Jewish Roots and Pentecost

Since the days of the early church, Christians have incorporated pilgrimages as part of their spiritual journey and enhancing their relationship with Christ. And I want to give you the gift of a pilgrimage in April of 20 27. Come join me and Father Kenneth Parsade as we lead a pilgrimage to France and trace the path of some of the greatest French saints. This 11-day pilgrimage includes visits to Louis , Normandy, Paris, Mont Saint-Michel, Rouen, and Lourdes. We will visit the homes, convents, and tombs of the most influential French saints, Saint Therese the Little Flower, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Dominic, Saint Vincent de Paul, Saint Joan of Arc , and more. And we will celebrate daily private mass in some of the most iconic churches, like the Abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel, Secret in Paris, and the Chapel of the Miraculous Medal in Lourdes. This is a trip that will change your life. Learn more at ycatholic.substack.com/slash pilgrimage. I hope to see you there. The first occurs in Luke twenty four, when the women come to Jesus' tomb, only discover that his body is missing. Suddenly, two angels appear and ask, Why do you look for the living among the dead? As in, why are you coming to a cemetery to seek someone who is alive? The answer is obvious. The last time they saw Jesus he was dead and being put into the garden tomb. And then in Acts one, Jesus is talking with his disciples when suddenly he is taken up. The disciples are left standing there looking incredulously into the sky. We can only imagine what they were thinking. Where did he go? Is he coming back? Maybe he'll come back tomorrow. What's up there? And then two angels suddenly appear and ask, Why do you stand here looking into the sky? Uh why wouldn't they be looking up into the sk y? They've never seen anything like this before. Hi, this is Justin Hibbert and you're listening to Why Catholic, my podcast about the what and why of Catholicism. In this podcast I take Catholic theology and history and break it down into episodes that are about seventeen minutes in length, give or take. Occasionally I like to slip in episodes about a particular feast day or a saint on their feast day, and today most of the United States is celebrating the solemnity of the ascension of the Lord. Before I get further into this episode, let me just say thank you for joining me today and a huge thank you to those of you that support this podcast with your generous monthly and annual donations. You can become a supporter of Y Catholic by going to whyCatholic.substack.com slash subscribe. Thank you for your generosity. As we're diving into this topic on Jesus' ascension into heaven, let's do a little breakdown of a timeline. We go back to Passover, when Jesus was crucified at Galgatha in Jerusalem. Three days later he rises from the dead, and that's when his post-resurrection appearances occur over the course of forty days. And how exhilarating must this have been for Jesus' followers? Here they thought Jes us was dead and gone. Their hopes were dashed on a violent Passover night, and then all of a sudden, here's Jesus again. Something big must be in the works. We know exactly what Peter was thinking because he asks Jesus a very telling question in Acts one. Peter says, quote, Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom of heaven? End quote. You see, Peter, like most Jews, thought when the Messiah comes, he will establish the supremacy of Israel and crush her enemies. During Jesus' life, Israel was occupied by the Roman Empire. One of the reasons the teachers of the law turned on Jesus is because they had a lot of pre conceived notions as to who the Messiah would be and what he would do, and Jesus didn't fit that description. They were expecting a military ruler to come and clean the house, take care of all of the Roman occupation, and free Israel They were expecting Jesus to establish a political kingdom. If you notice in the gospels, Jesus hardly refers to himself as the Messiah. Another word for Messiah is the Greek word Chr The reason is because the term Messiah was loaded. All sorts of people had ideas on what the Messiah should be, and so if Jesus went around saying I'm the Messiah, they would think okay, now is the time we take care of the Romans and we finally become a free nation once again. It reminds me of the scene in the movie Braveheart where soldiers meet William Wallace for the first time. All they've heard are the legends. So when Wallace reveals himself, they're like, You can't be William Wallace. He's seven feet tall. But Jesus had an entirely different idea. In fact, not only does he not take out the Romans as Peter was hoping, but shortly after his conversation with Peter, he just disappears into the sky. You've got to think that the disciples are like, okay, what do we do now? He was gone for three days, then he was back for forty days, and now he's gone again. When's he coming back? Tomorrow? Three days from now? Forty days from now? And the