When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.
They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.
ACTS 2:1-11
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.
They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken.
Utterly amazed, they asked: “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”
Luke’s text marks the beginning of the “explosion of the church.” Until this moment, the community of believers in Jesus had been focused on itself, preserving the memory of the Lord. Now it is about to become a missionary community, by the power of the Spirit of Jesus.
The symbols are the least important: the wind, the tongues of fire, the gift of tongues, are the external signs that symbolize the presence of the spirit and the universality of the message. But the fact is certain: those few and timid followers of Jesus become apostles and prophets and set out to proclaim the Risen Jesus to the whole world.
The faith of the disciples suffered the tremendous challenge of the death on the cross, was resurrected in the paschal experience, and now reaches the fullness of its meaning: they become witnesses, missionaries, spreaders of the spirit of Jesus. This is what constitutes the birth of the church: not only that they believe in Jesus and keep his memory, but that they become witnesses, a living presence of the spirit of Jesus in the world.
It is necessary to remember who are the ones who receive the Spirit. The texts of Acts that refer to this are three. The first, the description of the first community immediately after the Ascension:
(C.1) 12 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey away. 13 And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. 14 All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.
The second, another description of the community that introduces the election of Matthias:
(C.1) 15 In those days Peter stood up among the brothers (the company of persons was in all about 120) and said:…
The third, the first line of the text we are commenting on today:
(C.2) 1 When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place.
A perverse distortion of these texts reduces the infusion of the Spirit to the Twelve, or, at most and by the work of pious painters, to the Twelve presided over by Mary, the mother of Jesus. A good example is the Apostolic Exhortation “Pastores Gregis” by John Paul II, October 16, 2003, in which, referring to the Bishops, he states:
The special outpouring of the Holy Spirit that the Apostles received through the action of the Risen Jesus (Acts 1:5,8; 2:4; Jn 20:22-23), they transmitted to their collaborators with the gesture of the laying on of hands (1 Tm 4:14; 2 Tm 1:6-7). These, in turn, with the same gesture, transmitted it to others and these to still others.
In this way, the spiritual gift from the beginnings has reached us through the imposition of hands, that is, episcopal consecration, which grants the fullness of the sacrament of order, the high priesthood, the entirety of the sacred ministry. Thus, through the Bishops and the priests who assist them, the Lord Jesus Christ, although seated at the right hand of God the Father, continues to be present among the believers.
The chosen texts are:
ACTS 1. 8 but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
John 20. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” |v22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit…
These texts are used by the author to avoid attributing the outpouring of the Spirit to the entire community and to make the hierarchy the sole recipient of the Spirit. Unfortunately, we are accustomed to these self-interested manipulations of the texts.
GALATIANS 5:16-25
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.
But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.
Paul indicates several themes of extreme importance in our spirituality: the antagonism between spirit and flesh, the antagonism between the Law and the Spirit, the fruits of the Spirit, living according to the Spirit. Let us detail them, as a summary of our faith and our way of living.
Paul uses the term “the flesh” in a similar way to how John uses the term “the world” or “the darkness,” although in a more interior sense. It refers to the opposition to the Spirit, the resistance to God, from within or outside the human being. We could speak of “sin,” in its most interior manifestation or in its social consequences.
“The flesh” is therefore what separates us from God. I believe we could speak correctly if we identified it with “original sin,” that which we feel within us as opposed to the action of God, to our own convenience, even to what we desire. Paul expresses it dramatically in Romans 7.
The reading of this text can be a beautiful source of meditation, applying it personally.
“For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, … it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rm 7:15-25)
This is possibly the best description of our human condition, and this is what makes us discover that the concept of sin-forgiveness that emerges from the Gospel, which we have often handled in our Reconciliation celebrations, is not simply an affirmation of the goodness of God, but a profound message about the psychology of sin.
Sin is the “force of gravity” that prevents us from moving towards God. Much more than guilt, it is a burden, a slavery, and therefore, rather than speaking of forgiveness, we must speak of liberation. That is why Jesus is called the Savior. Once again, the Gospel is not a thin veneer that is added to the human: it is taking the human being from the deepest part, as he is, and making it possible for him to orient himself towards God.
This is the first fruit of the Spirit of Jesus. Liberation: another beautiful image: prisoners of the flesh, prisoners of the earth, diminished, caged birds, made to fly, who wait to be carried away by the wind.
This is the Spirit, the Spirit of the Son, the Spirit of the children, the one who rescues us from the slavery of the earth and opens up for us the luminous horizon of the Children:
For Paul, life is a struggle between the flesh and the Spirit, between that “force of gravity” that pulls us down and the Wind of God that makes us rise, lets us be “animated” by that Breath.
Paul shows the opposition of the two lives: the life according to the flesh has been crucified: we do not dedicate ourselves to that, even though our flesh asks us to. To live in the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control…
All of which is far above the law, which only urges our external behaviors. It is a perfect summary of the essence of the gospel: to live as children/brothers, that is to be witnesses of Jesus.
José Enrique Galarreta