Pentecost Homily 2022

 

Pentecost Sunday 2022

 

Pentecost was already a feast day in the Jewish Calendar for about 1500 years when the events of our first reading today from Acts chapter 2 play themselves out.

The Jewish celebration of Pentecost was a celebration of the 2^nd harvest of the year

 

So that is why so many devout Jews are in town in our first reading.  They all speak different languages because by this time, Jewish people had been scattered throughout many different nations, but still made a pilgrimage back to Jerusalem for major holidays, including Pentecost.

 

 

And so the Jewish celebration of Pentecost receives in today’s first reading its fulfillment in the coming down of the Holy Spirit.

 

And so as well the celebration of the 2^nd harvest now is transformed into our call to go out and bring other persons to Christ…to draw them to Christ now that we too have been given the Holy Spirit.

 

On Pentecost, The Holy Spirit transformed pretty cowardly men into master harvesters full of zeal and joy who were able to start the conversion of the world to Christ

 

That mission is the same for us today.  We have been given the fullness of the Holy Spirit through our baptism and confirmation; may we cooperate with the Holy Spirit as the Apostles did…may we too become people who, by our lives and our preaching and our teaching, win human persons for Jesus Christ