Before Pentecost, during His Divine Ascension, our Lord Jesus Christ prophesied both the event and the reason it would happen, telling the disciples: “Receive ye power through the coming of the Holy Ghost upon you, and be ye my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and unto the end of the earth” (Pr 1:8). All the Apostles were in Jerusalem, and indeed “all of them were worshipping with one accord in prayer and supplication” (Pr 1:14). A necessary condition for the descent of the Holy Spirit was that there should not only be unity and unanimity among the Apostles, but also that the group of disciples should be complete, so that all of them could receive His gifts. Therefore, the Lord saw to it that the event of Pentecost took place immediately after the election of the twelfth disciple, Matthias.
Pentecost, the event of the Holy Spirit’s graduation, was experienced by Christ’s disciples:
- with a shout: “and there was a sound from heaven above, like the sound of a violent breath.”
- through the flaming tongues: “and they caused these dividing tongues of fire” to stand to each Apostle one by one,
- through their “conquest” by the Holy Spirit: “and were overcome by the Holy Spirit”
- and lastly, by their goodness to speak other languages: “and they spoke in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.”
prompting the Archbishop of Albania to comment:
“In this fiery way, all nationalistic and linguistic barriers were broken down and it was proclaimed that the horizon of Christian preaching was not Judea, but the whole world. The event of Pentecost reveals in a sublime way the ecumenical character of the Church” (Until the End of the Earth, p. 341).
Thus, Pentecost and the Mission were inextricably linked, not only through their ecumenical character, but also because of the interdependent relationship between them, since the Mission is the consequence, the sequence, the next step of Pentecost. St. Gregory Palamas also emphasizes this by saying “Pentecost includes the transfer from earth to heaven and the descent and diffusion of the Divine Spirit” (PG 151,248B-C). This is what the leading Apostle Peter does immediately after the event of the ascension of the Holy Spirit in his sermon, through which three thousand people believed in Christ and entered the Church.
