Okay, so here we are. We are ten days after the ascension of our Lord. We covered all of that in the last episode with the ascension. Matthias is chosen by Peter and now here we are ten days later looking at the scene or the narrative of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit, descending upon Mary and the Apostles.
Now before I forget, I wanted the things I wanted to say was this is the origin, by the way, of the novena in the Catholic tradition. We have this custom, this devotion of particular novenas, to further this intention for that intention, under the patronage of this sanctity, or that, say whatever it might be. And novena is nine days of prayer, and then on the tenth day, then novena would be completed, then you can move on with your life. Hopefully your prayers are answered.
Now this is the origin of it, because after the ascension, there are ten days, and so on the tenth day, the Holy Spirit comes upon the church. So during the nine days leading up to the tenth is this, they're constantly, as we read in verse chapter 1 verse 12 and following, they're constantly praying and weeding the Holy Spirit. So just by the way, parenthetically, this whole story here is the origin of the custom, the devotion of praying novenas. Alright, so what I want to do to move on here with the story, because there's so much to cover, and there's hours not going to be enough, even just for this one chapter, is let me read the first 13 verses here on Pentecost, and then we'll talk about how it summarizes so much of the Old Testament, focusing on three main events, but let's read this here first, verse 1.
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place, and suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting, and there appeared to them tongues as a fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And as they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, they began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now there are dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, and devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound, the multitude came together, and they were bewildered because each one heard them speaking in its own language.
And they were amazed and wondered, saying, are not all these who are speaking Galileans. How is it that we hear each of us in his own language? Parthenes, means, and Ellenemites, and goes on to describe all the countries. We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God, and all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, what does this mean?
But others mockingly said, they are filled with new wine, like a bunch of drunkards, right? All right, let's stop right there. So this is the brief account of Pentecost, and of course it's absolutely jam-packed with Old Testament allusions and fulfillments, and what I like to do in this sort of introductory broad brush fashion is to show you how Pentecost fulfills three Old Testament events. First is the Feast of Weeks.
Second is the giving of Mount Sinai, so Mount Sinai, and three the Tower of Battle. And they're all connected in its own way. They're all kind of showing a fulfillment of an Old Testament feast and showing how God is gathering his people back together, and he's reuniting his human family into his divine family through Jesus Christ, obviously. Okay, so let's look at the first one.
Pentecost is known as the Feast of Weeks, and the Old Testament is also known as the Feast of Harvest. And this is one of the three great pilgrimage feasts in Jerusalem where all men had to go travel every single year to go observe the feast, Passover and tabernacles or the other two. Women didn't have to, they weren't required because it was a long and difficult journey. Then if a woman was pregnant or had just given birth, it would be even much more difficult for the mother and the child.
So for a variety of reasons, women didn't have to go. They didn't mean that women didn't go. Many of course did. They had these great caravans as we saw with Jesus being left in the temple for those three days.
I mean, whole families went together, but my point is men were the only ones that were required to go, excuse me. And so originally it was called the Feast of First Fruits for the Wheat Harvest. That's not to be confused with another feast of the Jewish calendar, which was actually called First Fruits. It was right in the midst of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
But this one's the Feast of First Fruits for the Wheat Harvest. And it was celebrated 50 days after Passover. And interestingly enough, over time you'd have the offering of two leavened loaves offered up to God. And these two bread loaves symbolized the Jews and the Gentiles.
It's really, really beautiful how the bread is symbolizing all of humanity, one for the Jews, one for the Gentiles. And it's given back and offered up to God. So that's essentially what this Feast was. The Feast of Weeks is called the Feast of Weeks, by the way, because it was, like I said, 50 days after Passover.
So that would be seven weeks, which is 49 days of the following day, the 50th day. What is the day they celebrated this? Okay, so it was an agricultural feast. It was really a feast of plenty, a feast of abundance from God offering up the first fruit, that first harvest of the wheat.
It's beautiful, a beautiful offering to God, trusting in his bounty and his goodness. So typologically, this is really beautiful because now here we are in the New Testament Pentecost. It's 50 days after our Lord's Passover. And now you've got, now one thing I'd have to summarize here really quickly.
