Living Catholic with Father Don Wolf
Father Don Wolf, a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, offers a Catholic perspective on the issues confronting each person today.
Living Catholic with Father Don Wolf
Pentecost: Spirit, Wind and Fire | June 8, 2025
The feast of Pentecost deserves our renewed attention. While most Catholics readily celebrate Christmas and Easter with appropriate fervor, Pentecost—one of Christianity's most ancient celebrations with direct scriptural roots—often passes with minimal recognition.
Unlike many Christian observances that were established after the New Testament era, Pentecost existed as a significant Jewish festival (Shavuot) long before it became associated with the descent of the Holy Spirit.
Originally marking the grain harvest approximately fifty days after Passover, it evolved to commemorate Moses receiving the Law on Mount Sinai. This dual significance of thanksgiving for both physical and spiritual sustenance made it a major pilgrimage feast that drew Jews from throughout the Roman Empire to Jerusalem.
Against this rich backdrop, the dramatic events in Acts 2 take on deeper significance. The "driving wind," "tongues as of fire," and miraculous speaking in different languages weren't random supernatural phenomena but deeply meaningful symbols connecting God's past actions with this new chapter in salvation history. The wind echoes creation and exodus narratives where God's breath brings life and freedom. The fire recalls divine manifestations from Abraham to Moses. The transcending of language barriers reverses Babel's confusion and proclaims the gospel's universal nature.
In this episode, Father Wolf offers a refreshing perspective on speaking in tongues, distinguishing it from pure ecstasy and describing it as "a door being opened in a person's personality." He also highlights Bishop Barron's intriguing observation that the disciples' proclamation of "Christos Kyrios" (Christ is Lord) directly challenged the prevailing "Caesar Kyrios" (Caesar is Lord) of Roman society—a subtle pronunciation change with revolutionary implications.
The Pentecostal experience remains available today, not merely as extraordinary manifestations but as an empowerment to proclaim fundamental truth.
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Father Don Wolf is a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. Living Catholic also broadcasts on Oklahoma Catholic Radio several times per week, with new episodes airing every Sunday.
This is Living Catholic with Father Don Wolfe. This show deals with living the Catholic faith in our time, discovering God's presence in our lives and finding hope in His Word. And now your host, father Don Wolfe.
Speaker 2:Welcome Oklahoma to Living Catholic. I'm Father Don Wolfe, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish and rector of the Shrine of Blessed Stanley Rother. This Sunday is the Feast of Pentecost. While it fits comfortably in the liturgical calendar, it has been a major feast of the Church since its inception. We mostly don't pay that much attention to it. Probably for us, in our environment, it has to do with the fact that school is letting out and harvest time is here, summer is beginning and the rest of the world is moving by at its own breakneck pace, not to mention the fact that we're just downstream, a couple of weeks from Memorial Day, when the surrounding society doesn't support what we do in the church and we have no firm footing when it comes to celebrating these church events don't have that much effect on us. Footing when it comes to celebrating these church events don't have that much effect on us. We don't have a lot of time left over to sit up and recognize one more stellar day in the life of the Catholic Church, which is too bad for us, since this feast day is one that has deep roots in the Jewish liturgical calendar as well and has a remarkable pedigree. It's one of the few days we pay attention to that which the Bible itself points us toward. After all, we celebrate Christmas, with all of its surrounding traditions and optimism, as the time when Jesus was born, but there wasn't a place in the Old Testament or in the New in which anyone looked forward to and mentioned Christmas Day. It's a perfectly good thing to celebrate, and we do, with all of the justification and gusto that it deserves, but it's not written into the calendar of events prescribed for the people of God. The same caveat goes for Lent and Easter and Ascension Thursday. There are times we remember and celebrate appropriately, but they're part of the calendar we put together after we read the New Testament, not because they were appointed for us.
