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May 19, 2013 * No. 2060 * Pentecost - C

Announcements | On-going Activities | Newsbits | MTQ Bulletin Archives


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.






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