Pentecost - The Outpouring of the Holy Spirit by Fr. Joseph Evinger
Sunday, June 9
th, we celebrate the feast of Pentecost which is the last day of the Paschal or Easter Season.
The feast of Pentecost in the books of the Old Testament is the second of three most important feasts of the year. The first is the feast of Passover fulfilled in the ultimate Passover of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The third feast is the feast of Booths celebrating the harvest of grapes and olives as well as other fruits. On each of these feasts the people were to go up to the temple of God and give back to God a portion of everything He had given to them. They were to worship Him and give thanks.
Regarding the feast of Pentecost, it is a thanksgiving celebration of the wheat harvest which also coincides with the anniversary of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments from God on Mount Sinai. Both are fifty days after the feast of Passover.
Jumping ahead 1500 years, it was on this feast of Pentecost that the Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit upon the apostles in the form of tongues of fire. It was on this day fifty days after the great Passover sacrifice of Christ on the Cross that God etched the new commandment of love in His disciples hearts so that they would gather in the new harvest not of grain but of people.
The reason Christ sent the Holy Spirit was to move the Church into a new era of grace. It is through the power of the Holy Spirit that bread and wine become Jesus’ body, blood, soul, and divinity, God’s presence forever on this earth. It is through the Holy Spirit that we come to know and serve God and are thus filled with peace, freedom, and zeal. It is through the Spirit of God that we evangelize, that we tell others about the good things that God does for us. A new Pentecost has arrived may we all allow the Spirit of God whom we received in Confirmation to move us to encounter Christ more fully in the Blessed Sacrament so that we can better evangelize those whom we meet.
This feast of Pentecost, let us ask for a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Church so that God can renew the face of the earth and bring in the harvest.