Speaker 2:But Pentecost is different. Originally it was a harvest festival structured to be about 50 days after Passover. The word in Hebrew was shavuot, which means weeks, and translated in Greek as 50th, which is where the word Pentecost comes from. Remember that the Greek word pente, as in Pentagon, means five or in this case, 50th. I say more or less 50 days because Israel is about the same latitude as Oklahoma and the grain sowed in early spring would be about ready for harvest at just about this time, as the grain in Oklahoma is about ready to be harvested, but nobody can calculate the exact day when harvest is going to begin, since weather and climate can vary enough to make the harvest significantly later. But it was understood to be about 50 days after Passover. Later on in the history of the Jewish liturgical experience, it was also claimed as the day when Moses received the law on Mount Sinai.
Speaker 2:From being a memorial of thanksgiving for the new crop, pentecost became a celebration of the great harvest of justice and order and uniqueness given by God to his people of Israel. When this feast day came around and was celebrated at the heart of the Jewish world in Jerusalem, it attracted pious Jews of means. After all, who else could travel from all over the empire to come and give thanks for what they had received? The gift of God was something more than the bread they ate. It was also the means by which they lived their lives as a people peculiarly given to God's own presence in the world. It was a feast of thanksgiving to God for the law entrusted to the people of Israel. Not only that, it was one of those curious numbers from the Old Testament that we see reinforced over and over. There's nothing magical about it, but 50 adds up to seven, sevens, seven is the number of days of creation. An entire week and a week of weeks, being 49, is completed on the 50th day, so Pentecost becomes the 50th after Passover. All of these factors together make it a big deal, something to pay attention to, which is what happens among the apostles in the Acts of the Apostles.
Speaker 2:50 days after the resurrection, the whole city of Jerusalem was filled with people from all over the Jewish world who had come to celebrate this great feast. Remember, they were gathered for Pentecost. The celebration of this day was the occasion for what happened, not the celebration of what took place. When it happened, they were all gathered in order to have their own recognition of the day of Pentecost. And as they were gathered so it is described in the Acts of the Apostles these several things took place.
Speaker 2:All of them were out of the ordinary. Each of them has a kind of long pedigree when it comes to understanding what they mean. They're more than simply an occurrence. They're each an indication of something important and notable. It's like when there's a swearing-in of the president. He holds his right hand up, palm out, and puts his other hand on a Bible. It's a gesture that's part of the swearing-in. It's not simply an accidental placement of his hands or a casual option for his posture. It's the agreed-upon indication of honesty, sincerity and commitment. So also when these moments take place at Pentecost, they mean that something important is taking place. They also mean that we should pause and pay attention. So we should run through these events of the day of Pentecost, but let's first keep in mind the overall event. It is this Everyone was gathered, startling things took place, and then St Peter summed up what it meant. And the summing up wasn't the extraordinary events but was a catechetical lesson on the meaning of the history of Israel and the ministry of Jesus for the salvation of all.
Speaker 2:When we come to the events of Pentecost, or even use the word Pentecostal, we're liable to fix our eyes on the extraordinary and unrepeatable rather than on the great moment of teaching that took place. In the long run, it's the teaching, the putting together the disparate elements that formed one great overarching structure of life and understanding. It's the teaching that counts. What was it that Father Karl Rahner said? We ask God for the strength to do the extraordinary so that we can avoid doing the ordinary. That's true enough in this case. It's easy to focus on the amazing events of Pentecost and diminish the ordinary accomplishments there.
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, St Peter stands up and teaches. In fact, his teaching is so powerful that many are added to the life of the faithful that day. But when we read the passages, we're overwhelmed by speaking in tongues and the wild rushing winds, more than we are by the power of his words to convince and satisfy. It would seem we're more taken with the phenomena around the principal achievement than we are of the achievement itself. As we go through all that took place on this great feast day, we should endeavor to keep in mind at the end of the day, st Peter stood up, provided a lesson to the hungry hearts of his listeners and then provided them with the sacrament they longed for. Doesn't that sound familiar to us? But to the events that surprised everyone on that day, and then to their impact. First of all, as the apostles were gathered as part of this great feast they were Jews, after all they heard a driving wind, tongues as a fire appeared, and they began to speak in different languages. So we'll go through those manifestations one by one, but they're all related.
