What if the angel Gabriel showed up at the foot of your bed in the middle of the night and said, “I’ve got a surprise for you. Tonight, you can come with me into any scene from the scriptures that you want.” Let me ask you, where would you go? For me, hands down, I’m telling Gabriel “floor it to Pentecost my angelic friend!”
The Power of Pentecost
We read in the Acts of the Apostles, that after the resurrection, the apostles were told by Jesus not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for “the promise of the Father about which you have heard me speak; for John baptized with water, but in a few days, you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”[1] The apostles had seen countless miracles at the hands of Jesus, and even at their own when they had been given authority to perform miraculous deeds in His name.[2] This time, however, was going to be different.
At Pentecost, the gift of the Holy Spirit effectively clothed the disciples with the power that Jesus told them they would receive.[3] This is the beating heart of Evangelization: God has given His Spirit to His people and set their hearts on fire, in order to set the world on fire with his love.[4]
Our Own Unworthiness
If Gabriel were to take me to Pentecost tonight, I would imagine that once back home, after seeing such glory, I’d be reminded of all the times I have ignored the prompt to evangelize. Typically, there are two reasons we don’t follow through in such moments. One: the Spirit actually stops our well-intended impulse to evangelize for a divine reason unknown to us. Two: we quench the Spirit’s invitation to live life in the Spirit to the fullest, with our hearts wide open to letting heaven crash into earth through the power of the Gospel,[5] proclaimed with love, in an authentic way. The Holy Spirit showed up with tongues of fire! To think that the Holy Spirit doesn’t want our lives to be ablaze with His presence is a theology and spirituality that is lacking a receptivity to what Jesus said his disciples would be clothed with: POWER![6]
Clothed with Power
The mission of the apostles was mammoth! As they watched Jesus ascend into heaven with “Go and make disciples of all nations” still ringing in their ears, perhaps they were thinking, ‘I don’t know how this is going to turn out, but I trust in the Lord’s word.’ When Pentecost finally came, tongues of fire appeared over the heads of those in the upper room and the surging power of God’s presence was poured into them as they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.[7] “Filled with the Holy Spirit” — think about that for a moment, “filled!” That’s our life in Christ if we want it! Let us absolutely abandon any habits of ours that dampen our enthusiasm and hunger for life filled with the Holy Spirit. For that is what our life in Christ is meant to be.
The apostles proclaimed the Gospel, overflowing with God’s power and love, and were unable to contain it. They took it to the streets with words from heaven on their lips. This is a witness to how we need to pray and live our lives guided by the Holy Spirit; to worship the Lord in Spirit and in truth, going out knowing that out of the fullness of love for God in our hearts[8] will we speak words that touch people with God’s love. For God has first loved us[9] and when we fill our heart with the treasure of this love, there will be many wonderful and amazing things to share day by day.[10] Why must we be any less effective than the apostles?
Cooperators with the Truth
Even in the earliest days of the Church, the 12 apostles had help in their mission of evangelization. Of course, there were many others with them on the Day of Pentecost, including the Blessed Mother! But we also remember names like Apollos, Lydia, Prisca and Aquila, Barnabas, Silas, and Paul himself — and there were many others — who played key roles in the mission of the Church in her earliest days. These figures, some of whom were ordained clergy and others who were not, were known as “apostles” and “prophets.” The hierarchy — literally sacred order — of the Church doesn’t exclude anybody from mission. Rather, it empowers every member of the Church for mission!
The mission of the Apostles remains in the Church to this day. We read in the Catechism that, “the whole Church is apostolic, in that she remains, through the successors of St. Peter and the other apostles, in communion of faith and life with her origin: and in that she is sent out into the whole world.”[11] So while the Church is apostolic in that she is built on the foundation of the apostles[12] and continues to be guided by the successors of the apostles, we can be confident that the Lord truly calls each of us to the joy of Holy Spirit-inspired evangelization. Their mission is our mission because the one mission is HIS mission.
[1] Acts 1:4b-5.
[2] Matthew 10.
[3] Luke 24:49.
[4] Luke 12:54.
[5] Romans 1:16.
[6] Luke 24:49.
[7] Acts 2:4.
[8] Luke 6:45.
[9] 1 John 4:19.
[10] John 16:13.
[12] Ephesians 2:20.