PENTEC0ST  – CYCLE A -  2020

     With the Solemnity of Pentecost we  have reached the end of the Easter season.   

     We will see how Pentecost has had different names and meanings over the centuries.  

     During the Jewish celebration of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was sent by the Father to the Church.

     The Spirit will remain always in the Church, but not only with the Church but with all the human beings no matter who they are. The Spirit has been poured out upon all flesh.

     The Spirit is the source of the renewed youth of the Church, he brings the eternal newness of God to our humanity that so many times are accommodated in our ageing process unwilling to change, to accept a new lifestyle.

PENTECOST

v Every Israelite had to present himself before YHWH, three times a year:  the second of these feasts became Pentecost.  

In Ex 23:16 it is called the Feast of the Grain Harvest.

v In the book of Number 28:26  it  is called the Feast of the First Fruits.

v In the book of Deuteronomy 16:10  it is called the Feast of weeks  because this feast was celebrated seven weeks after the feast of the Unleavened Bread (Passover.)

v It was also called the Feast of the 50th day(Pentecost)  because it was celebrated 50 days after the first grain offering   Lev 23,9-14

v This feast became a historical feast in which the people remembered the Covenant on Mount Sinai, and the New Covenant promised by  God through the prophets Jeremiah 31,31-34 and Ezekiel 36  :22-28, and fulfilled by Jesus in his Paschal Mystery.

v On the day of   Pentecost, the Father sent on the Church the Spirit Jesus had promised.  

FIRST READING: Acts 2:1-11     

Ø  The strong driving wind that filled the house, takes us to the beginning of creation when the Spirit of God as a mighty wind covered the abyss. 

Ø  The noise, the fire, all these strong forces of nature remind us of the theophany on Mount Sinai, when God talked to Moses and made a Covenant with his people, giving them the Law. 

Ø  The tongues of fire: fire, enthusiasm, to proclaim the marvels accomplished by Christ Jesus.  

Ø  The "miracle" of the tongues that made possible for all to understand what the Apostles were announcing to them. This takes us back to Babel, where people of one tongue could not understand each other due to greed, pride, sin. Pentecost is the opposite of Babel. The Holy Spirit helps those who are different, opposite, enemies to recognize  each other as human beings, as brothers and sisters, loving  one another.    

Ø  I will copy below two quotations from the Jewish tradition about the event on Mount Sinai: 

·       God did not have mouth or tongue, but by means of a wonderful act he decided that a thunder should be heard in the air and a blast should be articulated into words putting the air in motion.  This became fire that had the shape of flames... a voice resounded in the midst of the fire and descended from heaven and this voice spoke the dialect of each one of those who heard it.   (Jewish Philosopher called Filon explained in this fashion the divine theophany on Sinai.) 

·       When the voice of God was pronounced on Sinai it divided itself into seventy voices so that all the nations could understand. The Hebrew people believed that there were 70 nationalities in the world.     

(My translation of both quotations which have been taken from the book   Gianfranco Ravasi  Según las Escrituras- Ciclo C").

Ø  All were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.   

Ø  Through the 2000 years of history since the First Pentecost, the Church has made present the wonderful event of Pentecost among all the nations, sometimes silently, some other times loudly, through the life and mission of men and women from all nations: of parents, missionaries, catechists, priests, sons and daughters, the complete list would be too long.   The enemies become friends; the foreigner and stranger are welcomed into the local community.

Ø  The Church that becomes visible in Pentecost continue announcing with fire the Good News of God-With-Us,  in the midst of its weakness and its sin but with a great love for her Lord, like the love that that simple man from Galilee, Peter, had for Jesus.

Sequence — Veni, Sancte Spiritus

Come, Holy Spirit, come!

And from your celestial home

Shed a ray of light divine!

Come, Father of the poor!

Come, source of all our store!

Come, within our bosoms shine.

You, of comforters the best;

You, the soul's most welcome guest;

Sweet refreshment here below;

In our labor, rest most sweet;

Grateful coolness in the heat;

Solace in the midst of woe.

O most blessed Light divine,

Shine within these hearts of yours,

And our inmost being fill!

Where you are not, we have naught,

Nothing good in deed or thought,

Nothing free from taint of ill.

Heal our wounds, our strength renew;

On our dryness, pour your dew;

Wash the stains of guilt away:

Bend the stubborn heart and will;

Melt the frozen, warm the chill;

Guide the steps that go astray.

On the faithful, who adore

and, confess you, evermore

In your sevenfold gift descend;

Give them virtue's sure reward;

Give them your salvation, Lord;

Give them joys that never end. Amen.

Alleluia.

 This beautiful sequence does not need any explanation, only to read it slowly meditating what we are reading and to whom we are saying it. This peace and consolation that we ask for will become little by little a reality in our being.