Speaker 2:First of all, what the disciples heard was something like a quote wind, unquote. What the Bible describes is a word used only twice in the whole Bible. It has the same root word as the Greek word for spirit or breath, but it's not the regular word used for it. Reading this description is exactly accurate. It sounded like wind, both in that it had the sound of air rushing past, as well as the fact that when you said the word, it sounded something like you were saying wind. I don't know if we have a good example of such a thing in English. It would be something like saying, as they were gathered there, the window blew open. The sound of the word window, since it sounds like wind, as well as the implication that it blew open somehow by the force of the air rushing past it. That gives us a hint that it's related and that we ought to pay attention to the force of what was happening. Now, that's not a translation. It's more of a poetic allusion to the kind of thing they heard, but it's worth paying attention to, and we should also pay attention to the fact that wind, breath, spirit and speaking are words that are also related. That is to say, when the wind blows, we know it's like a breath that we exhale.
Speaker 2:We speak by blowing air across our vocal cords. That's how we make sound, and the sounds we make are what makes the words we use as we speak. And the sounds we make are what makes the words we use as we speak. To hear a driving wind and then have it followed by a description of speaking languages isn't an accident for the careful listener. When the wind blew on Pentecost, it was an open door for something to happen. Plus, the word spirit is the Latin word for breath.
Speaker 2:When Adam was formed from the clay of the earth, he received life from God's breath. He was literally breathed into and he began breathing. That's where the word spirit comes from. It's our understanding of what spirit is. To be inspired, for example, means to be breathed into no-transcript. That person knows what inspiration is. It's to receive a new breath. It's to be breathed into. So as the great wind fills the space, everyone became aware that something extraordinary was happening.
Speaker 2:This anticipation was all the more heightened because of the times that wind played such an important role in the Old Testament. The most notable was when Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt and came to the Red Sea. They were stuck on the shore and the Egyptian army was coming after them and they were trapped. Moses cried out to God and God told him to hold up the staff that he had used when talking to Pharaoh and pray. As he prayed, the wind picked up and blew all night long, and when morning came there was a path through the sea.
Speaker 2:And then there's one of the most puzzling descriptions. It says tongues as of fire came and parted over each one of them. We see this image so many times in art, a portrayal that always puzzled me as a child the apostles sitting in a circle, all of them portrayed as the serious, bearded, berobed men, and all with a small flame above their heads. As a child, I always thought it looked like lanterns without a chimney. Sometimes I thought I actually saw in the art what looked like might be small logs to sustain the fire burning there. But no matter how it was portrayed, it looked odd. The description seemed strange and distancing, except, of course, the description that they were tongues as a fire that descended upon the apostles. It's another hint of what's going to happen. That is, there's a description, a kind of apportionment of the great experience of what is to follow. Tongues as of fire descended over the apostles and they suddenly began to speak in other tongues. Whatever the inspiration was like or whatever happened to them, it was something like the experience of some energy suddenly settling over them.
Speaker 2:In the Old Testament, there were many descriptions of fire settling over situations and people. Abraham had the experience of his offering being consumed by fire. Moses saw a burning bush, in which he noticed that the fire did not consume the bush, which caused him to walk and walk over and look and pay attention. Also, when the people leave Egypt, they're led by a pillar of fire at night that accompanies and leads them. When they come to Mount Sinai, where they will receive the law, they see the top of the mountain bathed in light and fire. This has the immediate connection with the time of Pentecost as the celebration of when the law was given.
