Dear Parish Family,    
 
   Both the Jews and the Christians now celebrate Pentecost, though not for the same reasons.  Along with the Feast of the Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles, Pentecost was one of the major feasts of the Chosen People. The word Pentecost is Greek for pentecostes which means “fiftieth.” The feast received this name because it was celebrated fifty days after the Feast of the Passover. Originally, this feast was a thanksgiving festival for the completion of the harvest.  During Passover, the first omer (a Hebrew measure of about a bushel), of barley was offered to God.  At Pentecost, two loaves of bread were offered in gratitude for the harvest.  Later, the Jews added to the Feast of Pentecost the element of Yahweh’s Covenant with Noah, which took place fifty days after the great deluge.  Still later, they made this feast an occasion to thank God for His Covenant with Moses on Mount Sinai, which occurred fifty days after the beginning of the Exodus from Egypt.

For Christians, Pentecost marks the end and the goal of the Easter season. It is a memorial of the day the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles and the Virgin Mary in the form of fiery tongues, an event that took place fifty days after the Resurrection of Jesus.  The Paschal mystery — the Passion, the Death, the Resurrection, and the Ascension of Jesus — culminates in the sending of the Holy Spirit by the Father (at the request of His Son), on Jesus’ disciples. The feast also commemorates the official inauguration of the Christian Church with the apostolic preaching of St. Peter, which resulted in the conversion of 3000 Jews to the Christian Faith.  Pentecost is, thus, the official birthday of the Church. Today’s Scripture readings remind us that Pentecost is an event of both the past and the present. The main theme of today’s readings is that the gift of the Holy Spirit is something to be shared with others. In other words, the readings remind us that the gift of the Holy Spirit moves its recipients to action and inspires them to share this gift with others.

Today’s Gospel passage also tells us how Jesus gave to the Apostles the power and authority to forgive sins. His, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” was immediately followed by, “For those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain, they are retained.”  These wonderful words, which bind together inseparably the presence of the Holy Spirit and the gift of forgiveness, are referred to directly in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  But they have a much wider meaning.  Those words remind us of the Christian vocation we are all have, to love and forgive as we have been loved and forgiven, in the world of today, which is often fiercely judgmental and vengeful.

The feast of Pentecost celebrates the unseen, immeasurable presence of God in our lives and in our Church – the ruah (breath) that animates us to do the work of the Gospel of the Risen One, the ruah that makes God’s will our will, the ruah of God living in us and transforming us so that we might bring His life and love to our broken world.  God “breathes” His Spirit into our souls that we may live in His life and love; God ignites the “fire” of His Spirit within our hearts and minds that we may seek God in all things in order to realize the coming of His reign.

The Venerable Fulton J. Sheen once said about the Church, “Even though we are God’s chosen people, we often behave more like God’s frozen people–frozen in our prayer life, frozen in the way we relate with one another, frozen in the way we celebrate our Faith.” Hope we can all allow the ‘fire’ of the Spirit to melt away our coldness and live again a fuller life.