Feast of Pentecost
Acts 2:1-11; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13; John 20:19-23
Pentecost, the feast celebrated on this weekend, is the greatest day of the church’s year, save for Easter and Christmas. It is interesting in this sense; it is the only ancient Jewish feast still observed by the church.
In the beginning, Christians almost invariably were of Jewish origins. Quite early in Christian history, the apostles themselves took the Gospels far and wide. As a result of these missionary efforts, many came into the church who were not of Jewish backgrounds.
When the church was born, a series of political upheavals were causing great stresses in traditional Judaism.
All these developments meant that the attention that once would have been paid to Jewish feasts, just as the Lord observed these feasts, faded and eventually ended altogether. Pentecost is the lone exception.
For Jews, Pentecost celebrates the divine bringing together of them as a people. In this act of God, more than just ethnic or genetic unity was achieved. They were unified as a people in their mission to be true to God and to profess God before all the nations.
Christians see Pentecost as their holy day, recalling the moment when God the Holy Spirit vivified the apostles. Receiving strength and power from the Holy Spirit, the apostles then went forward to proclaim salvation in Christ to the entire world.
They formed the church founded by Jesus. They took the church, and the Gospel, to the world. The church grew, always as a community.
The first reading recalls this process. The apostles continued the Lord’s work. Through them, the Lord lived anew.
For the second reading, the church presents a passage from First Corinthians. Absolute faith in Christ, as God, and as Savior, is key. Without grace that accompanies this absolute commitment, and indeed enables faith, humans are confused and liable to fatal misstep.
St. John’s Gospel is the source of the last reading, a Resurrection narrative. The risen Lord appears before the apostles. As God, possessing the Holy Spirit, Jesus gives the apostles the power to forgive sins, extraordinary because only God can forgive sins.
Reflection
For weeks, the church rejoiced in the Resurrection, excitedly proclaiming that Jesus is Lord, and that Jesus lives!
As this season has progressed, the church, through the readings at Mass, also called us to realize what effect the Resurrection has upon us and upon human history. The salvation achieved by Christ on Calvary never will end. It is for all time and for all people. Mercy and justice will reign supreme.
How will this be accomplished? It will be accomplished by the Lord’s disciples in every consecutive age.
Bound together by completely free and uncompromised individual decisions to follow Christ, true Christians are united in the church. They share their identity with Christ and the grace of the spirit. As Acts reveals, they are part of the community still gathered around the apostles, under the leadership of Peter, and still looking to the apostles for guidance and direction. Thus, in the church, salvation and hope live, and Jesus lives.
Practically speaking, Christians, however zealous, cannot be ships passing each other silently in the night. They bear together the mission to bring God’s mercy and wisdom to the world. Christians. They belong to, and are one in, the church. They need each other.
At this feast, the church’s lesson therefore is very contemporary, very immediate and very personal.
We all belong, as did the first Christians, to an apostolic church, a community created by God to bring divine mercy to weary and wandering humans.