5/19/2024 - Pentecost Sunday | The Parish of St. John Henry Newman

Be My Witnesses

The ancient Jewish festival of Pentecost has its origins and practices rooted in the Torah (first five books of the Hebrew Bible). It was originally an agricultural festival celebrating the wheat harvest in ancient Israel. It was one of the three major pilgrimage festivals when Jews would bring crop offerings to the Temple in Jerusalem from all over the world. The name "Pentecost" comes from the Greek word “Pentecostes” meaning "fiftieth", as it was celebrated 50 days after the Feast of First fruits (the barley harvest festival during Passover week). In Hebrew it's called Shavuot, meaning "Weeks", as it falls seven weeks after Passover. By the time of the Second Temple period, Pentecost took on a historical significance, becoming associated with the giving of the Torah to Moses at Mount Sinai, which was calculated to have occurred around that time of year.
There are very interesting parallels between the Sinai event described in the Book of Exodus 19 and the experience of the Apostles narrated by Luke in Acts 2. Both events involved a manifestation of God's power and presence - on Mount Sinai with thunder, lightning, smoke, and an earthquake (Exodus 19:16-19), and at Pentecost with the sound of a violent wind and tongues of fire (Acts 2:2-3). Luke uses the phrase ‘noise like a strong wind’.
Both events marked the establishment of a covenant - the Mosaic covenant at Sinai (Exodus 19-24) and the new covenant in Christ through the outpouring of the Spirit (Acts 2:16-21, quoting Joel 2:28-32). Both equipped God's people for their mission - Israel to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Exodus 19:6), and the Church to be Christ's witnesses to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).
There are also striking contrasts between these theophanies (manifestations of God). Moses went up the mountain and came back with tablets of stone. Jesus went up into the heavens and was not seen again in his physical form by the disciples. At Sinai the laws were written on stone tablets, while the Spirit writes God's laws on believers' hearts (2 Corinthians 3:3). The law brought knowledge of sin but not the power to overcome it (Romans 3:20, 7:7-25), whereas the Spirit enables obedience and Christlike transformation (Romans 8:2-4, 13).
At Sinai, the people were terrified and kept at a distance, but in the new Pentecost the disciples lost all fear and threw open the closed doors and witnessed to the resurrection of Jesus through the miracle of diverse tongues. When the multitude gathered from all over the world heard the message given by the disciples in their own language, an intense sense of unity was given to them as the first fruit of the Spirit.
Today we confront a culture that has enthroned enlightened self-interest and has reduced men, women, and children to pawns of ideology. Secularism and affluence have muted the presence of God in our part of the world. The Spirit is full of surprises as on that day of Pentecost. History has shown us that even in our worst moments, Jesus’ ever-present Spirit can break through and raise up saints who turn things around. They call us back to the Gospel and give us hope. A Francis of Assisi pops up out of the moral mess of the twelfth century. Maximilian Kolbe steps forward from the Nazi madness to die a martyr. Dorothy Day, Mother Seton and Mother Cabrini are saintly women from our own city who ‘stalk’ us to rise out of our tepid following of Christianity to be empowered witnesses through a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Ascension and Pentecost tell us that God is still present, still speaks, still sends out disciples to make a difference, and still calls. Not just the saints from the past, but you and me. What Jesus said at Ascension still remains valid and indispensable: You be My witness. We are the Church, and what we do, the Church does. And what we fail to do, the Church fails to do.
Fr Tom Kunnel, C.O