Pentecost Sunday Year C
First Reading: Acts 2:1-11
Second Reading: Romans 8:8-17
Gospel: John 20:19-23
Today is the solemnity of Pentecost. The word Pentecost is Greek and means 50th. It is the 50th day after the Lord’s resurrection and marks the end of the Easter season. Pentecost was one of the three great Jewish feasts for which many Israelites from all over the world went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Pentecost was celebrated on the 50th day after the Passover. It was an agricultural festival during which farmers bring the first fruits of the harvest and offer it to God; as a sign of thanksgiving and as a prayer for greater harvest. This Israelite harvest ritual celebrated so joyously became, by God’s providence, the symbol of the spiritual harvest which the Apostles began to reap on this day.
The descent of the Holy Spirit on the 50th day is very fitting for at least two reasons. First, it was a day people offered their firstfruits to God in worship. When people offer to God their first fruit, they consecrate the entire yield to God and acknowledge that they are all a gift from God. Paul in his Letter to the Romans chapter 8 developed this ritual into a beautiful theology where the Holy Spirit is the firstfruits God gives his people as a pledge of total belonging and therefore future salvation.
Secondly, Pentecost, like Passover was not simply an agricultural festival. Both awakened echoes of the greatest moments of their history. Passover celebrates the saving action of God from slavery in Egypt when the angel of the Lord slew the first-born son of the Egyptians and the Exodus from Egypt. 50 days after the Passover, the people of Israel came to Mt. Sinai. It was at Sinai that Israel entered into covenant with God and with one another and became the people of God. God said, ‘and you shall be my special possession, you shall be to me a priestly kingdom, and a holy nation’ (Exodus 19: 5-6). At Sinai, God gave His people the 10 commandments as a guide to show them how to relate with Him and with one another. So, the Pentecost or the 50th day was not just about offering firstfruits to God but also about God entering into covenant with His redeemed people and giving them a norm of life, a new way of life. We all know that it did not work out well. Israel was hardly faithful to the covenant.
Exodus 19 tells us that thunder was heard and all Mount Sinai was on a smoke because the Lord came down upon it in fire as out of a furnace. The image of the mighty wind rushing through the house and the fire coming to rest on each person present describe the divine identity of the Spirit who descends in the manner the Lord God did at Sinai. Wind and fire were elements which typically accompanied manifestations of God in the Old Testament. Fire also has a purifying effect and so describes God’s action of cleansing the soul of all trace of sin. It also describes the newness that the Spirit brings about. The Spirit comes to renew the face of the earth and to do something new in the lives of individuals and communities.
Genesis chapter 11 had presented the multiplicity of human language and the fragmentation of unity as the consequence of sin. Humanity out of pride set out to guarantee their security by attempting to reach heaven by their own effort and perhaps dominate God. This event took place at Babel. Pentecost becomes a reversal or a healing of this event. Jerusalem becomes the opposite of Babel, the city the prophets said, all the nations will flock (Isaiah 2: 2-3), a prophesy that finds its ultimate fulfilment in the Church, the new Jerusalem where men and women of all nations, races and tongues come together in one faith and love.
Before the Pentecost, the disciples locked themselves up a room, afraid and without any plan for the future. But when the Holy Spirit came upon them, filled with courage, they set out as witnesses to convert the world. They overcame the prejudices and barriers that separated men and women from one another. They spoke to foreigners and established contact with people with whom until now, they had nothing in common. They forgave one another and saw each other as brothers and sisters. They stopped speaking against each other and began to speak with one another and to praise God with one voice – fruits of the Holy Spirit in action.
In the Gospel, Jesus breathed on His disciples and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” By breathing on His disciples, Jesus imitates the creating action of God, who at creation, “formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being” (cf. Genesis 2:7). With his gesture Jesus indicates that the Holy Spirit is the divine breath that gives life to the new creation as He gave life to the first creation. The responsorial psalm highlights the creative and renewing action of the Holy Spirit; “Send forth your Spirit, and they shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth.” Pentecost invites us to seek out and open up to God those areas of our lives; in our homes, in our community life, in our workplace or business, or our relationships where the Spirit of God can come in and do something new. It is He who renews the human person and as Paul says in the second reading, makes us children of God capable of works that please God.
Happy feast of Pentecost.
Rev Fr Chidi Onwuka M,Ss.Cc