Pentecost Sunday [A]

May 31, 2020

John 20:19-23

“Happy Birthday!” today is the feast of Pentecost, and today is the birth of the Church. We should rejoice because our Church is getting older by age, but getting ever stronger by vitality and creativity in preaching the Good News. Yet, the question is why we celebrate the birthday of the Church on the Pentecost Sunday?

To answer this, we need to understand the biblical meaning of the celebration of Pentecost and what took place to the disciples on the day the Holy Spirit descended upon them. The word Pentecost means the fiftieth, and the feast of Pentecost takes place on the fiftieth day after Sunday Easter. However, the Christian feast itself is originally a Jewish religious festival: the feast of Shavuot or the Feast of Weeks. The feast took place seven weeks after the grand celebration of the Passover. Together with Passover and the Feast of Tabernacle (Booths), Pentecost are the major pilgrimage festivals that require any male Jews to make their way to Jerusalem. Initially, the feast is agricultural in nature. The people of Israel gave thanks for the successful harvests and offered the fruits of their harvest to the Lord. Yet, it also gained a religious meaning. In the feast of Shavuot, the Israelites commemorate the giving of the Law and the making of the covenant with the Lord God in Mount Sinai.

This explains why many people from different nations gathered in around the place of the disciples: they were pilgrims of Pentecost. This answers a more fundamental question about the identity of the Holy Spirit: Why did the Holy Spirit have to present Himself as fire, and no other image like a dove? If we go back to the Sinaitic event itself, we are going to find something remarkable. When God made His covenant and handed down His Law, He appeared Himself to entire Israel as fire [see Exo 19:18]. The Holy Spirit appeared in fire simply because He was the same God who manifested Himself in Sinai. The Pentecost Sunday reveals the fundamental truth about the Holy Spirit that the promised Paraclete is divine.

In Sinai, the Israelites received the Law and entered into a covenant with the Lord. God embraced them and made them “a priestly kingdom and a holy nation [see Exo 19:6]. Israelites became a nation that belongs to God. In the new Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples and instilled in them the New Law of Love. He fashioned them to be new People of God [see Pet 2:9]. The new community of God’s family has been born!

Yet, these new people are even greater. The Holy Spirit empowered the disciples to preach the Good News to people from different nations and languages. The Pentecost reversed the negative effect of the tower of Babel [see Gen 11:1-9]. When people were so proud of themselves and tried to become like God with their power, different languages turned out to be a curse that divides them. Yet, with the Holy Spirit that transformed the hearts and instilled humility, languages become a blessing that unites the different people.

We thank the Holy Spirit that gave birth to the Church. We give thanks to the Holy Spirit that has called us to part of the new people of God.

Valentinus Bayuhadi Ruseno, OP