{"id":24670,"date":"2009-05-28T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-29T02:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/2009\/05\/the-mind-of-christ-is-not-myop\/"},"modified":"2014-06-08T12:04:02","modified_gmt":"2014-06-08T16:04:02","slug":"the-mind-of-christ-is-not-myop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/2009\/05\/the-mind-of-christ-is-not-myop\/","title":{"rendered":"The mind of Christ is not myopic: the event of Pentecost broadens us"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n\"holy<\/a><\/span>The Holy Spirit makes the Christian experience truly\u00a0Catholic and universal, open to all human experience.\u00a0To be Catholic is to be\u00a0universal and open to the world. Not only to Canada, North America Europe or\u00a0Asia, or a certain familiar part of the world or segment of society, but it\u00a0must be\u00a0open to all, to every single person. The mind of Christ is not intended\u00a0to be a selective mentality for a few but the perspective from which the whole\u00a0world will be renewed and redeemed. An insight like this, the universal scope\u00a0of salvation did not however come easily and without much pain and confusion.<\/p>\n

In fact, the whole of the New Testament can be understood precisely as the emergence of the Catholic, the universal, in Christian life.\u00a0Christianity, had it not moved from where it was particular and small would\u00a0have just been a small modification of the Jewish experience, a subset of\u00a0Jewish piety that was still focused in and around Jerusalem and the restoration\u00a0of a literal kingdom of Israel. The first two generations of Christians\u00a0discovered that Christianity could not be just that.\u00a0Because they had received\u00a0the Holy Spirit, which is the universal principle, the Holy Spirit opened\u00a0peoples’ eyes to the universal import of the Christian truth and\u00a0through the\u00a0encounter\u00a0with non-Jews\u00a0who received the Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n

The artists of the Middle Ages often contrasted the Tower of\u00a0Babel with the “Tower” of the Upper Room. Babel symbolizes the\u00a0divisions of people caused by sin. Pentecost stands for a hope that such\u00a0separations are not a tragic necessity. The babbling mob of Babel compares\u00a0poorly with the heartfelt unity of the Pentecost crowd. Babel was a mob.\u00a0Pentecost was a community. A people without God lost the ability to\u00a0communicate. A people suffused with the Spirit spoke heart to heart.<\/p>\n

At Pentecost the full meaning of Jesus’ life and message is\u00a0poured into our hearts by the Spirit alive in the community. The New Testament\u00a0seems to say that – for a fleeting moment – the nations of the earth paused\u00a0from their customary strife and experienced a community caused by God. The\u00a0brief and shining hour of Pentecost remains to charm and encourage us to this\u00a0day.<\/p>\n

These paragraphs come from Basilian Father Thomas Rosica’s\u00a0essay on the Pentecost scriptures published on Zenit.org for May 28, 2009. Father Rosica is the executive director of\u00a0Salt and Light TV<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

A video on Pentecost can be seen\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Holy Spirit makes the Christian experience truly\u00a0Catholic and universal, open to all human experience.\u00a0To be Catholic is to be\u00a0universal and open to the world. Not only to Canada, North America Europe or\u00a0Asia, or a certain familiar part of the world or segment of society, but it\u00a0must be\u00a0open to all, to every single person. The … Continue reading The mind of Christ is not myopic: the event of Pentecost broadens us<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[2107],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24670"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24670"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30968,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24670\/revisions\/30968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}