Speaker 2:The description in the Acts of the Apostles is like a recapitulation of what had happened in the Old Testament to guide the people and to bring them what they needed. Not only that, we have some intuition of this description from our own experience. Anybody who's been a part of some inspirational moment from a great moving speech or before a football game or to a solemn ceremony at a funeral that person knows what it's like to feel a sort of new energy settle over the crowd In the same place where everyone feels disheartened and confused can be a place where a new sense of energy begins to flow. It's not just a metaphor either. When those moments happen, you can feel a whole new rush of power and energy present there. I've been in places and at moments where it really does seem as if energy did fall down upon the people there and had them prepped for whatever was to come next. We might be more likely to describe it as a fire being lit under someone, as if a fire were placed under a kettle or a pot, but the image is the same. In these circumstances, energy is added and the situation is ready to change.
Speaker 2:Pentecost was a moment in which everything was to change, and then the great moment happens Suddenly, there's the movement of the Holy Spirit and everyone begins to speak in different tongues. All these men, most of whom were from Galilee, most of whom were not lettered, suddenly begin speaking in ways that amazed the gathered crowds of people to hear them. The ones who followed Jesus, all from the same remoteness of Jesus' home region, were now in the heart of cosmopolitan Jerusalem and suddenly they were speaking of God's glory in ways that amazed the international crowd that had gathered, and it's hard to know what to make of that exactly. Certainly, there is the interpretation available to us who read and who know that these men suddenly speaking in new languages is an image of the proclamation of Jesus going out to the whole world. The barrier of language and culture was only temporary. What Jesus had to offer and the truth of his resurrection was now available to the whole world, not just to Jews from Galilee. Also, there's the sudden recognition of the unification of language, in which these men are suddenly gifted with words the whole world can hear. It's the inversion of the curse of the Tower of Babel, where everyone was suddenly unable to understand so that their project was interrupted. Now, when everyone could understand, a new project could begin. But there's also the perspective of those who are empowered to speak. More than an interpretation, there's the image of these men suddenly speaking.
Speaker 2:The inspiration of the Holy Spirit has been accompanied by speaking in tongues, which is a phenomenon commented on by St Paul, as well as the author of the Acts of the Apostles. It's an element of the worship common to the charismatic movements that have animated so many prayer groups all over the world in the last several generations. Most of the time this type of prayer is described as ecstatic. It isn't. If by ecstatic we're to understand it takes place because the person speaking in tongues is lifted beyond himself and is carried away. It, in fact, would be better to describe it as experiencing a door being opened in a person's personality that allows that person to speak differently. A compelling image I heard once was that speaking in tongues is as if a vessel of water had been heated up until the steam caused the valve in the vessel to stick open and once opened, it stays that way, so that this practice is available any time. The thing to remember is that it does happen and it is a method of prayer described directly in Paul's letters. It's also not particularly recommended by Paul, but is part of the practice he knew and understood.
Speaker 2:What's not really known is whether what is spoken is actually some version of some language or if it's simply different phonemes put together so that it sounds as if it were language. I'll let others, more experienced and perhaps more analytical, answer that question. Suffice it to say it is an experience of the Holy Spirit available even today. It is apparently an experience anyone reading the Acts of the Apostles in the first generation of the church would have recognized. Of course, there's also the comment that I like from Bishop Barron. He notes that in Jerusalem of the first century, everyone who traveled would have known some Greek, it being the international language of the day, and the accepted thing to say in Greek if anyone cared to comment on the structure of life and business, would have been Caesar Kyrios Caesar is Lord. But the proclamation of the first Christians was Christos Kyrios Christ is Lord. That simple change in pronunciation would have been understood by everyone there and it would have been truly startling for them to hear, so much so they would have pricked up their ears and, especially as Jews, would have been ready to hear more. Rather than a radical restructuring of how people learn and speak languages, this first proclamation could have been the most basic and the most impactful we could imagine.
