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.

6159. 'And for your food, and for those in your households' means so that the good of truth may therefore be present in every single part. This is clear from the meaning of 'food' as the good of truth, dealt with in 5410, 5426, 5487, 5582, 5588, 5655, and from the meaning of 'those who are in households' as every single instance of good derived from truth, so that 'for food for those in your households' is the good of truth in every single part. What is really meant by this - by the statement that the good of truth may be present in every single part - is this: As a person undergoes regeneration, good instills itself into every single part of him, for it then comes about that an affection for good reigns throughout the whole of him. And what reigns throughout the whole reigns in each individual or every single part. This may be recognized from the dominant affection in any person. That affection, whatever it may be, is present in every individual part of his will, and also in every individual part of his thought. Even though it does not seem to be present always in his thought, it is nevertheless there. It does not seem to be there because at such moments it is covered over by other affections that circumstances introduce; but as those affections are stripped away, so the dominant affection comes into view.

[2] There is no better way to demonstrate this than by reference to spirits and angels. Spirits who are evil, that is, ones in whom evil has dominion, are evil in every single part. They are such even when they utter what is true or perform a good action, for in doing so they have nothing else in mind than to deceive others into thinking that they are in fact good spirits, and so to mislead them by an outward appearance of goodness. When they are doing this it can be clearly detected simply from the sound of their voice, and one can also detect it in the sphere emanating from them. Angels in heaven, in whom good has dominion, that is, reigns throughout, are good in every single part. That is, good from the Lord shines out of every single aspect of them. Even if they do something evil to outward appearance, their end or intention nevertheless is that good may be the outcome. From all this it may be seen that where good reigns throughout the whole, it does so in every single part; and the same holds true where evil reigns. For a reigning throughout the whole first begins when every single part is good or evil; and the essential nature and the number of those parts determines the nature of the whole. For what is called the whole is such by virtue of its existence in each separate part .