Acts 2:1-11; 1 Cor 12:3b–7, 12–13; Jn 20:19–23
Pentecost Day: Creating Unity through Love and Forgiveness
Two characteristics of Lucan narratives today (Acts 2:1-11) mark him out as a historian: his desire for chronology and detail. In the previous chapter (chapter 1), Luke underscores the fact that Jesus told the apostles not to leave Jerusalem before they had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Luke also added that Jesus appeared to his apostles for forty days before his ascension. Now, at the mention of Pentecost, it makes chronological sense to understand that on the fiftieth day after the resurrection of Jesus, it was Pentecost day, and the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples (Mary the mother of Jesus and other relatives and women were present with the apostles on Pentecost Day).
Pentecost, for the Jews, was the day they commemorated God’s giving of the Torah to the Jews through Moses. Therefore, Pentecost was a feast known to the Jews, and that feast must have been responsible for the gathering of so many Jews and converts to Judaism in Jerusalem on Pentecost Day. Indeed, when the Torah was given to Moses, it was accompanied by thunders and storms, as allusion to divine presence. The strong wind, the shaking of the house where the disciples were, and the tongues of flame descending on each apostle, must be symbolic of the Jewish belief about the event of the giving of the Torah on mount Sinai. Hence, their attention was drawn, almost automatically, to this new phenomenon – Pentecost!
There is more to the correspondence between the giving of the Torah and the giving of the Holy Spirit! Luke presents the phenomenon of the giving of the Spirit as one that empowered the apostles to preach in every language. In other words, Pentecost was a universal proclamation of the good news to all nations: all the nations and tribes of the world were symbolically present in Jerusalem at Pentecost, and they heard the marvels of God, the new Torah, in their respective languages. Consequently, God meets each person in his own native language and nation. The privilege of a unique language (Hebrew) in which God should be addressed and a unique race (Jews) as God’s exclusive people came to an end on Pentecost Day! God’s universalism and universality transcends all particularity and particularism!
The Lucan details of the event of Pentecost situate vividly the first manifest overtake of Jewish parochialism: not because God does not love the Jews, but because God has no favorites; humanity as a whole is God constituency! The Holy Spirit creates a new universal people for God on Pentecost Day. People who were not apostles received the Holy Spirit alongside the apostles! The languages considered condescending for prayers acquired divine prerogatives! God no longer respects man-made boundaries, he goes beyond frontiers, beyond Judaism!
At Pentecost, unlike some of Jesus’ appearances to the apostles when some were absent, everybody was present even non-apostles! Faithfulness to Jesus’ command to assemble and remain together until the coming of the Holy Spirit was respected, and to all who respected that instruction, the Holy Spirit was given. The birth of the One, Universal/Catholic, and Apostolic Church was inaugurated! There are no longer outsiders, but all are insiders: Jews or Gentiles, slave or free, male or female (1 Cor 12:13)
The Holy Spirit is at the origin of God’s new creation: the realization of God’s creation of one common humanity and family! The authorization of the Holy Spirit to preach in all languages the new humanity in Christ is to make known this realized project in Jesus Christ! The core of the Lucan gospel is the portrayal of Jesus as the Messiah sent by God to inaugurate God’s universal inclusivity and human redemption.
The many peoples and the different linguistic groups enumerated by our first reading today, from the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 2:1-11), tell us about diversity. This diversity was brought into unity through the Holy Spirit. Pentecost is the celebration of unity made possible through the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit! The people who spoke different languages understood one language spoken by the apostle Peter! The language of the gospel Peter preached went straight to the hearts and souls of his audience and brought about conversion! The so many people, from different nationalities gathered in Jerusalem on Pentecost day, were made members of the one Christian family by the Holy Spirit!
Pentecost is the creation of the one human family called Christianity. Christianity is the Body of Christ, made up of different peoples and linguistic groups. Just as a body without the soul or spirit is dead, so is a Christian without the Holy Spirit! Paul says, in our second reading today (1 Cor. 12:3-13), that there is one body – the Body of Christ – made up of Jews and Greeks, slaves and free persons. In other words, Christ is in every human being irrespective of their color, status, gender and language.
The language of Pentecost is love! Love is a universal language – everybody understands love, when they encounter it. Love is a language that goes straight to the heart and soul and transforms its recipients. Whether Pentecost is possible today depends on us – we all need to speak the language of love – no more discrimination on the basis of color, language, gender and status!
God demonstrates this love, not only in the universality created by his Holy Spirit at Pentecost, creating one humanity in the beauty of its multiplicities of genders and cultures and races, but also through the gift of forgiveness and the power to forgive sins entrusted to his Church in today’s gospel. Only the power of forgiveness can construct harmony out of differences. One doesn’t not need to be a priest in order to forgive sins. The little differences between couples or colleagues; the daily peccadillos and misplaced words and actions; the petty jealousies and rivalries; all these call for the spirit and action of forgiveness for humanity to survive and thrive together in peace. What an opportunity the feast of Pentecost is reminding us of the exercise of love through forgiveness just as God has loved and forgiven us in Christ, so we do the same for one another – to love and to forgive!
Assignment for the Week:
Seek out an enemy and be reconciled with him or her!