GOSPEL: JN 20:19-23
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ON the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”
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Pentecost literally means fi ieth. The descent of the Holy Spirit coincides with Shebuot, the Jewish Feast of Weeks. This agricultural feast marked the beginning of the offering of first fruits. At Pentecost, two loaves of bread were offered in gratitude for the harvest. Later, the Jews added to the Feast of Pentecost the element of Yahweh’s “Covenant with Noah,” which took place 50 days after the great deluge. Still later, the Sinaitic Covenant with Moses was celebrated 50 days after the Exodus from Egypt.
For us Christians, Pentecost marks the end of the Easter season (50 days after the celebration of the Paschal Mystery, i.e., the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus) and after the ascension culminates with the sending of the Holy Spirit. The feast also commemorates the official inauguration of the Christian Church.
In the First Reading, we are told about the coming of the Holy Spirit and its effects on the Apostles and the people in the form of glossolalia or speaking in tongues. Even though they are talking in their own respective languages, they are able to understand each other. This is in contrast to the story of the Tower of Babel where people could not communicate and work together in building the ziggurat or the tower that would reach to the heavens. The word Babel thus came to denote “confusion.”
