Appearance to the disciples

Jn 20:19-23

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, "Peace be with you." When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. [Jesus] said to them again,"Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive them, and whose sins you retain are retained."

ORIGINALLY, PENTECOST was a Jewish feast called Shavuot or the Feast of Weeks. A week of weeks is forty-nine days, but if you count both ends (as the Semites did), it comes to fifty. It was celebrated on the fiftieth day after the Feast of Harvest or the Feast of the First-Fruits. It was a major feast and very popular one on which Jews came to Jerusalem from all over the world to celebrate.

The awesome story of the first Christian Pentecost, fifty days after Jesus' resurrection, is told in today's reading from the Acts of the Apostles. Luke, its author , initiates this new creation in the same way which he tends to highlight important events like the birth of Mary's child (2:6) and Jesus' resolute determination to go to Jerusalem to fulfill his mission and die (9:51). He now introduces the dawning of the age of the Holy Spirit as the dominant reality in the life of humankind.In Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, the word for "spirit" is the same as the word for "breath" and for "life".

As symbols of the coming of the Holy Spirit, Luke uses a driving wind, sound, fire, and tongues (Acts 2:2, 3). These symbols wouldn't have been strange to Jews who knew their Scriptures. The Spirit of God blew over the waters at creation and rushed upon David on the occasion of his anointing as king (1 Sm 16:13). And God appeared frequently in the Jewish Scriptures in the from of fire, the best symbol to the Jews of the brightness and intensity of the activity of God - as, for example, God appearing to moses in a burning bush and on Mt. Sinai in the form of lightning.

The familiar symbol of tongues is easily grasped as communicating a heavenly gift. Tongues of fire came to rest on each one of the apostles (Acts 2:4), to the activity of the Holy Spirit. The Phenomenon of the people from many nations understanding the Apostles is the counter type of the confusion of the tongues at the Tower of Babel (Gn 11).

The activity of the Spirit is the subject matter of the rest of the Acts of the Apostles. The Spirit instructs the early missioners, is the driving force in proclaiming the message of salvation, is responsible for conversions to the new faith, gives strength in persecution, is the inspiration for Paul's journeys, and is responsible for the inclusion of non-Jews in the early Church. And all of God's saving activity until the end of time is due to the loving action of the Holy Spirit.

But perhaps the greatest marvel was the fact that weak, timid, and shallow men were changed into bold and wise men who would reach the ends of the earth to proclaim Jesus.