Pentecost Sunday
When the Holy Spirit reaches us
When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem. At this sound, they gathered in a large crowd, but they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language. They were astounded, and in amazement they asked, “Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans? Then how does each of us hear them in his own native language? We are Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene, as well as travelers from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs, yet we hear them speaking in our own tongues of the mighty acts of God.” Acts 2,1-11
The Holy Spirit, participating to the essence of God, always existed: it is eternal. He was always present in the creation and in the history of the salvation. The harmony of the universe, which shines in the starry sky as wells in the blade of glass, is possible because the continuous and constant blow of the Holy Spirit. However, there have been some moments, in the history of the creation and of the salvation, where the Holy Spirit has blown particularly strong and some events took place for the description of them whoever human adjective would result inadequate. It would be as to call a breath of wind those strong southwest winds which sometimes, in our Castiglioncello, derange the sea and strongly disturb the trees of the pine wood. Let’s see it. By the beginning of the times, the Spirit of God created the harmony of the universe: “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters” ( Gn 1,1-2 ). Subsequently, after a symbolic time of six days, the Spirit of God created the man: “God created man in his image” (Gn 1,26), “the Lord God blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being” (Gn 2,7). Eventually, after the man lost himself in the sin, when the times became mature, God called Adams, who is the initiator of the history of the salvation, carried on by Jesus Christ, which essentially consists in the reordering of the spirit of the man, as the creation described in the Genesis was the reordering of the created things. To implement this project, at some point in the history, the conception of Jesus of Nazareth by the Holy Spirit took place: “Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” ( Lk 1,30-33). After, the Holy Spirit descended over Jesus of Nazareth, when John the Baptist baptized him in the Jordan river: “After all the people had been baptized and Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Lk 3,21-22). Today we celebrate the Pentecost, where the Holy Spirit descended in the refectory on Mary and the apostles and the Church was born: “All of the sudden a rumble came from the sky, almost a wind which enters impetuous and it filled in the entire house where they were. Some lines of fire appeared to them, which were dividing and were landing over each of them, who have been filled in by the Holy Spirit and they started to speak by different languages, in the way the Holy Spirit permitted to them to talk”. This narrations points out that the wonderful effect of the decent of the Holy Spirit in this world has been the cancellation of the incommunicability among the men who, from the day of the construction of the Babel tower, did not understand each other anymore. Later the men said: “ Let’s go, we built up a city and a tower, which top will touch the sky and let’s define a name, not to be dispersed all over the earth”. But the Lord descended to see the city and the tower which the sons of the man were building up. The Lord said: “They are one people, all speaking the same language, they have started to do this, nothing will later stop them from doing whatever they presume to do. Let us then go down and there confuse their language, so that one will not understand what another says” (Gn 11,6-7). After the day of the Pentecost, although speaking different languages, the men recovered their mutual understanding in the name of the Lord. It happened also to me, on 1990, when I was sent to Madrid to make a teaching for the yearly meeting of the Charismatic Renewal. I started to talk in Italian and an interpreter was translating into Spanish, but, at a certain point, despite my limited Spanish, I understood that I had to start to speak the language of the persons who were listening to me. I started and I arrived up to the end of my teaching. I never spoke such a good Spanish as by that day.