sabbath, Hallelujah Saturday, Saturday of the Glory, Sábado de Gloria, and Black Saturday or Easter Eve, and called "Joyous Saturday", "the Saturday of Light", and "Mega Sabbatun" among Coptic Christians, is the final day of Holy Week, between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, when Christians prepare for the latter.
The Paschal Triduum or Easter Triduum, Holy Triduum, or the Three Days, is the period of three days that begins with the liturgy on the evening of Maundy Thursday, reaches its high point in the Easter Vigil, and closes with evening prayer on Easter Sunday. It is a moveable observance recalling the Passion, Crucifixion, Death, burial, and Resurrection of Jesus, as portrayed in the canonical Gospels.
A church service is a formalized period of Christian communal worship, often held in a church building. It often but not exclusively occurs on Sunday, or Saturday in the case of those churches practicing seventh-day Sabbatarianism. The church service is the gathering together of Christians to be taught the "Word of God" and encouraged in their faith. Technically, the "church" in "church service" refers to the gathering of the faithful rather than to the building in which it takes place. In most Christian traditions, services are presided over by clergy wherever possible. Styles of service vary greatly, from the Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Reformed, Roman Catholic, and Lutheran traditions of liturgical worship to informal worship characterized by certain free church traditions, common among Methodists and Baptists, that often combine worship with teaching for the believers, which may also have an evangelistic component appealing to backsliders and the non-Christians in the congregation. Quakers and some other groups have no formal outline to their services, but allow the worship to develop as the participants present feel moved. Most Christian denominations hold church services on the Lord's Day ; a number of traditions have mid-week Wednesday evening services as well. In some Christian denominations, church services are held daily, with these including those in which the seven canonical hours are prayed, as well as the offering of the Mass, among other forms of worship. In addition to this, many Christians attend services on holy days such as Christmas, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, Ascension Thursday, among others depending on the Christian denomination.
Old Salem is a historic district of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United States, which was originally settled by the Moravian community in 1766. It features a living-history museum which interprets the restored Moravian community. The non-profit organization began its work in 1950, although some private residents had restored buildings earlier. As the Old Salem Historic District, it was declared a National Historic Landmark (NHL) in 1966, and expanded fifty years later. The district showcases the culture of the Moravian settlement in the Province of North Carolina during the colonial 18th century and post-statehood 19th century via its communal buildings, churches, houses and shops.
The Feast of the Ascension of Jesus Christ commemorates the Christian belief of the bodily Ascension of Jesus into Heaven. It is one of the ecumenical feasts of Christian churches, ranking with the feasts of the Passion and Pentecost. Following the account of Acts 1:3 that the risen Jesus appeared for 40 days prior to his Ascension, Ascension Day is traditionally celebrated on a Thursday, the fortieth day of Easter, although some Christian denominations have moved the observance to the following Sunday, sometimes called Ascension Sunday. The day of observance varies by ecclesiastical province in many Christian denominations, as with Methodists and Catholics, for example.
The Easter Vigil, also called the Paschal Vigil, the Great Vigil of Easter, or Holy Saturday in the Easter Vigil on the Holy Night of Easter is a liturgy held in traditional Christian churches as the first official celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus. Historically, it is during this liturgy that people are baptized and that adult catechumens are received into full communion with the Church. It is held in the hours of darkness between sunset on Holy Saturday and sunrise on Easter Day – most commonly in the evening of Holy Saturday or midnight – and is the first celebration of Easter, days traditionally being considered to begin at sunset.
God's Acre is a churchyard, specifically the burial ground. The word comes from the German word Gottesacker, an ancient designation for a burial ground. The use of "Acre" is related to, but not derived from the unit of measurement and can be of any size. In the early 17th century the term was used as a translation of the German, but by the end of the century, it was accepted as an English term.
