This morning’s Gospel reading is John 20:19–23:

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”

Being a student of language, I find Pentecost and one aspect of its immediate impact fascinating. I’ve learned and become conversational at times in French, Italian, and most consistently Irish, although my skill level in the first two are minimal at the moment.

These four don’t have much in common, except for varying degrees of encroachment by English. French and Italian come from the same Latin branch of the Indo-European language family, while English is a hybrid of the Anglo-Germanic-Nordic group and a forced marriage to Norman French after 1066. Irish comes from another family altogether — the Celtic branch of six distinct languages, two of which are dead-ish (Manx and Cornish), one barely surviving (Bretonish), and the others surviving at debatable levels.

Just these languages alone are so different from each other to block any meaningful communication without some cross-education. According to World Atlas, there may be as many as 7,151 languages in use at the moment, not counting “pidgins and creoles,” and presumably not counting dialect differences. There are over 140 “language families,” and four super-families: Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic, Sino-Tibetan, and Niger-Congo.

That’s a lot of languages — and a lot of isolation and insularity.

How did we get here? There are sociological and linguistic explanations, but there is also the biblical account in Genesis. In the Pentecost Vigil, the first reading comes from Genesis 11, in which the Lord creates language differences to punish an attempt to usurp His power:

The whole world spoke the same language, using the same words. While the people were migrating in the east, they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another, “Come, let us mold bricks and harden them with fire.” They used bricks for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky, and so make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered all over the earth.”

The LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the people had built. Then the LORD said: “If now, while they are one people, all speaking the same language, they have started to do this, nothing will later stop them from doing whatever they presume to do. Let us then go down there and confuse their language, so that one will not understand what another says.” Thus the LORD scattered them from there all over the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the speech of all the world. It was from that place that he scattered them all over the earth.

This lesson teaches us yet again about our right relationship with God. In Babel, mankind was repeating the Original Sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden — attempting to make themselves into gods. The Lord wants us to come to Him as sons and daughters, not as besiegers attempting to wrest control of Creation from His grasp.

And yet, this is the lesson that mankind struggles to learn every day. Original Sin manifests itself in different forms in different ages, but its character never changes. It is a rebellion against the Lord, a refusal to accept a steward role for Creation and truth and persistent efforts to reject His authority. Even if most of us don’t rebel at a macro level, we all rebel at the personal level. We all sin and all of us need grace to overcome it.

In Pentecost, we commemorate the final step of Christ’s saving act — sending the Holy Spirit to His apostles and disciples. Not only does the Holy Spirit give the apostles strength for their mission in our reading from Acts 2, it has one other very significant effect:

When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem. At this sound, they gathered in a large crowd, but they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language. They were astounded, and in amazement they asked, “Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans? Then how does each of us hear them in his native language? We are Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene, as well as travelers from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs, yet we hear them speaking in our own tongues of the mighty acts of God.”

The ability to proclaim in all languages gave Christ’s new church the ability to pursue His Great Commission: Go and make disciples of all nations. It also acted as a sign of Christ’s authority through the Holy Spirit, allowing those present to grasp immediately that the apostles had the Lord’s authority to proclaim the Word to the world.

But at an even deeper level, this follows the pattern of Christ Himself at the beginning of His mission. While in the desert for 40 days, Jesus in His human nature contends with the Serpent of the Garden and three times rejected his temptations. In doing so, Jesus redeemed the sins of Adam and Eve and the Israelites by refusing to usurp the Father’s authority for His own purposes. Jesus remains faithful even in torment and temptation, and in doing so redeems human nature and makes our salvation possible.

We can see the gift of tongues at Pentecost in the same manner. This gift from the Holy Spirit reverses the punishment of Genesis 11. It does not restore a single language to the world, but it allows God’s Good News to transcend the divisions of language. It offers the world an opportunity to unite in love and obedience to His authority rather than unite in rebellion and rejection of it.

All we need to do to participate is pray, “Come, Holy Spirit, come!” We can even do that in any language we like, whether it be Veni Sancte Spiritus or Tar Spiorad Naomh! The Lord has reversed our fortunes and redeemed us of our sinfulness — and all we need to do is invite Him into our hearts and obey His word.

The front-page image is a detail from “Pentecost” by Jean Restout, 1732. Currently on display at the Louvre. Via Wikimedia Commons. 

“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature, looking at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections from the main page can be found here.