The Church celebrates the Pentecost today using the texts of
the Roman Catholic Lectionary. The Jewish celebration of Pentecost which the
Apostles join with Jews from other lands to celebrate in Jerusalem is a feast
of celebration of the first fruits of the harvest. It is a thanksgiving to God.
Our starting block for deepening our relationship with God is also
thanksgiving. The time of thanks described by Luke in the Acts of the Apostles
is disturbed by God with a Great Spirit or wind. (Friar Jude Winkler reminds us
that the Hebrew word for both is the same.) The event described by Luke has the
form of the fulfillment of the words of the Prophet Joel (Joel 2:28-32) from
800 years previous. The accounts of Luke in the Book of Acts and the Gospel of
John have different descriptions of the release of the Holy Spirit to the
Apostles. Friar Jude reminds us that John is a mystic to whom exact time and space
are not relevant and from whom the eternal timeless release of the “Peace with
us” empowers us to hear the reminder of the Holy Spirit of our relationship to Jesus
and the Father to incarnate Divine Life for the mission to forgive and welcome
others to search the intimacy of the Divine Life in their journey. The
historian Luke who also seeks to connect the followers of the Way with the
ancient tradition of the Jews shows us thanksgiving, a link to Joel’s fire, the
healing of the curse of Babel and the life and strength for the mission of Jesus
to continue to speak this truth to all the nations. Father Larry Gillick SJ
sees Pentecost in the light of the Life which is celebrated traditionally in
the harvest and which is experienced in a particular way today in the Northern Hemispheres
as the return of growth, green and, of course, dandelions. Our thanksgiving is
before our eyes. The fire of the Holy Spirit reminds us of our Life Giving
mission. Our peace is in the understanding of the forgiveness and intimacy to
which the Pentecost events invite us. Come Holy Spirit is the proclamation of
Life in our present and for our future!
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