Pentecost Sunday

Dear Parishioners, 
As I have said before numerous times in these Pastor’s Corners and in homilies: God’s plan are perfect and full of all goodness and right. So why wouldn’t the Descent of the Holy Spirit as related to us in the Acts of the Apostles be anything but perfect, good, right, as well as dramatic – great material for a wonderful scene in a movie! Yet the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles, our Blessed Mother Mary, and surely the other close disciples of Jesus, both men and women, was more than just a wonderful scene in a movie. This event changed the world and officially established Jesus’ Church by a public, fully audible and fully visible event. Public, because it was in the city of Jerusalem and there were lots of Jewish people present for the celebration of the Jewish feast of Pentecost – the fiftieth day; fully audible because of the sound of the strong driving wind, and fully visible because of the numerous tongues of fire that were seen to separate into individual flames over each of the followers of Jesus who were chosen to be specific leaders of the newly-born Church that day. This Christian Feast of Pentecost in Jerusalem was, as I mentioned before, first a Jewish feast commemorating the fiftieth day of some Jewish event or observance, but God chose to use this day with all its festivities and Jewish people from far and wide in attendance to “give birth” to the Church that Jesus had successfully established by His Birth, Ministry, Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension. Therefore, it is correct and right to call the Christian Pentecost the “Birthday of the Church,” of Jesus’ Church which He established on the Rock of St. Peter, His specifically-chosen Apostle, and about which Jesus said that the “gates of Hell shall not prevail” against this Church He was establishing. Not only were the strong, driving wind and the tongues of fire miraculous, the real miracle was when all of these Jewish people from different parts of the known Jewish world heard the Galilean-born Apostles, who knew no other languages, speaking in his or her own language! That was another miracles in addition to the great manifestation of God in the coming of the Holy Spirit in wind and in fire. Come Holy Spirit! Fill us with the fire of Your Love, and in us, renew the face of the earth.