Read­ing Time: 3 minutes

Introduction

Since Monday of the Sev­enth Sunday of Paschal, Chris­ti­ans espe­cially, Cath­ol­ics have been pre­par­ing for the com­mem­or­a­tion of the des­cent or gift of the Holy Spir­it on the Apostles, on all believ­ers and what gen­er­ally, is termed the offi­cial birth of the Church. The feast of the des­cent of the Holy Spir­it con­cludes the paschal peri­od. What a won­der­ful way of mark­ing the end of the feast of the resur­rec­tion of Jesus! Finally, Jesus ful­fills his prom­ise of anoth­er Paraclete, the spir­it of truth, whom the Fath­er will send in his name to the dis­ciples, who will teach them everything, and remind them of all he has taught them. Hence­forth, Chris­ti­ans should carry­out Jesus’ instruc­tion to take the Gos­pel to every eth­nic group, bap­tiz­ing them and teach­ing them to observe all the teach­ings of Jesus (cf. Matt 28:16–20). The dis­ciples were pro­hib­ited by fear of the Jews of announ­cing the Gos­pels until they received the divine touch, the divine author­iz­a­tion and enable­ment that dis­pelled every fear from them. The Acts of the Apostles is a unique doc­u­ment­a­tion of their mis­sion­ary activ­it­ies. They boldly pro­claimed the mes­sage of sal­va­tion to all; announced, pro­fessed and con­fessed that Jesus is the son of God and that he is the saviour of the world who rose from the dead accord­ing to the will of the Fath­er. Finally, they bore wit­ness even with their lives. It is this same mes­sage that Chris­ti­ans are urged to con­tin­ue in and accord­ing to their vari­ous vocations. 

What Happened in Acts 2?

Just like the mis­take in the name of the incid­ent of Acts 2, there is also much con­fu­sion as regards what exactly happened on that day. Major­ity of Chris­ti­ans have con­tin­ued to dis­tort and cor­rupt the mes­sage of the Scrip­ture. What happened in Acts 2 is not a form of abracadabra or hocus-pocus. It was a ful­fil­ment of Jesus’ prom­ise to the apostles as recor­ded in Luke 24:49 and Acts 1:8. The mir­acle in Acts 2 does not con­sist in the fact that the apostles mes­mer­ized their audi­ence by speak­ing in for­eign lan­guages or that they uttered inde­cipher­able expres­sions. On the con­trary, the mir­acle con­sists in the fact that as they spoke, people of vari­ous tongues (lan­guages) and from vari­ous nations who gathered there under­stood them clearly in their own nat­ive lan­guages (dia­lect). That is, they received the word of God in their own lan­guages. This was the mir­acle. The mir­acle of the pro­clam­a­tion and spread­ing of the gos­pel mes­sage, the mes­sage of sal­va­tion without fear and with devo­tion. Def­in­itely, the spir­it of God is not respons­ible for any oth­er thing any­body is doing as far as this par­tic­u­lar incid­ent is con­cerned. The apostles did not speak in order to dis­play their capa­city to impress the people, or to make them­selves cen­ter of atten­tion and attrac­tion. What was at the cen­ter was not their capa­city to speak lan­guages they nev­er stud­ied, but the fear­less pro­clam­a­tion of the Word of God to all, and the Holy Spir­it made it pos­sible that they do that in lan­guages they nev­er stud­ied, but which were under­stood by those who spoke those lan­guages and dia­lects. This is where the accent should be not on our per­son­al comportment.

Conclusion    

How do Chris­ti­ans under­stand the gifts and the oper­a­tions of the Holy Spir­it? As Paul poin­ted out, the gifts of the Holy Spir­it are not for per­son­al aggrand­ize­ment. They are for the com­mon pur­pose. They are giv­en for the good of all. How do you use yours? We must beware of those who force the gift of the Holy Spir­it on them­selves. The dis­ciples hid them­selves for fear of the Jews. The Holy Spir­it came and dis­pelled such fear. We must ask God to take away from us the spir­it of fear, lying, injustice, cheat­ing, steal­ing, cor­rup­tion, par­ti­cip­a­tion in evil, false wit­ness, wicked­ness, idle­ness, lazi­ness, irre­spons­ib­il­ity, char­ac­ter assas­sin­a­tion and oth­er evils. This is what the Holy Spir­it should do in us. Fur­ther­more, we must cloth your­self with the fruits of the Holy Spir­it as lis­ted in Gala­tians 5:22–23. I wish you God’s spir­it always. Happy feast of the Holy Spir­it and happy new month. Sha­lom!                  

FOR DETAILS, GET YOUR OWN COPIES OF THE BOOK “THE WORD OF LIFE:
SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vols. I‑II-III)!! The reflec­tion for the Holy Spir­it Sunday is found in The Word of Life, vol. I, pages 289–303. Happy reading!

For details on how to get it, con­tact the author on this link: https://m.me/uchennabiblia?fbclid=IwAR2yeg4a6sDGBp9QGkIvKj6FSADumMokN6lshdE0zuo-JHs6qOmlhA7jyHo
or email me at: postmaster@uchennabiblia.com
or simply send an SMS on 08116100926, and I will get back to you.

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