One thousand nine hundred and ninety two (1992) years is the count. That’s how long it has been since the Catholic Church came to birth, and today is her birthday. Before that first Pentecost day, the Church had lived in the ‘womb’ of the Spirit and had undergone varied stages in her development. These stages are represented by different images as: a covenant people, a pilgrim people, a troop of God, people of God or Israel, etc. In these nascent but real forms, God was gradually and consistently revealing Himself. For example, to Adam and Eve, He showed that He was a lover who revealed His image in us; with Noah, He showed Himself a peacemaker—renewing humanity that had gone astray; with Abraham, He surrounds His own with blessings in their sojourn; with Moses, He became the deliverer of His pilgrim people and the lover of law and order; with David, He was the great conqueror who brought many nations to Himself; and finally in Jesus, He shows Himself a great lover, giving His life for the beloved. Pentecost universalizes God’s love to make it reach all the peoples of the earth.
Jesus lived on earth for 33 years, died and rose after three days, ascended into heaven 40 days later, and ten days after His ascension, He sent the Holy Spirit to give birth to the Church, exactly fifty days after the new Passover. The Passover is the Jewish feast commemorating the deliverance of God’s people from slavery. Pentecost is an agricultural feast called Shavout celebrated fifty days after the Passover in the Jewish calendar, in which is commemorated the giving of the law in Mount Sinai, fifty days after the exodus. When we celebrate Pentecost today, we recall in a more universal sense the deliverance of the new people of God (which encompasses all children of God) from the chaos of sin and death—our own Egypt—through the passion, death and resurrection of Christ. We celebrate the fifty days after our new Passover (Easter), when the Holy Spirit was sent to give birth to the Church. That first Pentecost, which was originally a Jewish Harvest festival but recreated by God to renew the face of the earth in a new harvest of regeneration is what we celebrate today as the birthday of the Catholic Church.
I say that it is the Birthday of the Catholic Church with every intentionality. Pentecost is not for Pentecostals—anymore than baptism is for Baptists. Pentecost is specifically a Catholic feast. Recall that before Jesus ascended into heaven, He asked the disciples to remain in Jerusalem until they received the Promise of the Father. In obedience to the words of their Master but also out of fear of the Jews, they locked themselves up in the cenacle until today. As if some great fire was kindled in them, they rose up today, left the Upper Room and went out to speak openly about an issue that had had them in hiding. They were no longer afraid of being arrested. Some other power had arrested them. Their listeners that day were people from many and diverse races and tongues who had gathered for the festival and each of them heard the words of the apostles in their own native language. The first time language created a barrier between people was at Babel. Pentecost was an undoing of Babel, creating one universal language that all could hear. Universal is a translation of the Greek word “katolikos,” from which we got the word catholic. It was as catholic that the Gospel could be preached to the whole world.
St. Paul, writing to the Romans affirms this fact: “Your faith is proclaimed in all the world” (Rom 1:8). And to the Colossians, he wrote: “The Gospel which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world is bearing fruit and growing” (Col 1:5-6). The feast of Pentecost is a wakeup call to all of us to put teeth into our Confirmation commitment to renew the face of the earth. Happy Birthday!
Fr. Chukwudi Jo Okonkwo