A Homily for Whitsun Day
And they were all
filled with the Holy Ghost,
and began to speak
with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
—Acts 2:4
This day, Pentecost or Whitsun Day,
is called the “birthday of the Church.”
It was on the Jewish feast of Shevuot, or Pentecost, the fiftieth day
after the Passover, immediately following the resurrection and ascension of
Jesus Christ, that the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles, empowering them
to fulfill Jesus’s promise: “When the Comforter is come, . . . even the Spirit
of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me: and ye also
shall bear witness”
On that Pentecost day, the Holy
Spirit did come, and the Apostles—the Church—spilled forth from the locked room
in which they had been cowering, and became witnesses indeed. Although the Apostles were all Galileans,
they found themselves telling the good news to people from every part of the
known world, and being understood by each person in his own language.
Thus on Pentecost did God reverse
the curse pronounced at
The whole world spoke the same language,
using the same words. While men were
migrating in the east, they came upon a valley in the
When, in ancient times, human beings
had all spoken the same language, they were filled with pride and set about
trying to reach heaven by their own efforts.
Their pride was symbolized by the great ziggurat, or tower, at
But on Pentecost, by the power of
the Holy Spirit, twelve Galileans, who had up to that day never traveled so far
as a hundred miles from the place where they were born, found themselves able
to speak in all those languages and more.
They burst from that room, propelled as if by a mighty wind and by fire,
and spilled out into the streets. So
great was their joy, so great their inspiration, that even though it was still
early in the morning some people thought they must be drunk. Thus was the Church intoxicated by the Holy
Spirit, unable to contain itself, but eager to share with everyone in
The author of the Acts of the
Apostles, the Evangelist Saint Luke, was not there on Pentecost. He did not write his account of it until at
least thirty years later, after having gathered information from the Apostles
themselves and other witnesses. And the
main fact that came out after all that time, after the rushing wind and the
tongues of fire, was the breaking down of the language barrier. The Apostles spoke as the Spirit gave them
utterance, and they were understood by all those who heard them, everyone in
his own language.
This gift of tongues, this ability
to tell of the wonderful works of God in real languages to real people,
wherever they come from and whatever their native speech, symbolizes the
universal mission of the Church. It is
the empowerment of the Church to fulfill the Great Commission, given it by
Jesus just before his Ascension: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all
things whatsoever I have commanded you.”
How daunting must that task have
seemed to those who heard it spoken by the risen Lord’s own lips! “Teach all nations”? Was he crazy?
Even their Aramaic was so heavily accented that people in
The Pentecost experience is the
reversal of the disastrous project of the
Pentecost, or Whitsun Day, is called
the birthday of the Church; it is, therefore, our birthday, because we are the
Church. This morning, because of what
happened on Pentecost, God will be worshipped and the Eucharist will be
celebrated in hundreds of languages all over the world. Not only Parthians and Medes, Romans and
Judeans, Greeks and Arabians, but also Chinese and Japanese, Philippinos and
Malaysians, Bengalis and Tamils, Kikuyus and Ibos, Inuits and Oaxacans, to name
just a few, will all hear in their own languages, about the wonderful works of
God.
And it all began on that feast of
Pentecost fifty days after the resurrection and ten days after the Ascension of
Jesus Christ, when twelve of his chosen followers, in an upper room in
And what did the Apostles say, when
they told all of those strangers, each in his own language, about the wonderful
works of God? What they said has been
preserved for us, and it represents the earliest profession of the faith of the
Church. It is good news today, just as it
was good news in first century
Men of
For David says of him: ‘I have set the
LORD alway before me; for he is on my right hand, therefore I shall not fall. Wherefore my heart is glad, and my glory
rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope.
For why? thou shalt not leave my soul in hell; neither shalt thou suffer
thy Holy One to see corruption. Thou
shalt show me the path of life: in thy presence is the fulness of joy, and at
thy right hand there is pleasure for evermore.’
My brothers, one can confidently say to
you about the patriarch David that he died and was buried, and his tomb is in
our midst to this day. But since he was
a prophet and knew that God had sworn an oath to him that he would set one of
his descendants upon his throne, he foresaw and spoke of the resurrection of
the Messiah, that neither was he abandoned to the netherworld nor did his flesh
see corruption. God raised this Jesus;
of this we are all witnesses.
Exalted at the right hand of God, he
received the promise of the holy Spirit from the Father and poured it forth, as
you both see and hear. For David did not
go up into heaven, but he himself said: ‘THE LORD
said unto my Lord, “Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy
footstool.”’
Therefore let the whole house of
04 June 2006
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