Pentecost

Tomorrow, we Celebration of Pentecost the birthday of the church and the Coming of the Holy Spirit. 

Someone has written an interesting take from ann imaginary eyewitness to the first Pentecost.

“People ask me about it every once in a while. I remember it as through it were yesterday -- though it's been twenty years or more since then. History was being made, the end of an old era, the beginning of the new -- and I was there.

I was 19 or so, up to Jerusalem from Galilee for Passover. Just a kid. It was the year they crucified Jesus, a fellow Galilean. I was stunned, heartbroken. After his death I just didn't go home. I hung around with some of his followers, in hiding actually. And then on Sunday, word came that he had risen from the dead. And so I stayed in the city.

Those were heady days, with Jesus appearing to the apostles and others for weeks on end. Then he ascended, went up into heaven. We were to wait in the city, the apostles told us. Something about power and witnessing and the Holy Spirit. So we waited -- about 120 of us -- meeting morning and evening, talking, reading scripture, praying. Nearly ten days we waited like that.

Then one morning when we had gathered together for early prayer -- about 8 o'clock or so -- the building where we were meeting was hit by a whirlwind -- or so it seemed. You could hear the howling of the wind but couldn't feel it in the room.

"O dear Jesus," someone called out. And then came the flames -- dancing flames appeared in the room above us.

"God Almighty," another person shouted. Peter was praying loudly, other apostles joining in. It was eerie, when I think about it. Wind that didn't blow, flames that didn't burn -- like the glory of God on the mountain when he appeared to Moses.

All over the room flames were licking, flaring over people. And as they did it seemed like the brother or the sister would explode. Joy would flood their faces, tears course down their cheeks, praise fill their lips. Hands were up and down. People were laughing and weeping, kneeling and standing on tiptoes reaching up, as it were, to God….

Come down, O Love divine, 

seek thou this soul of mine, 

and visit it with thine own ardor glowing; 

O Comforter, draw near, 

within my heart appear, 

and kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing. 

O let it freely burn, 

till earthly passions turn 

to dust and ashes in its heat consuming; 

and let thy glorious light 

shine ever on my sight, 

and clothe me round, the while my path illuming. 

And so the yearning strong, 

with which the soul will long, 

shall far outpass the power of human telling; 

for none can guess its grace, 

till Love create a place 

wherein the Holy Spirit makes a dwelling.

Bianco da Siena - Translated by Richard Frederick Littledale