In Christian liturgy, a vigil is, in origin, a religious service held during the night leading to a Sunday or other feastday. The Latin term vigilia, from which the word is derived meant a watch night, not necessarily in a military context, and generally reckoned as a fourth part of the night from sunset to sunrise. The four watches or vigils were of varying length in line with the seasonal variation of the length of the night.
The Moravian musical tradition in United States began with the earliest Moravian settlers in the first half of the 18th century.
These Moravians were members of a well-established church – officially called Unitas Fratrum or Unity of Brethren – that by [the mid-18th century] had already seen almost three centuries of rich experience of religious life. They were spiritual descendants of the Czech priest Jan Hus, who for his attempts at reform was martyred in 1415. Forty-two years later in 1457, some of his followers founded a church body consecrated to following Christ in simplicity and dedicated living.
This newly constituted church developed a rich and orderly ecclesiastical life in the 15th and 16th centuries, but in the Thirty Years War of 1618-48 it was virtually wiped out. In the 1720s a few exiles of this religious heritage, along with various other seekers after truth, found refuge on an estate of a Saxon nobleman named Nicholaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf. There in their village of Herrnhut the ancient church experienced a rebirth culminating in a spiritual blessing on August 13, 1727, in which their former diversity of purpose was welded into one.
In a brief five years, by 1732, that first little village of the Renewed Moravian Church began sending missionaries to all corners of the world. After establishing work in England, the Moravians sent colonists to America in 1735. The initial settlement in Georgia proved unsuccessful, partly because of war between Protestant England and Catholic Spain to the south in Florida. More permanent work was established in Pennsylvania in 1741, with the town of Bethlehem as their chief center. Other settlements in Pennsylvania followed. The Moravians purchased 100,000 acres in North Carolina and settled at Bethabara in 1753 with the central town of Salem being founded in 1766.” [Villages of the Lord]
Eastern Orthodox worship in this article is distinguished from Eastern Orthodox prayer in that 'worship' refers to the activity of the Christian Church as a body offering up prayers to God while 'prayer' refers to the individual devotional traditions of the Orthodox.
The Moravian Church of the British Province is part of the worldwide Moravian Church Unity. The Moravian Church in Britain has bishops in apostolic succession.
A watchnight service is a late-night Christian church service. In many different Christian traditions, such as those of Moravians, Methodists, Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans, Baptists, Adventists and Reformed Christians, watchnight services are held late on New Year's Eve, which is the seventh day of Christmastide. This provides the opportunity for Christians to review the year that has passed and make confession, and then prepare for the year ahead by praying and resolving. The services often include singing, praying, exhorting, preaching, and Holy Communion.
The liturgical reforms of Pope Pius XII took place mostly between 1947 and 1958.
Lent is the solemn Christian religious observance in the liturgical year commemorating the 40 days Jesus spent fasting in the desert and enduring temptation by Satan, according to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, before beginning his public ministry. Lent is usually observed in the Catholic, Lutheran, Moravian, Anglican, United Protestant and Orthodox Christian traditions, among others. Some Anabaptist, Baptist, Methodist, Reformed, and nondenominational Christian churches also observe Lent, although many churches in these traditions do not.
Fulneck Moravian Church and its associated settlement were established on the Fulneck estate, Pudsey, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, in 1744 by Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, a Moravian Bishop and Lutheran priest, following a donation of land by the evangelical Anglican clergyman, Benjamin Ingham. Fulneck is now part of the City of Leeds, West Yorkshire.
God's Acre Cemetery is a cemetery for the Moravian congregation in Old Salem, North Carolina. It is located around 100 yards (91 m) north of the town's Home Moravian Church and also serves the thirteen member churches of Salem's congregation: Ardmore, Bethesda, Calvary, Christ, Fairview, Fires, Home, Immanuel New Eden, Konnoak Hills, Messiah, Pine Chapel, St Philips and Trinity. St Philips has a second cemetery in the northeastern corner of the adjacent Salem Cemetery.
