The
Church is renewed every time we
are renewed in the Spirit of
that first
Pentecost
The
Jewish
people celebrated Pentecost for
centuries before it became the Feast
of
the Descent of the Holy Spirit. The
Jewish Pentecost was a celebration of
the
fiftieth day of Passover, a feast
requiring every Jewish man, woman and
child
to come to the Temple at Jerusalem.
This explains the large crowd present
there
fifty days after Jesus rose from the
dead. They used this time to
commemorate
the giving of the Ten Commandments of
the Law to Moses on top of Mount
Sinai. At
Sinai, God revealed himself in wind
and fire.
As
the people
are gathered there at the Temple the
Holy Spirit descends in the rushing of
wind with tongues of fire. People
begin to speak the same message in
many
different languages. This event
reminds us of the Tower of Babel in
Chapter 11 of
Genesis, when God scattered his people
all over the earth and confused their
language. What was scattered because
of man’s sinfulness is now reunited
thanks
to the Spirit of God. What was lost at
Babel by the descendants of Adam and
Eve
is restored by Jesus, the new Adam,
born of Mary, the new Eve.
In
John’s
Gospel, Jesus appears in the Upper
Room on that first Easter night,
breathing his spirit on his Apostles
and saying, Peace be with you. In that
moment, Jesus takes away their fears
that his body may have been stolen,
and he
assures them that he is both risen and
glorified. This event also draws our
minds back to the Book of Genesis
(2:7) where God created Adam. The
first man
did not have life until God breathed
his Spirit into his nostrils. In the
Upper
Room on Mount Zion, the Apostles had
long since been charged with the task
of
preaching and building up God’s
Kingdom, but they did not have the
life-giving capability
of fulfilling this mission until Jesus
breathed his God-given power upon
them.
Just
as
God created Adam and gave him life,
so, too, Christ, who is God, created
the Church
and gives it the Holy Spirit who
guides her and protects her. Adam was
created
to know, love and serve God. He
disobeyed and became a mere mortal.
The Church
was instituted by God to help all men
to pick up where Adam left off–to make
God known, loved and served by all. In
as much as she obeys this great
commission,
the Church leads men back to
immortality. In our Creed, we profess
faith in the
Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of
life. Life is what the Holy Spirit has
given to the Church, and through
Baptism and Confirmation, this same
gift is
given to all who believe.
The
mistake
of the believers at Babel is that they
wanted to make their own path to
heaven. They felt they did not need
God in order to get there. Babel was a
tower built on pride, not on the firm
foundations of faith. At Pentecost,
God comes
down to us in the Holy Spirit, calling
all people to a new way of life.
Beginning on that first Pentecost,
hundreds of new disciples, our first
Christian
ancestors, began to live according to
the Spirit of God, using the gifts
bestowed upon them, living in charity,
joy, peace, patience, goodness, faith,
mildness
and temperance, replacing their former
ways of selfishness.
Jesus
said
at Easter, as the Father has sent me,
so I send you. In word, wind and
fire, as in the Body and Blood, Jesus
gives us his Holy Spirit once again,
renewing in us that same command he
once gave to his first disciples, that
we
go out to all the world and make
disciples of all. Today, we say with
believers
throughout time, veni, sancte
spiritus, Come, Holy Spirit, come into
our
hearts, come into our parishes, come
into our homes, and renew the face of
the
earth.
