Come! Other breath.
It will return, sparkling again.
Joseph Ungaretti

For the Fourth Gospel the outpouring of the Spirit takes place on Easter evening (cf. Jn 20:22-23). Most of commentators point out the parallel use of «he blew» (enephùsesen) of Gen 2,7 (LXX) with Jn 20,22, affirming that the Holy Spirit inaugurates a new creation. In Christ, man has been given the grace of rebirth to new life through forgiveness. Moreover, the Christian community, always through the Spirit, is established as the place where it is always possible to free man from the alienation of sin. The Spirit creates, redeems and makes all things new. This good Easter news is now entrusted to the Church. But there is also a more personal Pentecost. Writing to the Romans, Paul urges not to conform to the world but to allow oneself to be transformed by the Spirit (cf. Rom 12:2). The verb metamorphèisthai (‘to transform’) has a double meaning: reflexive (“transform yourselves”) and passive (“let yourselves be transformed”). The one who effects the transformation or transfiguration is the Holy Spirit (cf. 2Cor 3:18), who secretly but effectively makes the whole life of the Christian become a living worship pleasing to God, a Eucharist in the image of Christ. On this day the Church invites us to invoke the Gift par excellence, the Spirit. At the same instant he also urges us to become aware of his presence in us. Only in this way will we pass from one state in which grace is present in us unknowingly to the degree of a real perception of his saving action. One last observation. Pentecost takes place after fifty days and seals the Easter mystery of Christ. The number fifty is clearly symbolic and also alludes to human completion. Tauler argued that a man before the age of forty has no real experience of God. Between forty and fifty the Spirit changes him internally establishing him in the fullness of truth. Pentecost then it is not only a divine event but also an anthropological one, since through the Spirit humanity reaches its own fullness.

Commentary by b. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Santa Maria – Praglia (Italy)

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves, Prinknash Abbey