only thing Jesus tells them is that the time is not for them to know . How frustrating . This brings me to an important question. Why the ascension? Why did Jesus have to ascend into heaven? I want to suggest to you a couple of reasons. First, we are told in Hebrews 4 that Jesus experienced all the trials and temptations that every one of us faces. That's the extraordinary thing about Christianity. We don't believe in a God that just transcends humanity. Our faith attests to a God who condescended himself into all the entirety of the human experience . More than that, he goes deeper than what the human experience can bear. He's born not just of a woman but of a virgin. He dies just like a human, but it's the most br utal death that one can ever fathom. He experiences the resurrection, which we all will experience, but his occurs three days after his death. And there's one more event that humans will experience that he needs to exper ience, and that is going to heaven. In fact, we might say that if he did not ascend into heaven, he would not have completely experienced the whole human experience. It's not just because one day humans will go to heaven , but because a couple of humans had already gone to heaven. I'm referring to Enoch and Elijah, who were both assumed into heaven. But Jesus wasn't just assumed, he ascended. An assumption is another life form bringing one up into heaven. That's why we call it the assumption of Mary. In this case, it's Jesus going to heaven by his own power, hence we call it the ascension. Another reason why Jesus' ascension is critical is because as he tells his disciples in John fourteen, he is going to prepare a place for them. Well what does that look like? Is he a builder like his adoptive father Joseph in heaven building houses? Imagine that the master carpenter in heaven just constructing houses for all his future saints. It's all a mystery. All we know is what Jesus tells us, and that is he needs to go to heaven to prepare a place for them. There's another reason for the ascension, and that is what he tells them in John 16, he must go so that another advocate can come. He's referring, of course, to the Holy Spirit. I love the relationship of the Trinity. It is intentional submission. We see over and over how one person of the Trinity honors the other. At Jesus' baptism the Father honors the Son, this is my Son, with whom I am well pleased, listen to him. And here Jesus says, I've got to go so that the Holy Spirit can come. It's like he's saying, You've experienced me. I can't wait for you to experience the Holy Spirit. The Gospels demonstrate a Trinitarian relationship where each person of the Godhead wants the disciples to experience the fullness of the three-person God . Speaking of the Holy Spirit, this brings us to the timeline and how this all fits with a Jewish framework. There are seven feasts in the Levitical calendar, minus the weekly Sabbath. Three of them are grouped in the fall: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sikkot. These are sometimes called the High Holy Days. And then in the spring, there are three that are grouped together: Passover, which occurs on the 14th of Nisan, and then the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which begins the next day, and lasts for seven days, and then the feast of first fruits occurs on the Sunday following Passover. Because they are in this intertwining clump, you'll notice that many calendars just call it all Passover. But in reality, there are three distinct feasts. On the Sunday following Passover, you really have two feasts happening simultaneously: the feast of unleavened bread and the feast of first fruits. Jesus was crucified on Passover. This is the fulfillment of John the Baptist's proclamation that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes a It was on the first Passover that the Jewish people slaughtered the lambs, put the lamb's blood on their doorposts, and the angel of death passed over their homes and protected them from the judgment of the death of the firstborn which befell on the Egyptians . And when did Jesus rise from the dead? It was on the Sunday following Passover, the feast of first fruits. This is why Paul says in first Corinthians fifteen twenty that Jesus was the first fruit from those who have fallen asleep. Forty days later, Jesus ascends into heaven. What's the significance of forty days? Well, periods of forty are repeated all throughout the Bible. During the Great Flood, it rained for forty days and forty nights. Moses' life can be broken up into forty year periods, first as a prince of Egypt, then as a nomad wandering out Elijah and Jesus spent forty days fasting in the wilderness. The period of forty occurs some one hundred and fifty times in Scripture. So it makes sense why Jesus would choose a period of forty days between his resurrection and his ascension. And if you're keeping count, this means that from Passover to the ascension, there's been a total of about 43 days or so. Why is that important? Because 50 days after Passover