I love Pentecost!

Happy birthday, Church!

by Teresa R. Albright, Pastoral Associate

 scriptural Background (Acts 2:1-11)

Our first reading on the feast of Pentecost, as are all first readings during the Easter season, comes to us from the Acts of the Apostles. This book is Volume II of the gospel according to Luke, which was written down around the same time as Matthew’s gospel. While Matthew wrote to Jewish followers of Christ and others sympathetic to Judaism, Luke’s audience was primarily made up of “God-fearing” gentiles. And so, in this second chapter of his Acts of the Apostles, Luke attempts to paint a picture for his gentile listeners of the pandemonium that is Jerusalem during a pilgrimage festival like Pentecost.

Pentecost is the Greek name for the Jewish holidaycalled Shavuot, which continues to be celebrated by Jews around the world today. Like all ancient pilgrimage festivals, Pentecost celebrates the harvest. A multitude of pilgrims from all over the world, with all their cultural and linguistic particularities, descend on Jerusalem to offer the first fruits of the earth in thanksgiving for God’s sustaining gifts.

Regarding its religious significance in Jewish tradition, Pentecost/Shavuot also commemorates the descent of the Torah atop Mt. Sinai and the giving of the Ten Commandments to Moses. This moment in Jewish history is also remembered as the moment that the Hebrew refugees from slavery became a people in covenantal relationship with God.

For us Christians living 2,000 years after the actions of the apostles, the feast of Pentecost commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon them and is the impetus for spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ. This moment in Christian history is remembered as the “birth of the Church.”

 

A POEM FOR PENTECOST

I love the images of Pentecost!

Friends becoming family through shared travels and travails – “gathered together in one place.”   

A shapeless noise like a “strong driving wind” – the power of something invisible filling a space.

Tongues like fire – resting without scalding.

A descending dove – singular but not solitary.  

Centuries-old paintings come to mind – the balance of each composition hinging on the Blessed Virgin.

 

I love the ideas of Pentecost!

The descent of God’s Spirit – and our ascent to the mind of God.

Barriers of language and landscape – broken and remade.

Barriers of distinction transformed into all “different kinds of spiritual gifts.”

Different ways of giving – and different ways of living.

Unity in diversity – the corrective experience of Babel.

The covenantal cooperation between a People and their God.

 

portalS to prayer

·         Responsorial Psalm: “Lord, send down your spirit and renew the face of the earth!” (Psalm 104)

·         Gospel Antiphon: “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love.”

·         “The source of truth is found not in ‘a process forever unfolded in the heart of man’ but in unique events that happened at particular moments in history. There are no substitutes for revelation, for prophetic events.” (Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man)

 


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