Pentecost Sunday

"Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans?"

Again this week with a question about the men of Galilee. This time, though, they're not staring up at the sky like dolts. They're receiving the Holy Spirit. And then they speaking in tongues.

It's an interesting reversal of the Old Testament Tower of Babel, where everyone who spoke the same language suddenly couldn't understand each other. Here now, as is often the case with the New Testament, the new covenant, things are different, completely turned around. Here suddenly the Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, and everybody else, everybody speaking different languages, can understand the good news, the "mighty acts of God."

And funny enough, St. Paul backs me up from last week, where I wrote that some of us are apostles, some of us are prophets, and some of us are database managers. He writes:

There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit;
there are different forms of service but the same Lord;
there are different workings but the same God
who produces all of them in everyone.
To each individual the manifestation of the Spiritis given for some benefit.

And concelebrating with Monsignor this morning is Archbishop Morales from the Philippines. (And this makes me wonder if the Philippines are named after some St. Philip, but alas, later research reveals that they were originally Las Islas Filipinas, named after a King of Spain named Philip.)

And Deacon Reilly is leaving us, moving down to North Carolina. He explains that he and especially his wife have been experiencing health problems and need to be closer to their children now. Replacing him is a new deacon, Deacon Bart Merella, who says a few words about himself. He worked with Monsignor before, when they were both on the liturgy committee for Pope John Paul II's visit to Washington.

So we've got a new deacon and in a couple of weeks we'll all of us, the whole archdiocese, be getting a new archbishop.