Feast of PENTECOST
Pentecost closes the Easter cycle and the liturgical year. Pentecost opens our time, the time lived in faith and for the Mission, in the Spirit of Jesus, awaiting fulfillment.
It is the celebration of something very intimate to our faith: faith in the presence of the Wind of God, which transforms human life, to make of humanity THE KINGDOM.
ACTS 2:1-11
All the disciples were together on the day of Pentecost. Suddenly, a sound from heaven like a strong wind, resounded throughout the house where they were. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire, which separated and came to rest on each one of them. All were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit enabled them.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem. When they heard this sound, they gathered in a large crowd, but they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language.
They were astounded and amazed, saying:
– “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Among us are Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—we hear them speaking about the mighty works of God in our own languages!”
The sound of a strong wind, tongues of fire over each one, speaking in various languages. All these are beautiful symbols of the presence of the Spirit, who is a wind of God, a fire of God, a universal Word. The community of those who follow Jesus, the entire community, men and women who had followed Jesus from Galilee to Calvary, filled with the Spirit of Jesus.
Luke has shown in the first chapter that Jesus “is not here.” The second chapter corrects this statement: Jesus “is,” because his Spirit is here. And this will be the profound argument of the entire book: the presence of the Spirit of Jesus in the community of those who have believed in Him.
1 CORINTHIANS 13:3-13
No one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit. There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. And there are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all people. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.
For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.
A simple and profound text: faith in Jesus is already a work of the Spirit, that wind of God acting within us. Then, all the gifts of each one, their charisms in service to the community… But the soul of all this is the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of sonship, the wind of the Father, the one who acted in Jesus and now acts in the community of believers. And it does not matter whether they are Jews or not: the Spirit has blown on all, from that Water we have all drunk.
In Paul’s comparison, the Church is like a body: we are all members, we all have a function: Jesus is the Head (or the heart, it is the same). And in each member the Spirit acts for the good of the whole Body. The Spirit of God in the Church is like the soul in a body: it animates it, it makes it alive. The Church has a new life, the one given by the new soul, the Spirit of Jesus.
This, therefore, is the New Creation. Paul presents Jesus as “the new man,” the Firstborn of the Sons. That is our Spirit. That is the “new man,” recreated in the image of the Son. That is the vocation of every human being.
José Enrique Galarreta, S.J.