We'll go through this as the lecture goes on. After Pentecost occurs, or at least the descent of the Holy Spirit, and then everybody is wondering what in the world is going on. They're speaking these languages, our languages, their Galileans. Peter gets up and he addresses the crowd.
And I'll go through that. Those broad strokes with you momentarily. But at the end of this whole story, you discover that there are 3,000 individuals who believe Peter from his sermon, they desire baptism and they repent and they convert. Okay, so it's really, really beautiful because, I mean, we saw this here in verse 5, they're dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews and development from every nation under heaven.
So people have said that perhaps there are even some some Gentile proselytes in this mix, but at least they're Jewish individuals from the diaspora who have been scattered and now they're living in all these different nations. And because they're devout men, they come back to Jerusalem to observe the face. That would have been really, really difficult. Now this is really beautiful because these 3,000 converts coming from every nation under heaven, what are they then?
But the first fruits of the Lord's new harvest in the new covenant, right? And the fact that there's 3,000 from all these nations from all over the known world here anticipates the conversion of souls worldwide. So it's really awesome. Like you got this, this agricultural feast that these loaves being offered up to God for Jew and Gentile, well, now that's beginning to take place here, these 3,000 are the first fruits of the new summer long harvest, which is what's going on between our Lord's first Advent and a second Advent.
We have this long period of harvesting, right? Spiritually speaking, where souls will convert and be brought into the church. And these 3,000 are those first fruits of this long conversion process. We've been in it 2,000 years now, God only knows how much longer it's going to be.
So the redathering, and this is what's really amazing is the redathering of all the dispersed and scattered Jews and Israelites, I should say as well, that had been promised in the prophets, and we saw many of these prophecies in the past. So they're being regathered into the new kingdom of David starting now, the new exodus from these Jews being brought back into the new kingdom is happening now. So all the prophecies that we've been studying, this whole period of salvation history, especially since the exile is now beginning to be fulfilled. The long awaited restoration of the kingdom is happening.
And so I just want to share with you one of my favorite verses, Exodus 34, it's here in your notes. And many can be shared, I have Isaiah 11 for you as well, but I really like this one. And I says verses 11 following, It goes on, and I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, he shall feed them, he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the Lord, will be their God and my servant David shall be prince among them, and I will make with them a covenant of peace, and it goes on from there.
So this is so beautiful because you've got this prophecy of how God is going to come down. It's interesting because when God says I will be their shepherd, he also says my servant David will be their shepherd. And it's interesting because it's almost as if the prophecy is conflating the two, almost as if God is David. And that makes total sense because Jesus is, of course, as we've seen so many times, the son of David, he is the new king.
And at that point, he will regather everyone into the one family of God, into the kingdom of God, the kingdom of David, and make with them a covenant of peace, which is exactly what Christ does on the cross, beginning with the Last Supper, going all through the Paschal Mysteries, including the Ascension of Course, I will make with them a covenant of peace. So I really like this particular prophecy in Ezekiel because it identifies God with David. The son of David is divine, Jesus is divine, fully human, fully divine, of course, and he brings about this covenant of peace and regathers everyone together again. And that's what's so hard, I don't want this to become cliché for people, because we go about our lives, we go to Mass on Sunday, and God willing, we go to regular Mass, and have a regular prayer.
We're doing our Catholic thing here, or even our Christian thing. But one thing to keep in mind is we are members of one universal, that's what Catholic means, universal Catholic kingdom. The church is a kingdom, and as the church goes through time, bringing in converts, this is the regathering of all of these lost souls. So it's really beautiful to keep that overarching theme in mind and not just kind of take it all for granted or let it all become cliché, or wallpaper, or whatever expression you want to use, we are regathering souls into Christ's One Kingdom.
And that's what really gets me excited as well, is to think about conversion as harvesting souls, right, in the early 2000s, or the first harvest. Alright, very good. So that's enough of an introduction on Pentecost fulfilling the Feast of Weeks, or the Feast of Harvest. Awesome.
So now let's go on and look at Pentecost as a new Mount Sinai.