[Salvation]

Insight Scoop

A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for Pentecost Sunday, June 12, 2011 | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
• Acts 2:1-11
• Psa. 104:1, 24, 29-30, 31, 34
• 1 Cor. 12:3b-7, 12-13
• Jn. 20:19-23

After many years of leading a weekly Bible study at my parish I am more convinced than ever of a simple fact: if you do not appreciate the Old Testament, you will fail to understand nearly anything and everything in the New Testament. The New Testament is like a treasure chest of priceless jewels, but without the map of the Old Testament, it is very difficult to find and open that chest. Saint Augustine put it this way: “The New lies hidden in the Old and the Old is unveiled in the New.”

Today’s reading from The Acts of the Apostles, which describes a pivotal, transforming event in the early Church, is a perfect case in point. Even though The Acts of the Apostles and the third Gospel were written by a Gentile, Saint Luke, they are deeply rooted in the history and beliefs of the Jewish people. And Luke assumed that his readers would know and appreciate the key events, beliefs, and practices of the Jews.

First, there is the feast of Pentecost, which the Israelites called “the feast of weeks”, a reference to the seven weeks from the Passover to the celebration of Pentecost (cf., Lev 23:9-21; Deut 16:9-12). The number seven signified completion and fullness. Originally, the feast focused on giving thanks for the harvest; it later was associated with the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai, traditionally believed to have occurred fifty days after the first Passover in Egypt. The description of the coming of the Holy Spirit upon those in the Upper Room is concise, but is clearly meant to invoke a connection to the great theophanies, or appearances by God, that took place on Mount Sinai (also known as Mount Herob), which were accompanied by noises from heaven, strong winds, and fire (Ex 19:16-19; 1 Kngs 19:11-12; cf., CCC 696).

In addition, the breath or voice of God is closely associated with fire: “The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire” (Ps 28:7). Following the Resurrection, as recounted in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus, the Word made flesh, came to the apostles, breathed on them, and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” He thus gave them the authority to forgive and absolve sins. On Pentecost, God sent the Holy Spirit—marked by the appearance of “tongues as of fire”—so that the disciples could speak in different languages and proclaim the Gospel to all men. This gift of tongues was not so much about spiritual ecstasy as it was about spiritual transformation, which led to the bold, public communication of person, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Acts 2:14-47).

Jesus had promised the disciples that the Holy Spirit would teach them “all things” and help them remember his words (Jn 14:26). Likewise, Paul told the Christians at Corinth—a difficult and unruly bunch!—that no one can proclaim, “Jesus is Lord,” unless he is led by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is sent by the Father and the Son so as to give witness to the Son and to draw men to the Father. “The gift of the Spirit,” states the Catechism, “ushers in a new era in the ‘dispensation of the mystery’ the age of the Church, during which Christ manifests, makes present, and communicates his work of salvation through the liturgy of his Church, ‘until he comes.’” (CCC 1076). Thus Paul wrote, “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body…” The Holy Spirit preserves the unity of the Church, and he is described as the soul of the Mystical Body of Christ (CCC 809).

The feast of Pentecost, then, is a celebration of the harvest—the spiritual fruits given by God—and the recognition of New Law of Christ, which is established in divine love and through the Holy Spirit. As Saint Leo the Great observed, we “may easily perceive that the beginnings of the Old Covenant were at the service of the beginnings of the gospel and that the same Spirit who established the first established the Second.”

(This "Opening the Word" column originally in a slightly different form in the May 11, 2008, issue of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

[Salvation]

Insight Scoop

"Faith is a tongue of fire that burns us and melts us..."

An excerpt from Joseph Ratzinger's  Images of Hope: Meditations on Major Feasts (Ignatius Press, 2006):

The Holy Spirit points to the Trinity, and thereby he points to us. For the trinitarian God is the archetype of the new united humanity, the archetype of the Church, as the prayer of Jesus may be seen as its word of institution: "that they may be one, even as we are one" (Jn 17:11b, cf. 21f.). The Trinity is measure and foundation of the Church. The Trinity brings the word of creation day to its goal, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" (Gen 1:26). In the Trinity, mankind, which in its disunity became a counter image of God, should become once again the one Adam, whose image, as the Fathers say, was defaced by sin and now lies about in pieces. The divine measure of man should again come to prominence, unity, in it, "as we are one". So the Trinity, God himself, is the archetype of the Church. Church does not mean another idea in addition to man, but rather man on the way to himself. If the Holy Spirit expresses and is the unity of God, then he is the real vital element of the Church in which distinction is reconciled in togetherness and the dispersed pieces of Adam are fit together again. ...

A tongue of fire has been added to being human. We must now correct this expression. Fire is never something that is simply due to another and therefore exists beside him. Fire burns and transforms. Faith is a tongue of fire that burns us and melts us so that ever more it is true: I and no longer I. Whoever, of course, meets the average Christian of today must ask himself: Where is the tongue of fire? That which comes from Christian tongues is unfortunately frequently anything but fire. It tastes therefore like stale, barely lukewarm water, not warm and not cold. We do not want to burn ourselves or others, but in this way we keep distant from the Holy Spirit, and Christian faith deteriorates into a self-made world-view that as far as possible does not want to infringe on any of our comforts and saves the sharpness of protest for where it can hardly disturb us in our way of life. When we yield to the burning fire of the Holy Spirit, being Christian becomes comfortable only at first glance. The comfort of the individual is the discomfort of the whole. When we no longer expose ourselves to the fire of God, the frictions with one another become unbearable and the Church is, as Basil expressed it, torn by the shouts of factions. Only when we do not fear the tongue of fire and the storm it brings with it does the Church become the icon of the Holy Spirit. And only then does she open the world to the light of God. Church began as the disciples assembled and prayed together in the room of the Last Supper. Thus she begins again and again. In prayer to the Holy Spirit we must call for this anew each day. 

Here is more information about Images of Hope.