The Children of Israel were told to keep three feasts each year - the feast of unleavened bread, the feast of first fruits, and the feast of ingathering. Should we still do that?

In Exodus 23:14-16, Moses receives the instructions about these feasts. Those three verses in Exodus comprise our brief story. Their inner meaning is explained in Arcana Coelestia 9286-9296.

There are three feasts. In the Word, the number three represents a completeness, a sense of things being covered from beginning to end. Our thankfulness to the Lord is supposed to keep going - to endure.

The first feast, of unleavened bread, stands for worship, for our thankfulness for the Lord's action in our minds to get rid of false ideas. That enables us to start to receive good loves.

The second feast, of first fruits, relates to the planting of true ideas in that "soil" of initial loves for doing good.

The third feast, of harvest, or ingathering, stands for the time when, by applying our true ideas, we receive real good - loves of the neighbor and of the Lord - that become the middle of our lives. This is the state of rebirth, where we have - by working through the year (our lives), and enduring in thankfulness, allowed the Lord to get rid of our false ideas, and push our evil loves to the periphery, so that good can work, and be fruitful.

These feasts, then, represent the progress of our spiritual lives. In some manner, we need to keep them.

3735. 'And clothing to wear' means being joined to Divine Truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'clothing' as truth, dealt with in 1073, 2576, Divine Truth here since the Lord is the subject; and from the meaning of 'wearing' as making it one's own and being joined to it. As for the nature of the internal sense of the Word, that becomes clear from these and all other details; that is to say, when the sense of the letter refers to bread and to clothing, and also when it does so within historical narrative, as here in 'If God will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear', the angels present with a person at the time have no thought at all of bread but of the good of love, and in the highest sense, of the Lord's Divine Good. Nor do they have any thought at all of clothing but of truth, and in the highest sense, of the Lord's Divine Truth. To them such things as are referred to in the sense of the letter are simply objects for thought regarding heavenly and Divine matters, for such things are vessels existing in the ultimate degree of order.

[2] So when with holiness of mind a person thinks about bread - for example, when he thinks about the bread in the Holy Supper, or about the daily bread in the Lord's Prayer - that thought which he has about bread serves the angels present with him as an object for thought regarding the good of love which comes from the Lord. For the angels do not take hold of anything at all of the person's actual thought concerning bread, but instead their thought concerns good; for such is the correspondence between the two. It is similar when with holiness of mind a person thinks about clothing. The angels' thought in that case concerns truth. So it is with everything else in the Word. From this the nature of the joining together of heaven and earth by means of the Word becomes clear; that is to say, the joining together is such that when with holiness of mind anyone reads the Word he is joined by means of such correspondences more closely to heaven, and through heaven to the Lord, even though that person's thought is concerned solely with things in the Word which are stated in the sense of the letter. His holiness of mind at that time is the product of the influx of celestial and spiritual thoughts and affections such as exist with angels.

[3] So that such influx might exist and from that influx man might be joined to the Lord, the Lord has instituted the Holy Supper where it is explicitly stated that the Lord is the bread and wine. For the Lord's body means His Divine love, and the reciprocal love in man, love such as exists with celestial angels, while His blood in a similar way means His Divine love, and the reciprocal love in man, but love such as exists with spiritual angels. From this it is evident how much of the Divine there is within every individual part of the Word, though man does not know what that Divine content is or the nature of it. People however who, while in the world, have led a good life enter after death into cognitions and a perception of all those things, for at that time they cast off earthly and worldly things and take to themselves heavenly ones, and have, like angels, spiritual and celestial ideas.