We are once again in Jerusalem for the celebration of a feast. It has been fifty days since the celebration of Passover, when the people of Israel remembered how God had delivered them from the angel of death and how, through his servant Moses, he had from captivity under an Egyptian Pharaoh, and had set them on the road to freedom in the promised land. Today, on a feast called (in the Greek that was the common language of the Mediterranean world at the time) Pentecost, or Fiftieth (Day), Jerusalem is once again full of people, Jews and Gentiles from throughout the Roman world, gathered together to participate in the celebration of another great moment in salvation history: God’s revelation of the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai, which according to tradition took place fifty days after the Passover.

Gathered together, too, are the disciples of a man who was publicly executed on the eve of the Passover, supposedly for fomenting rebellion against the Roman rulers of a once-again conquered people. We are gathered with them in the same upper room where, fifty days ago, they shared a final meal with their Master on the eve of his arrest and crucifixion. It is the same upper room where we gathered with them, on the first day after the Passover, to hide from the people who had arrested their Lord, only to be amazed by the presence of their Lord, resurrected from the dead! We, like them, recognized him from the marks of his suffering, the evidence of his abuse which he showed us to confirm his identity. It is the same upper room in which the risen Lord opened his disciples’ hearts and minds to the true meaning of Sacred Scripture, that God’s Anointed, his Messiah, the Christ, was to achieve their salvation through his suffering. In this same room he told them to remain in Jerusalem until he had sent to them another Comforter, who would clothe them with power from on high, and lead them into all truth. The Master has been gone for ten days. We watched with the disciples as he departed from them and returned to the Father who sent him, his work for us completed. We are with them now, in that same upper room, with the Lord’s Mother and others who have experienced the risen Lord, awaiting the fulfillment of the Lord’s promise.

“And suddenly, a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting upon each one of them. And they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak… as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:2-4).

Suddenly, the world changes. The Spirit is here! Students of a master become emissaries of the king. The world is once again engaged. The fellowship increases. A new creation comes into view!  How glorious, that the celebration of this great feast should coincide this year with the easing of restrictions that have had us confined to close quarters! It’s as if the mighty wind of the Spirit is pushing us from the harbors where we have been sheltering from a storm into the great and wide sea of life. And yet, although empowered, we are changed, indelibly marked by our experiences of this pandemic. Many of us have suffered the loss of loved ones, often from a painful distance; many have ourselves suffered the virus, and some continue to experience its effects. But the Spirit has protected us, preserved us, and is perfecting us through suffering.

Our prayer this Pentecost season is that the Holy Spirit, which “heals that which is infirm and completes what is lacking,” transform us as He did the Apostles – from people who witnessed life-altering events, to emissaries of the True and Loving God, strengthened by our experience, and enlivened by His Grace.