SECOND READING  1 Cor 12:3b-7,12-13

     Paul says that no one can say, "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit.  However, it is not enough to pronounce words or sounds, but this sentence must come from our faith, our trust, and our love for Jesus. 

     Paul makes his community realize that there are different gifts, that everyone has his or her own gifts, which God gives to us to equip us to accomplish a mission in the community.   

     And,  to help his community to understand better, he makes the wonderful comparison of the human body, which has many members but it is one body.

     Another comparison could be a painting or a cloth made of many threats of different colors. As the weaver works we begin to see de design.

     Through baptism we are united to Christ  

     And we were all given to drink of one Spirit.  

     In the first reading Luke uses the symbol of fire, wind and tongues. In the second reading water is the symbol used to describe who the Spirit is. 

GOSPEL Jn 20:19-23  

v In the first reading we have seen how Luke explains the coming upon the Holy the Church using images taken from the Old Testament, from the traditions of Israel and even of the peoples around it.  

v In the Gospel the Church invites us to reflect on the mystery of the coming of the Holy Spirit in the way  John explains it.   

v According to the Gospel of John, the Lord came and stood in their midst, on the evening of the same day of his Resurrection. 

v And in this meeting with them he gave the Holy Spirit  

·       But before giving them his Spirit  

·       Jesus gives them Peace  thus they will be able to offer it to others. 

·       Jesus sends them.   As the Father has sent me, so I send you.  We know that through baptism we have been submerged in Christ to participate of his life and cooperate in his mission "the salvation of all men and women."    

·       Jesus gives to them the power to forgive sins.  He will cooperate with them; he will accept and support the decisions they will make.   Maybe we need to explain this a little  more, we, his disciples,  need to be attentive to his inner voice that speaks to us, so that our decisions coincide with his “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” then what the church ties on earth will remain tied, what it unties will remain untied.”

We have seen the two accounts of the coming of the Holy Spirit , one from the Gospel of John, Jesus gives his spirit the same day of his resurrection. In fact, in the Gospel of John Jesus gives his Spirit, on the cross, the gift of the Spirit comes to us thanks to the redemptive death of Christ on the cross.

For Luke the Spirit comes to the Church on the Jewish feast of Pentecost, with signs and wonders.

The Paschal mystery is only one, that has been made present to us in different steps (cross, resurrection, ascension, Pentecost) which we explain using different images to be able to grasp its deep and transcendent meaning.  

ü  The Church is born in Pentecost

ü  She has been conceived in the heart of the Father from all eternity

ü  Jesus has begun it with his community of disciples and

ü  Now it becomes visible for the world by the irresistible strength of the Spirit of God poured out upon this little and insignificant community of Jerusalem in a little and worthless country.

CLARETIAN CORNER

María Antonia understands that in order to be able to live the Holy Law, the Gospel, Christ himself Word of God, the Church needs a reformation, a renewal and a conversion, and return to the origins, to the first fidelity to the Gospel.  This  is the meaning of in imitation of the Holy Apostles.  That is how the idea of an apostolic religious life is born in the mind of María Antonia.  This  apostolic life  has its base on poverty and on the proclamation of the Gospel. 

This renewal touches all the commitments of the different walks of life; poverty according to each one’s personal call , because the lack of poverty has brought the evils which affect the Church; the communion of goods and the proclamation of the Gospel, to help the whole Church to renew herself in all her members. (Paris and Claret, two pens moved by the same Spirit, p.74)

Claret wants to make it clear from the beginning: the Bishop, who has the mission to keep and preserve the beauty of the Church, has to be a man of faith in Jesus Christ, true God and true man; and also in the Church as the fullness of Christ, Mystical Body and espouse.  This is going to be the foundation of the pastoral strategies which will follow after this Introduction.  

Claret gives the main points of his theology in a time when ecclesiology was mainly about the visible, social and apologetic  aspects of the Church.  He presents the Church from the ecclesiology of Paul, as the New Eve, the Bride of Christ, the Mother of the living, the Body of Christ, Christ in his fullness and in his Hierarchical reality.

Saint Paul has composed his theology on the Church from a double experience: his communion of life with Christ, which has its origin in the experience on the way to Damascus, and on his multiple apostolic works for the sake of the Christian community.  

It is the same with Claret. His communion of life with Christ the Evangelizer, and his multiple apostolic works, lead him to discover the mystery of the Church.  (Paris and Claret, two pens moved by the same Spirit pp. 103-104)                 

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

MUÑOZ, M. Hortensia and TUTZO, Regina. Paris and Claret Two Pens Moved by the Same Spirit. 2010

HAAG, H; VAN DER BORN, A; DE AUSEJO, S. Diccionario de la Biblia (Bible Dictionnary), Editorial Herder 1981.

PARIS, María Antonia, Autobiography

RAVASI, Gianfranco, Según Las Escrituras (According to the Scriptures), Year C, 2006.