Speaking in the languages of those who would listen to the disciples was the most remarkable fact from the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost.

As I reflected on this amazing event from the Acts of the Apostles this week, I recalled a story from a visit of a nephew and a niece of mine from Colombia, Cesar and Paula, fifteen years ago. They were in High School at the time. Cesar knew some English and was able to get by. Paula, on the other hand, did not know much English and any time a person would talk to her, she would say, “English? No!” Cesar is now a doctor and Paula is a psychologist. They both moved to Germany five years ago. Paula now speaks German. One day when I would visit them there, I would be just like Paula was saying, “Deutsch? No!”  

There are many ways to understand the meaning and the importance of the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. One way is the following. Pentecost is the reversal of the story of the Tower of Babel.

The sacred author of the Book of Genesis tells us that the whole world initially spoke the same language and that in a valley in the East, people agreed to build a city with a tower with its top in the sky. The theological translation for this human endeavor is to be understood as a humanity that believes it can flourish on its own merits and can try to dethrone God. This story is found in the eleventh chapter of the Book of Genesis and is the third time the book portrays the unsuccessful human attempt to reaching heaven without the help of God. (The other two times are original sin and the sin that brought about the great flood).

It was not as if God did not want humanity to be where God is. God planned for humanity to be with Him from the beginning. The thing is that humanity did not follow God’s plan and God needed to thwart humanity’s plans and punish it each time. The punishment at the Tower of Babel was to confuse people’s language so that one person would not understand what another would say.

The way God planned to take humanity back to heaven is what the sacred author of Genesis tells us in the twelfth chapter with the calling of Abraham and the coming into being of God’s chosen people. The culmination of this plan would be the Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of the Lord. The Lord’s Ascension is about the entry into heaven of a human being, a sinless human being who is also God.

The descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples, upon the Church, is the way God now empowers humanity to reach heaven. It is the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the Church that makes possible the sacraments which are how humanity now receives the forgiveness of sins. On the Day of Pentecost, the Apostles began to baptize, about three thousand people that day alone.

Pentecost was the reversal of the event of the Tower of Babel. Once the Holy Spirit was poured out into the disciples’ heads, they were able to communicate in the language of every person as if the whole world would speak the same language again. Love is the language of God. The people from all regions of the world who were present in Jerusalem that day were still, if you will, under the spell of Babel. Saint Luke tells us that they were confused when they heard the disciples speak in the language of each one of them. Confusion was the product of the Tower of Babel. Communion is the product of Pentecost.

The Holy Spirit has also been poured out into our hearts on the day of our Baptism and in its fullness on the day of our Confirmation. And just as the Holy Spirit transformed the disciples in new people able to speak the language of every person they met, meaning they were able to put aside their own wills so that only the will of God and the needs of others would count, in the same way the Holy Spirit challenges and empowers us now to speak with love to each person we meet, putting aside also our wills and focusing only on God’s will and people’s needs.  

Let us humbly ask the Lord to grant us his grace, the Holy Spirit, to both understand the mystery of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives and to allow this same Holy Spirit to transform us in instruments of God’s mercy and love.