Last week, on Pentecost Sunday, we heard about the dramatic, spectacular outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The Apostles ‘began to speak foreign languages’ despite not having completed any foreign language course. This ability was attributed to the Holy Spirit they had been filled with. ‘The crowd gathered and was bewildered because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.’ They were so ‘amazed and astonished [that] they asked […] “What does this mean?”’ However, some of those gathered had their own simple interpretation of the situation: ‘[they] sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”’ It wasn’t a particularly polite or dignified assessment. It must have hurt a bit because Simon Peter began his speech by referring to that harsh judgment: ‘these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning.’ The Apostles have just started the mission they were commissioned to – as we heard in today’s gospel reading – and from that very moment they had to explain and justify themselves and what was going on. Not the easiest of introductions to a new job… As it turned out soon, much tougher questions lay ahead. Questions that would challenge their own life-long held beliefs that they shared with their fellow Jews.
The early Church consisted of devout Jews who had been brought up in the Jewish tradition and religion. Shema Israel, the centrepiece of Jewish daily prayer reveals the very core of the faith: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.’ The belief in the one and only God made the Jews quite an unusual people in an ancient Middle East populated by a great variety of polytheistic beliefs. Over the centuries the Jews struggled to stick to that concept, tempted by more tangible cults of various idols – as the Old Testament testifies aplenty. But when the Jews remained faithful, they were met with derision from their neighbours and sometimes they paid the ultimate price, as the biblical Books of the Maccabees tell us. So, this is the wider religious context of the events that unfolded with the public emergence of Jesus. Initially, He was considered to be the messiah – the liberator of the oppressed people of Israel – on a par with the heroes of the Jewish glorious past. His followers built high their religious and political expectations, regardless of Jesus’ declarations to the contrary. His crucifixion completely shattered those dreams and the cause was lost. The body of their fallen hero was buried – like many others before him – and that seemed to be the end of the story. Until the following Yom Reeshone, the day after the holy day of Sabbath, that we call Sunday, when His tomb turned out to be empty and He himself appeared to those who had followed Him faithfully: the women and the Apostles. Jesus’ resurrection completely changed the narrative of who He was; it became obvious that He was someone incomparably greater than any of the heroes of the past. Such a realisation inevitably caused a massive theological conundrum: how to reconcile the monotheistic Jewish faith (there’s only one God) with their belief that Jesus was of divine nature?
In the days following Jesus’ resurrection, He didn’t appear to anyone beyond the closed circle of his disciples. St Luke’s gospel presents that period as the time when Jesus taught them in private: ‘He opened their minds to understand the scriptures.’ (24:45) The disciples looked back at Jesus’ public ministry, this time not through the lens of political militant activism as they used to do. This time round Jesus’ return to life was the focal point. Now they started to comprehend Jesus’ teachings, like these words: ‘Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.’ (John 14:9) or ‘The Father and I are one.’ (John 10:30) The concept of the Holy Trinity – one God in three Persons – wasn’t a purely academic, speculative theological idea without any real-life consequences. Exactly the opposite! Squaring this theological circle had far-reaching implications. The monotheistic Jewish founding fathers of the Church saw Jesus as the fulfilment of the Old Testamental promises and prophecies. Their faith in Jesus wasn’t a new religion but a natural continuation of their centuries-old faith. The split between Christianity and the Jewish faith developed eventually, but that’s a story for another occasion.
Unlike our spiritual forefathers two millennia ago we pretty much accept this article of our faith. The main challenge we might face in regard to the mystery of ‘one God in three Persons’ is about how to explain it to those who question it. The limitations of human language are the main stumbling block because it uses terms and definitions based on the observable world. So, the best way to describe spiritual realities beyond the physical realm is by metaphors or images; although they still offer just a glimpse rather than the full picture. Among many metaphors used by various theologians over the centuries, I find one particularly helpful, and that’s of a family. The wife and husband love each other; their strong loving relationship becomes flesh in their child. Similarly, though on a completely different level and in different ways, God the Father and God the Son love each other so much that their love is the person of the Holy Spirit. St John summarised it in the briefest possible way: ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:16) Love doesn’t exist in a void but it is a dynamic relationship of giving and receiving. Such love predates the creation of the universe as hinted by Jesus in his prayer at the Last Supper: ‘Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.’ (John 17:5). As adopted children of God, we are called to replicate His loving attitude in our lives.
