Beloved in Christ,
Greetings to you all in the name of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.
In this month we celebrate the Pentecost day. For Christians, Pentecost day is a Holy day on which we commemorate the coming of the Holy Spirit on the early followers of Jesus.
Before the events of the first Pentecost, which came a few weeks after Jesus’ death and resurrection, there were followers of Jesus, but no movement that could be meaningfully called “ the Church”. Thus, from a historical point of view, Pentecost is the day on which the Church was started. This is also true from a spiritual perspective, since the Spirit brings the Church in to existence and enlivens it. Thus Pentecost is considered as the Church’s birthday. The English word “Pentecost” is the transliteration of the Greek word pentekostos, which means “fifty”. It comes from the ancient Christian expression pentekoste hemera, which means “fiftieth day”.
The Pentecost event is recorded in the New Testament book known as The Acts of the Apostles. The chapter 2 begins, “And when the day of Pentecost had come, the first followers of Jesus were all together in one place” (Acts 2:1). All of a sudden, a sound came from heaven, like a strong wind, filling the house where the people had gathered. Something like tongues of fire rested on their heads. “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them the ability to speak” (Acts 2: 4). The languages spoken by the early Christians were intelligible and were heard by thousands of Jewish pilgrims who had come to Jerusalem to celebrate Shavuot.
The content of the miraculous messages had to do with God’s mighty works (Acts 2:11). Many who heard these messages in their on languages were amazed, though others thought the Christians were just drunk. At some point, Peter, one of the leading followers of Jesus, stood up and preached his first sermon. He interpreted the events of that morning in light of a prophecy of the Hebrew prophet Joel. In that text, God promised to pour out his Spirit on all flesh, empowering diverse people to exercise divine power. This would be a sign of the coming “day of the Lord” (Acts 2: 16-21, Joel 2: 28-32). Peter went on to explain that Jesus had been raised and had poured out the Spirit in fulfillment of God’s p promise through Joel (2: 32-33). When the crowd asked what they should do, Peter urged them to turn their lives around and be baptized in the name of Jesus. Then they would be forgiven and would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Acts reports that about 3,000 people were added to the Church that day. Not a bad response to Peter’s first sermon!
May God bless you all
Yours in Christ,
Rev. C. C. Sabu
