Catholic Pentecost (Day of the Holy Spirit)
Description:
The Jews promised obedience to God, and the Lord promised them His good pleasure. According to the time of year, the feast of Pentecost coincided with the end of the harvest and therefore met with special joy.
Many Jews scattered throughout the vast Roman Empire tried to arrive in Jerusalem for this holiday. Born in other countries, many of them already had difficulty understanding their native Jewish language, but tried to observe their national and religious customs and occasionally pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
The descent of the Holy Spirit was not an unexpected event for the apostles.
A few centuries before the birth of the Savior, the Lord God began to prepare people for the day of their spiritual rebirth and foretold through the mouth of the prophets: “You will walk in my commandments and keep my statutes and pour out of my Spirit on all flesh.” I will pour water on the thirsty and streams on the dried. And you will gladly draw water from the springs of salvation. I will give you a new heart and a new spirit, and I will take a heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you, and I will do it (Joel 2:28; Isaiah 12:3, 44:3).
Preparing to return to His heavenly Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, before crucifixion, dedicates His farewell conversation with the apostles to the coming descent of the Holy Spirit.
The Lord explains to the disciples that the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, must soon come to them to complete the work of salvation.
Preparing to receive the Holy Spirit after the Lord’s ascension to heaven, the disciples of Christ, together with the Blessed Virgin Mary, with some myrrh-bearing wives and other believers (about 120 people) were in Jerusalem at Pentecost in the so-called “House of Zion”.
It was probably in that large room where, shortly before His sufferings, the Lord had celebrated the Last Supper.
The apostles and all the assembled were waiting for the Saviour to send them the “Father’s Promise” and they would be clothed with power from above, though they did not know what the Comforter’s Coming Spirit would actually be (Luke 24:49). Since the Lord Jesus Christ died and rose again during the Old Testament Passover, the feast of Old Testament Pentecost fell that year on the 50th day after His resurrection.
And so, at the ninth hour of the morning, when the people were usually going to the temple for sacrifice and prayer, suddenly there was a noise over the Zion room, as if from a stormy wind. This noise filled the house where the apostles were, and at the same time over the heads of the apostles appeared many fiery tongues, which began to descend on each of them.
These languages had an extraordinary property: they shone, but did not burn. But even more extraordinary were the spiritual attributes that these mysterious languages communicated.
Everyone on whom this language descended felt a great surge of spiritual strength and, at the same time, unspeakable joy and inspiration. He began to feel like a completely different person: peaceful, full of life and ardent love for God.
These inner changes and new untried feelings were expressed by the apostles in joyful exclamations and loud praises of God. And then it turned out that they did not speak their native Hebrew, but in some other languages unknown to them.
Thus the apostles were baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire, as predicted by the prophet John the Baptist (Mt 3:11).
Meanwhile, a noise resembling a stormy wind attracted many people to the apostolic house. Seeing the people flocking from all sides, with prayers of praise and glorification of God on the lips of the apostles went out to the roof of the house.
Hearing this stream of joyful prayers, those gathered near their house were struck by a phenomenon incomprehensible to them: the disciples of Christ, mostly Galileans by birth, people who were apparently uneducated, from whom one could not expect knowledge of another language except their native language, suddenly began to speak different foreign languages.
And as diverse as the crowd was in their origin and language, everyone, however, heard one preacher glorifying God in the language of his country. The astonishment of many turned into horror, but there were also the wicked who “said laughing” that the apostles were “drinking sweet wine” (Acts 2:13).
Seeing the perplexity of the people, the Apostle Peter stepped forward and delivered his first sermon, in which he explained to the assembled that an ancient prophecy had been fulfilled in the miraculous descent of the Holy Spirit.
This sermon was brief and simple, but since the Holy Spirit spoke through Peter, these words penetrated into the hearts of those who heard it. Many of them took heart and asked him, “What should we do?” “Repent,” replied the apostle Peter, “and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.” Not only will you be forgiven, but you will receive the grace of the Holy Spirit.
Many who believed in Christ according to the word of the Apostle Peter, immediately repented of their sins in public, were baptized, and by the evening of that day the Church of Christ had grown from 120 to 3,000 people.
Such a miraculous event began the existence of the Church of Christ – this blessed society of believers, in which all are called to save their souls. The Lord promised that the Church would remain undefeated by the gates of hell until the very end of the world.
The feast of the Holy Trinity is established by the apostles. After the day of the descent of the Holy Spirit, they began to celebrate Pentecost each year and commanded all Christians to remember this event (1 Corinthians 16:8), (Acts 20:16).
To the all-night service of this day, as well as to the feast of Easter, mass baptisms were usually timed, and this custom still persists in relation to baptized adults in the Roman Catholic Church, in the liturgy of which this holiday is equated in its meaning with Easter. The famous “golden sequence”, “Come, Holy Spirit” (“Veni Sancte Spiritus”), a hymn belonging to the author of the 13th century, is sung during the festive mass of Pentecost.