The Language of the Church

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In the beginning, the people of the world were of one set of words. In all the earth, there was one set of words. A unity, if you will, of the tongue. Genesis literally reads that the people were of one lip. Among all the children of Adam, one language encompassed the world.

And this unity of words led them to plot evil against God. Being of one lip, the people could conspire together, and this allowed them to cook up the scheme of building a great city and a tall tower to reach up into the heavens. Their unity of words bred pride in their hearts. They were proud that they could band together and accomplish anything under the sun, whatever they set their hands to.

The Breath of the Church

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today we are gathered to celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, one of the oldest feasts in the calendar of the Church, even older than Christmas or Easter, in fact. The festival which we here commemorate goes back all the way to the time of Moses and the giving of the Law. And yet it has remained, handed down through successive generations even to our own time, and for untold ages yet to come.

The Feast of Pentecost was originally enacted to celebrate the harvest of the winter wheat. The word “pentecost” is Greek for “fifty”, referring to the fifty days after the Feast of Unleavened Bread, after which the Pentecost was celebrated. Traditionally, this festival also had the added significance of commemorating the Lord's giving the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai fifty days after the Exodus from Egypt.