June 8, 2025 – Pentecost Sunday

Fr. Matthew Siegman

Many Catholics do not know that Pentecost is one of the most important feasts our Church celebrates. Until the changes in the liturgy after Vatican II in 1970, Pentecost had an octave, just like Easter. In fact, the Octave of Pentecost ranked higher than the Octave of Christmas in the Church’s calendar. Furthermore, the Sundays that we now call Ordinary Time (as in “numbered” or “ordinal” time, not “boring” and “normal” time) used to be “Sundays after Pentecost”: the entire season was a reminder of the importance of Pentecost! While the octave is gone and the church labels Sundays differently, we can still see the importance that the Church has traditionally assigned to Pentecost in the option for an extended vigil with four readings, echoing the Easter Vigil. Pentecost also retains a sequence, a beautiful piece of poetry that reflects on the feast and assist us in opening our hearts more fully to the graces God showers upon us as we celebrate the feast day.

We might wonder, though, “Why is this feast day so important to the Church?” The readings from the Extended Vigil shed some light on our Church’s thinking. In the reading from Exodus, we are reminded of the covenant God made with the children of Israel on Mount Sinai. He called his children out of Egypt and made of them a new nation called Israel. These people were not a nation in the modern sense of the term–they were more a confederation of tribes for most of their history–but they were a particular people in covenant with God. On Mount Sinai, God gave his people the commandments, he made them a holy nation so they could bring the world back to God, and he dwelt with them so that they might have the strength and courage to do this. The Spirit of God led the people by day and night. When they built the Ark of the Covenant and the Tent of Meeting, the Spirit of God dwelt there, with his people.

We also have a reading from Ezekiel, and its odd vision where the Spirit of God reanimates dry bones, bringing them back to life. To understand this vision, it is important to note that Ezekiel was writing in the time of the Babylonian Exile. The Northern Kingdom, Israel, had been destroyed 150 years earlier, and the Southern Kingdom, Judah, was now destroyed as well. The temple was gone, the ark was gone, and the Spirit of God had left Jerusalem. The dry bones that Ezekiel sees are a symbol of Israel, a nation that is destroyed. In the vision, God breathes new life into the bones of Israel. This prophecy is partially fulfilled, in a way, after 70 years of exile, when the captives returned home to Jerusalem, but even that nation–a shell of its former self–was eventually destroyed by the Romans, who wiped out Jerusalem in 70AD. And the Spirit of God never returned to the city of Jerusalem, even after they rebuilt the Temple.

God does not leave his prophecies partially fulfilled, though. Christ, while he was on this earth, called his apostles and his disciples out of their former ways of life so that they might follow him. He was, in fact, calling them forward to create a new Israel: the Church. And on Pentecost, Jesus fulfilled the promise he made over and over again in St. John’s Gospel that “the Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.” (John 14:26) This Spirit, symbolized by tongues of fire, came into the hearts of each person present and gave them new life. It was, as Ezekiel the prophet said, as if sinews and flesh covered the dry bones and brought them back to life. If this analogy seems odd, remember what St. Paul teaches us: “As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body […] and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.” (1 Cor 12:12-13)

By giving new life through the power of the Holy Spirit to his apostles and disciples, God did something incredible: he breathed life into what we now call the Church. The sequence fittingly ends with the words, “Give them virtue’s sure reward; // Give them your salvation, Lord; // Give them joys that never end. Amen. // Alleluia.” As God fills us with the gift of the Holy Spirit, we should desire nothing less than salvation and eternal joy.