Acts 2:42-43 NLT
'All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer. A deep sense of awe came over them all, and the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders.'
Pentecost is the birth of the Church, the missional bridgehead across which a God-fearing group of individuals are transformed into an empowered community and entrusted with a mandate to express God’s kingdom throughout the world. Jesus initially gathered twelve apostles, symbolic of the twelve tribes of Israel. (This number is significantly re-established with Judas’ replacement during the Jerusalem Novena.) Jesus then commissioned the 70 to go out to gather in the harvest, 70 (or 72) being symbolic of what was then understood to represent all the people groups in the world. The kingdom available to all who seek it.
At the Last Supper, Jesus introduced the new covenant of his body and blood, before he himself became the sacrificial lamb crucified, risen and ascended, throwing open God’s eternal door of mercy. The Spirit was God-given, represented as “tongues of fire” (Acts 2:3), symbolic of God’s leading of his people through the wilderness into the Promised Land, and now the permanent means by which redeemed humanity might retain communication with the God of eternity. Each of the apostles spoke in a God-inspired language (Acts 2:4), yet each language was comprehensible to the quickly gathering crowd (Acts 2:7-8), the Church now established as both a gathered and a missional community, a source of God’s presence and a community with a mission to share God’s life.
Pentecost today reminds us of the significance and importance of Church as a gathered community. Of its calling, albeit in different forms, to be a place of worship and encounter, a dwelling space for the presence of God. It also renews our responsibility to freely offer ourselves to God’s work of mission wherever life finds us. However jaded and ‘down’ we might feel, we can call out to God for a fresh outpouring of his Spirit, which is both a renewal of intimate communication with God and an empowering for obedient service of God.
QUESTION: What does ‘church’ mean to you?
PRAYER: Spirit of the God, fall on me afresh. At the conclusion of this Novena, I thank you for your help and refreshing touch.

Released on 5 Jun 2020