PENTECOST 2026
Acts 2:1-11; 1Cor 12:3-7, 12-13; John 20:19-23
I suspect that you need the gift of tongues to negotiate that list of nations in the First Reading. I recall that, when I was based at the Diocesan Youth Centre (Castlerigg Manor) a 15/16 year old lad received a spontaneous round of applause for completing the reading faultlessly. (Incidentally, although that seems like yesterday, that lad will now be in his fifties, a reminder of how time passes, and an encouragement to live every moment fully.) Meanwhile, St. Paul emphasises the unity of the baptised in the one Body of Christ.
Then we come to THAT Gospel! Why, why, why, do we use it today, even though it describes an event on Easter Sunday evening? I mentioned last week the confusion to which, I suspect, it contributes.
It is, in fact, obvious why it is used today: it refers to a different way in which the Spirit may be given. The Pentecost event is spectacular, and the Easter Sunday evening and Pentecost episodes respectively reverse and confirm the experience of the prophet Elijah on Mount Horeb.
You may remember what happened to Elijah. It is related in the First Book of Kings, chapter 19, verses 9 to 18. Elijah spent the night in a cave on the mountain, but was then summoned by God to appear before Him on the mountainside. Then, we are told, “the Lord Himself went by”. There were an earthquake, a mighty wind, and a fire, but the Lord was not in any of them. Instead, He spoke to Elijah in the “still, small voice” of a gentle breeze.
All of this is repeated and, we might suggest, reversed at Pentecost, not on a mountain, but in the Upper Room. There is a “sound like a mighty rushing wind which filled the entire house” recalling the wind and earthquake of Elijah’s experience. Then come the “divided tongues, as of fire” reminding us of Elijah’s fire. Yet it seems that now God IS in the wind and fire, because it is as the tongues of fire come down on the inhabitants of the room that they are filled by the Holy Spirit.
The giving of the Spirit is spectacular, and the results equally so, with a form of spontaneous translation transforming the speech of the apostles. Some people, including Pentecostals and members of the Charismatic Renewal, claim to receive the Holy Spirit in a similar manner today. I do not have sufficient experience of those movements to be able to comment, other than to say that what is claimed as the gift of tongues doesn’t appear to be intelligible to anyone.
It is certainly exuberant. Perhaps that is my problem: I recall throwing my school cap in the air at the Giant Axe as the ninth goal went into the Prescot net in December 1962, but in general I am not prone to exuberance. Indeed, I have a degree of sympathy with the priest, now deceased, from the Shrewsbury Diocese who found himself in a Charismatic gathering in New York. As a rather buxom lady descended on him with a view to enfolding him in an embrace, he cried out “Oh no!. Please don’t! I’m British!” Still more am I in agreement with the early Church Father who claimed that the Gift of Tongues was fulfilled in his day—and hence in ours—by the preaching of the Gospel throughout the world in all the languages into which it had been translated, of which there are many more today.
As for today’s Gospel, it presents us with the bestowal of the Spirit in a much gentler form, which resembles more closely the gentle breeze or the “still small voice” through which God spoke to Elijah. On Easter Sunday evening, the Risen Christ breathed on the apostles with the words “Receive the Holy Spirit”.
Clearly, then, the Sprit may be given to us in different ways, as St. Paul points out to the Christians of Corinth. Essentially though, we receive the Spirit through our Baptism—also, as a result of the unfortunate separation of Confirmation from Baptism—at our Confirmation. What matters is that we have received the Spirit, and that we continue to respond to the Spirit’s guidance and promptings within the one Body which is the Church, fed by the one Body which is the Eucharist, without which we starve.
