Pentecost Sunday

Jeff Bagnall • 10 May 2024

Luke’s ‘history’ ( Acts 2:1-11 ), writes of the fulfillment of the promise given by Jesus before His Ascension “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses … to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8, see also Luke 24:48-51 ); it has the role of an introduction to the theme of the book of Acts, namely, the extension of the gift of the Spirit across the known world. It is set at the time of the Jewish feast of Pentecost (sometimes called Weeks) which is 50 days after the Passover festival, both of which started off as harvest festivals; but Pentecost had come to reflect the renewal of the covenant at the foot of Mount Sinai after the exodus from Egypt. The message is mostly about the spread of the Spirit; so as there was fire and wind at Sinai, so here the Spirit comes on the first followers of Jesus as the initiation for the work they had to do. The Hebrew and Greek words for spirit are closely related to the word for wind, contributing to this description in language traditional for encounter with the divine. As part of this introduction to his theme, Luke also tells us that a large cosmopolitan crowd were present and understood and accepted what Peter said in his preaching to them. The idea of speaking in tongues plays on the two senses: ecstatic utterance and language differentiation. The words of Scripture in whatever language, are in some way the word of God for us if we but understand it properly.

In the alternative second reading Paul writes to the Galatians ( 5:16-24 ) of a more personal role of the Spirit in the lives of individuals; with the Spirit each of us can avoid sin and falling short of the mark, and we will receive the endowments for humanity at its very best, sometimes called the fruits of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience … self-control.” It is always easy to misinterpret what others say or write; it is hard to capture the full meaning across from one language to another; but in this reading we are also crossing the boundaries of culture and nearly two millennia. The word translated as ‘flesh’ is the most awkward; it seems to refer to what we sometimes call the secular world; but just as Paul’s and the early church’s thinking developed, so now we want to emphasise the sacredness of the secular. This development is because of our incipient realisation of the presence of the Spirit in the whole of created being. Some of our traditional prayers represent this of which the Sequence (Come, Holy Spirit) is one which enumerates with delightful and poetic language, the various corrective actions of the Holy Spirit upon the world and its individuals; it ends as a prayer for the Spirit to act upon us, which is really a way of urging ourselves to let the Spirit work through our lives.

In the Gospel ( John 20:19-25 ), we have part of a group of speeches presented after the Last Supper; they are in reality addressed to the churches for whom the gospel is written and, of course, as the word of God, they have something to say to us. After the life, death and resurrection of Christ, the Spirit will come as an advocate advising us Christians how to live out in our own situations the true kind of life for which we exist. It is a message that will come to us each in our own culture, age and particular circumstances. For it is our role as followers of Christ to live out the truth as witnesses for all. The passage implies that the truth (of beliefs and of way of life) will need to develop and adapt to ever new situations. To the extent to which we can bring ourselves to live as God wants we will enhance the glorious presence of Christ in our world. We celebrate and renew our efforts at this particularly time of Pentecost.

Jeff's jottings: The Spirit of life

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Jeff Bagnall was a lecturer for many years at Craiglockhart College teaching RE to many future Catholic Primary teachers.

33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time - 2025 - Year C

4 November 2025

The first reading is from the last section of the book of Malachi. In the Hebrew this is Chapter 3, but in the Greek version it is Chapter 4. Cyrus, the king of Persia who became the ruler of Babylon in the 6th century BC, had high ideals for society and a policy of returning deportees back to their homelands. We know of this from the Cyrus cylinder which was discovered in 1869 in the ruins of the city of Babylon and is in the British Museum. In the Bible, the book of Isaiah the prophet interpreted this return to their own land as brought about by their God through Cyrus. But those who returned were not all as good living as they should be and so, in the book of Malachi, we hear today of God’s punishment upon them, but for those who are good or repent, God will come “with healing in his wings.”

31st in Ordinary Time - 2025 - Year C

22 October 2025

The first reading is from the book Wisdom ( 11:22-12:3 ). This book was written less than a century before the birth of Jesus. It came from someone in the Jewish community in Alexandria in Egypt. Jews at the time were not just in the promised land and were quite aware of the ways of thinking in the wider community about life, gods and associated mysteries. The book of Wisdom is in Greek and its ideas are a development of earlier Jewish ideas, absorbing more contemporary notions from this wider community in which they lived. And so wisdom is very important; it is used by them to refer God Himself and their idea of life now extended to even life after death which was not previously held by Jews. Our reading exemplifies the literary quality of the thoughts poetically expressed in a theology of the relationship of God with the failings of humanity and the development of creation. The second reading is from 2 Thess 1:11-2:2 . The two letters to the Thessalonians are the first surviving documents about Jesus that we have – the oldest writings in the New Testament – prior to the gospels that tell of the life of Jesus. Paul was a learned Rabbi in the Jewish community living away from the Jewish enclave in the Roman empire. The story in Acts of him being quite against Jews becoming followers of Jesus is quite reliable. However, this learned man later became a Christian and worked mostly in Roman communities making converts of Jews but especially of Gentiles. He had established a community in Thessalonica but the Jewish synagogue there was not receptive of his message that God was happy with Gentiles, so a mainly Gentile community of followers of Jesus was established away from the synagogue. However after he moved on from his short stay there, he wants and needs to writes to them from prison. It seems from the text we have that he may have given them a wrong idea of God’s being present to them even now and this being the time of the fulfilment of God’s plan for creation. Some of them had given up their regular work and way of life and were just waiting for the End-time to come. And someone may have encouraged them with this view. So Paul has to tell them to get back to regular life – as good followers of Jesus – the final End has not yet come. We are reminded by this that Christianity is constantly developing an understanding of life and creation, and we should be warned not to be so certain of what are basically mysteries – a danger the church has always suffered from.