Pentecost
Pentecost was an important Jewish festival which marked the harvest. Often Jews would travel to Jerusalem to celebrate in the capital city.
Pentecost was celebrated fifty days after the PassoverJewish festival which remembers the escape of the ancient Israelites from Egypt..
The disciples of Jesus had seen him after his resurrectionThe rising of Christ from the dead, three days after the crucifixion. and witnessed his ascension (return) to Heaven.
Those same disciples are staying in Jerusalem when a miraculous event occurs:
The disciples experienced a violent wind and tongues of fire came from heaven and rested on each of the disciples.
Suddenly the disciples were able to speak in different languages (tongues) to all the people who had come to Jerusalem for the festival.
The festival of Pentecost is still important to Christians today because it represents the beginning of the Christian Church. It reminds them how Jesus鈥 promise that God would send the Holy SpiritThe third element of the 'Trinity' (God is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit). The Holy Spirit is active as God's presence and power in the world. was fulfilled.
Today Christians believe the Holy Spirit continues to help them to live their lives and to tell others about Christianity.
Saint Paul鈥檚 teaching on the Church
In the New TestamentThe second part of the Christian Bible containing 27 books consisting of four types of literature: letters (epistles), gospels, history and prophecy., the Apostle Paul (an early Church leader) writes to the Church in Corinth in Greece and explains what the Church should be like (1 Corinthians 12).
The Church in Corinth was divided over spiritual gifts given to the Church by God. Paul reminds the Church that all the gifts are given by the same God and should be used to help the Church, rather than to divide it.
Paul says the gifts include wisdom, knowledge, healing, miraculous powers and prophecy. Such gifts should be used positively and for the common good.
Paul uses the image of the human body to point the way to how the Church should work together for the good of all its members. For example, Paul says that it is no good if the body was only an eye because it would no longer be able to hear. Alternatively, if the whole body was an ear it would be no good either because it wouldn鈥檛 be able to smell.
Paul goes so far as to say that when one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers. This shows how caring for each other within the Church is vital as members鈥 lives are so interconnected - just as each person in the Church is connected to Jesus, who is the head.