Speaker 2:Now, while Bishop Barron's teasing inferences don't fit the exact details of the descent of the Holy Spirit, it does invite us to imagine that we need not wait for the gift of tongues to fall upon us or to depend upon the extraordinary manifestations of power to fill our lives in order for us to participate in the Pentecostal moment, to be filled with the Spirit, is first of all, to proclaim what we know to be true, and the first of this proclamation is to know and to proclaim that Jesus is the Christ and is the Lord of the dynamics and the prospects of the world. When we know this and can speak it, then our world is made different and our futures change. As we go through the end of the passage, there are three things to notice. The first is that the description of this particular Pentecost is that a new inauguration of power has come down upon the apostles. They were filled with an energy from beyond them. It was as if they were set on fire and they were provided with an energy they couldn't account for, other than it came upon them and provided them all. They needed to know about their mission and how to fulfill it. The second is that they needed to know about their mission and how to fulfill it. The second is that they began to speak. They were not content to stay as they were and enjoy the reputation of those who had followed Christ. Their history paled in comparison to their futures. It was not where they had come from, but where they were going that defined them. The coming of the Spirit animated them and transformed their identities. They didn't turn their backs on the past, but the past became only prologue. It became the perspective from which they could go forth to make the message of Christ powerful and meaningful.
Speaker 2:And finally, the end of the description of the day of Pentecost was Peter's sermon to those who were gathered, all delivered in Greek, by the way. He summed up everything that had happened and invited those who had heard the apostles speaking of the glory of God to respond to God's initiative. In short, he taught them. But teaching doesn't end by providing them information. The sum of the work of God was for them to take action, which they did by being baptized. Just as when the wind blew over the waters of the Red Sea so that there was a pathway forward for the people of Israel, the wind blew through the day of Pentecost so that water was summoned and poured over the 5,000 of those gathered as they entered the life of Christ in the church, over the 5,000 of those gathered as they entered the life of Christ in the church. Peter summed up the work of God by summoning the original power of God to open a new pathway for the people of Israel. That was this new Pentecost experience on this renewed day. That's what celebrating Pentecost is like. The wind should howl through our lives as we wake up to all God has done to bring us here. We've all been chosen and exquisitely empowered to speak of what we have known and seen, of God at work with us, especially now that we have seen the work of blessed Stanley Rother among us. We're responsible for seizing this moment that our valves might become unseated and remain open, so what the world most needs to hear can pour out of us. It might be as if what had always looked like plain green grass had suddenly stemmed and headed and turned golden, ready for harvest. Now is the time, this is the season, the day is at hand. It is Pentecost Back in just a moment. Welcome back to our final segment, faith in Verse.
Speaker 2:We have a poem today called what is my Life? He asked what is my life these days? I pass now. I was there to see him, as the schedule would allow. What am I to do? Who am I to be nowadays? There's nothing left for me along the normal pathways.
Speaker 2:My stroke has taken away my substantial memory. I can hardly identify my most personal inventory or keep track of where I am or where I should be as the days pass and I try to act responsibly. Tell me how I serve God here, in this place, where we're warehoused and kept apart and safe, all is provided. We scarcely raise a finger to provide for ourselves, much less for another to linger. What would God's will be for me, other than to wait for the last breathed conclusion of his eternal grace Be poured upon this life, now grown stunted and meager, that I can affirm with hope and promises, full and eager? Will there be more for me as the graces given stir and simmer, or will the light of my eyes flicker and grow only dimmer?
Speaker 2:I had no answer. I confessed to him humbly and looked at his brutal prospects, full on numbly. God's gifts are not given as earthquakes and floods flowing, but come, of course, also as whispered breezes blowing. Perhaps the Spirit is at work in you now, today, and has hard thrown the vessel to contain God's true way. That's what Is my Life. The. The day of Pentecost is simply the beginning for the disciples to experience and then to put into practice the power that comes to them by way of the Spirit. So it is also for us. I hope that in the weeks to come that we can continue exploring together what it means to be Living Catholic.
Speaker 1:Living Catholic is a production of the Archdiocese of. Oklahoma City for Oklahoma Catholic Radio. To learn more, visit okcrorg.