Read­ing Time: 2 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.….

Clarification of term and idea

Gen­er­ally, Chris­ti­ans refer to this Sunday as the “Pente­cost” Sunday. Pente­cost due to the Greek term used by Eng­lish Trans­la­tions to render the Hebrew; secondly, prob­ably because they think the term Pente­cost either means Holy Spir­it or is a syn­onym for the Holy Spir­it; and thirdly, because it was on this day that the apostles received the gift of the Holy Spir­it. When in Acts 2:1, Luke says “when the day of pente­costēs had fully arrived…”, what he means is when it was time for the Jew­ish feast of weeks, the dis­ciples were with one accord in one place. It was on this day that the Holy Spir­it des­cen­ded on them. As could be seen, it is this Greek word pente­costēs, also found as pente­costes in the Vul­gate (Lat­in Bible), that almost all the Eng­lish Trans­la­tions trans­lated as Pente­cost. It is only the Com­plete Jew­ish Bible that has Shavu-òt (see explan­a­tion later), which is the Hebrew word that is usu­ally trans­lated as Pentecost.

Conclusion    

How do Chris­ti­ans under­stand the gifts and the oper­a­tions of the Holy Spir­it? As Paul noted in his First Epistle to the Cor­inthi­ans, 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 and on oth­ers. 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. Sha­lom!  

FOR DETAILS, GET YOUR OWN COPIES OF THE BOOK “THE WORD OF LIFE: SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vols. I and II)!! The reflec­tion for the gift of the Holy Spir­it (B) is found in vol. I pages 289–303 and vol. II pages 229–231. 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.

           

 Email This Post