Pentecost is the longest season of the church year. Advent, as you know, is four Sundays, leading up to Christmas, and Christmastide lasts twelve days, from Christmas to Epiphany (that’s the “Twelve Days of Christmas” from the song). Then Epiphany is anywhere from four to seven weeks or thereabouts, ending with Ash Wednesday, which begins Lent. Lent is forty days—minus Sundays—and then Eastertide lasts from Easter to Pentecost Day, seven weeks. After Pentecost Day comes the Season of Pentecost, which runs all the way through the late spring, summer, and fall, until Advent begins again.

Christian theology is divided into a number of categories. There’s Christology, which is how we understand Jesus, who he was, what he came to do, his humanity and divinity, and so on. There’s Pneumatology, which is where we figure out who the Holy Spirit is, the Spirit’s place in the Godhead, what the Spirit’s role is in the church and the lives of individuals. There’s Anthropology, which is different from the academic study of human cultures; theological anthropology is about the nature of humanity, our goodness and badness, and how humans relate to God. There’s Soteriology, dealing with the question of salvation. There’s Eschatology, in which we try to figure out what will happen at the end of time, what the Second Coming of Christ will be like, the cosmic battle of good versus evil and how it will end.