"Receive the Holy Spirit!"

＊＊＊ 1st Reading ＊＊＊ 

Acts 2:1-11

When the day of Pentecost came,

They were all together in one place.   And suddenly out of the sky came a sound like a strong rushing wind andit filled the whole house where they were sitting. There appeared   tongues as if of fire which parted and came to rest upon each one of them.  All were filled with Holy Spirit and began to speak other languages, as the Spirit enabled them to speak.

 Staying in Jerusalem were religious Jews from every nation under heaven.   When they heard this sound, a crowd gathered, all excited because each heard them speaking in his own language.  Full of amaze­ment and wonder, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Gali­leans?  How is it that we hear them in our own native language?  

 Here are Parthians, Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopo­tamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,  Phry­gia, Pam­phylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cy­rene, and visitors from Rome,   both Jews and foreigners who accept Jewish beliefs, Cretians and Arabians; and all of us hear them proclaiming in our own language what God, the Savior, does.

 

Ps 104:1, 24, 29-30, 31, 34

Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.

 

＊＊＊＊ Gospel ＊＊＊＊    

1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13   (or Romans 8:9-17)

 I tell you that nobody inspired by the Spirit of God may say, “A curse on Jesus,” as no one can say, “Jesus is the Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.

 There is diversity of gifts, but the Spirit is the same. There is diversity of ministries, but the Lord is the same.   There is diversity of works, but the same God works in all.

The Spirit reveals his presence in each one with a gift that is also a service.   As the body is one, having many members, and all the members, while being many, form one body, so it is with Christ.  All of us, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, have been baptized in one Spirit to form one body and all of us have been given to drink from the one Spirit.

 

Gospel Reflection：

The Spirit’s Lingua Franca

Read:

The Pentecost, the corrective event of the Tower of Babel disaster. We are all members of the one body of Christ, reminds St. Paul. Jesus breathes on the disciples, as Yahweh had breathed once into the nostrils of the first human.

Reflect:

The first public comment made of the new post-resurrectional community of the disciples of Jesus was that they spoke a kind of language that everyone understood. The Pentecost is the corrective to the Tower of Babel experience (Gen. 11:1-9) where hardly anyone spoke a language that another could understand.

If the Babel was an attempt out of existential fear to resist a dispersal of people and to play God, the Pentecost is an act of God’s Spirit to dispel the fear and empower the new community to traverse every corner of the world, bringing a new language that every human being can understand.

What is this language that anyone, beyond the conditionings of space, time, or culture, can understand? It is the language of love, the lingua franca of the Spirit of God. It is the language Christians are called to speak in and be united in.

Pray:

Pray for the gift of the language of the Spirit – Love.

Act:

Talk lovingly to everyone whom you meet today.