is another major Jewish Levitical feast called Shavuot , or we know it as Pentecost. The number fifty corresponds to the Greek word pente . Sometimes the Bible calls this festival the feast of weeks as it occurs seven we eks after Passover. Jesus gives one instruction to his disciples. He tells them to wait in Jerusalem. Why? Well, Pentecost is the day that the Holy Spirit will come just as Jesus promised. So he's telling them to wait in Jerusalem for another week. Now I mentioned earlier that there are seven Levitical feasts. Three of them are pilgrimage feasts, Sakot in the fall, and then Passover in the early spring, and fifty days later, Pentec ost. So at the time of Jesus' death, Jerusalem was filled with Jews from all over the world. And then at Pentecost, Jerusalem was once again filled with Jews from all over the world. And so Jesus has an audience, a captive audience for his death and resurrection, and then again later at Pentecost for the coming of the Holy Spirit. So one of the reasons why Christianity spread so quickly is because three thousand of these people, many of them pilg rims from all over the place, heard Peter's sermon in Acts two, were baptized at Pentecost, and then returned to their homes and shared the gospel with their communities. But there's more layers to all of this. What does the feast of Shavuot or Pentecost commemorate? It commemorates God giving the law to Moses and the Israelites at Mount Sin ai. The Jewish people consider this the culmination of Judaism,. Yeah it's one thing to be freed from slavery in Egypt, but the giving of the law is the cohesion, the identity of what it means to be a Jew. After Moses receives the law on top of Mount Sinai, he descends the mountain only to He's so beside himself that he smashes the stone tablets of the law. Then he gets some of his men to go throughout the camp and put people to death for the rebellion. Three thousand people in that first Pentecost are executed. But God has another plan, not just to give them a new set of stone tablets, but he says one day I will write my law on their hearts. He's referring to the Pentecost after Jesus' death, resurrection, and ascension, the Pentecost where the Holy Spirit will invade the hearts of his people . And whereas on the first Pentecost three thousand people were executed for their idolatry, at the fulfillment of Pentecost, three thousand people repented, were baptized, and were added to the kingdom of heaven. I did a whole episode called The Poetry of Pentecost. It's episode 48. You may want to take a listen to that, and I've linked to it in the show notes. Now you may be wondering if the day of the ascension corresponds to anything in the Exodus story and has Jewish roots like Passover and Pentecost do? And I think the answer is yes. Now it's challenging because there's some different theories as to the actual day of Jesus' death, how we count those days, the Hebrew calendar versus the Gregorian calendar, and when events in the Exodus story actually occur. But I think we can time Jesus' ascension and link it to a few possible events in the book of Exodus My personal favorite theory is Exodus eighteen. Listen to all these different cases brought before him by the Israelites. Jethro says, You're gonna wear yourself out doing this. You need to appoint some judges to take on that work. And then that's what Moses does. And if you think about it, that's what the ascension accomplishes. Jesus entrusts his authority to his disciples as the new magistrate who will rule in his place. They will sit on Moses' seat. And if you want to hear a little bit more about this, take a listen to episode 108 called The Jewish Roots of the Papacy. Another viable option is just after this event in Exodus 19 when Moses ascended Mount Sinai for the first time. That occurred on the first day of the third month, the month of Savon, and then count seven days, and that's Pentecost on the seventh of Savon. It's hard to know for sure, but one thing I do know is that we have a god who intertwines the past and the present. The old covenant is constantly pointing to the new with such intentional poetic precision. The Jews thought they were just haphazardly wandering in the desert, but little did they know, they wouldn't just encounter God on Mount Sin ai. Everything would point to a greater fulfillment in their future Messiah, Jesus, the Son of God . Thank you for joining me for Why Catholic. Be sure to subscribe to Y Catholic wherever you get your podcast. And you can also subscribe to my Substack site and get the next episode in your email inbox. As a subscriber, you get a special discount code to the Y Catholic Etsy store. If you've been blessed by this podcast and you're feeling generous, there's also a way to financially support it and patrons get some extra perks. To become a free subscriber or a patron, just go to yCatholic.substack.com/slash subscribe. Also join me on Instagram at Y Catholic Podcast All One Word. Thanks again for listening. My name is Justin Hibbert and this is Y Catholic. God bless you