7th Sunday of Easter 2020
Acts 1:12-14; 1Peter 4:13-16; John 17:1-11.
After the Ascension, the apostles return to Jerusalem and establish themselves once more in the Upper Room. To do what? To cower in fear? No no no no no no no......NO! To do what they were told by Jesus, which was to await the coming of the Holy Spirit. While they are waiting, they pray proskarterountes homothumadon, says St. Luke, literally “persevering unanimously”: in other words, they stick at it—all of them.
Who are they? Luke tells us that they were the eleven apostles, whom he lists by name, women, Mary the mother of Jesus, and His relations (“brothers” in the extended sense in which the word is still used in many parts of the world today).
That is an interesting combination. Tell me, when you have seen representations of the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, who has been shown? I will lay you threepence (well, twopence halfpenny) that you will have seen the apostles, Our Lady, and no one else. That is naughty: it implies that these were the only people to receive the Spirit.
“Ah,” you will say, “but next Sunday, for the Feast of Pentecost, my missal says that the APOSTLES had all met in one room.” Your missal may say that, but St. Luke doesn’t. He simply says “they all”. Doesn’t it make more sense to assume that this means all those who had been there already? After the miracle of tongues, he tells us that “Peter stood up with the Eleven” which seems to imply that this was the first time that the apostles had acted on their own: prior to this, the women and the “brothers” had been with them, along with Our Lady.
So it seems to me that those who prayed for the coming of the Spirit, “persevering unanimously”, as we have been told, AND WHO RECEIVED THE SPIRIT, were a cross section of the Church—the apostles as the leaders, as what we would now call the magisterium, but also the women and the relations, representing the laity.
In other words, the whole Church, men and women, clergy and laity (insofar as it is reasonable to use such terminology at this stage) received the Holy Spirit, something which the hierarchy has sometimes forgotten. It is interesting that Our Lord’s relations are included, as they had tended to be somewhat reluctant followers. Is this implying that the Spirit is given to everyone, those on the margins as well as the fervent, provided they are willing to pray and to ask?
Where does Our Lady fit in? Again we are faced with a mistranslation. The Lectionary states that the apostles were all “persevering unanimously in prayer”, though it actually translates it as “joined in continuous prayer” which is not quite the same thing, “together with several women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers.”
So the Lectionary includes Mary among the women, which is not accurate. St. Luke actually puts Mary in a category of her own, saying “with women AND Mary the mother of Jesus AND with His relations”. Mary is NOT included by Luke among the women, but is separated from them by kai (“and”), with the relations separated again by kai sun (“and with”).
This may appear to be playing with words, but it isn’t. Mary had already received the Holy Spirit. As Catholics, we believe that she was filled with the Holy Spirit from the moment she was conceived, thus preserving her from sin: our separated brethren would agree that she was filled with the Holy Spirit when her Son was conceived. Thus she is in a category of her own—she, the woman filled with the Spirit praying with the Church that it may become the woman filled with the Spirit, the Bride of Christ. As we pray for a new outpouring of the Spirit, may we ask her, the mother and model of the Church, to continue to pray with us—and to guide the compilers of the new Lectionary to be more accurate with their translations.
