Sandy Curnow Reflection

Our Lady of Pentecost

And after the Ascension, came the waiting.  Jesus was gone.

The last words of Luke’s Gospel describe the disciples returning from Christ’s Ascension ‘with great joy’.  By contrast, Luke’s account in his Acts of the Apostles of the Ascension has the disciples more somberly  trudging back the 1-2 km from Mount Olivet to Jerusalem having been told, this time definitively, that Jesus “was taken up from you into Heaven”.  It was the ‘taken from you’ that must have echoed in their heads. Regardless of what Christ had told them about the coming of the Spirit, their sense of personal loss must have been overwhelming.

It was nearing  the time of the important Jewish festival of Shavuot –initially a festival of First Fruits, of wheat harvested, but more importantly  it was the Feast celebrating Moses receiving the Torah on Mt Sinai.  Every synagogue had a copy of these the holiest scrolls of the Law. The first five books of the Jewish Testament were the most sacred foundation texts of Judaism.  It was in many ways their starting point.  In accordance with the importance of the Feast, Jerusalem was packed with pilgrims who had come from around the known world to pray in the Temple.

Jesus’s group was so small – around a hundred and twenty people, – some of whom had been followers from the first days in Galilee, many of them named in the gospels as disciples, and now just eleven apostles.  They should “receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you”, but who knew when that would come about?  Peter organized the drawing of lots to decide which of the followers should replace Judas.  No other leadership of the group seemed to have emerged. Having seen their Messiah so publicly executed, few among the group would have been looking for any public recognition. 

At this point, unexpectedly, Mary the Mother of Jesus appears as a centralizing figure, gathering all the men and women together and leading them in prayer.

Duccio’s Pentecost (1308) – photo Public Domain

Now, it is accepted by biblical scholars that the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles are written by the same author. Moreover, most scholars agree that the Infancy Narrative, the first two chapters of the gospel, was a later addition. So, starting from chapter Three  (which does read like opening chapters) in the rest of Luke and the whole of Acts  the specific naming of Christ’s mother is  highly significant, because it is the one and only time Mary the Mother of Jesus is mentioned by name in the text.

Now, in this hour of indecision it is she who holds the whole disparate group of men and women together in prayer.  Then when the day of Shavuot (also Pentecost), had come and ”they were all together in one place”, a sound of a great wind filled all the house and tongues of fire rested on each one of them.   No longer huddled together in fear, they moved out into the multilingual crowd outside, preaching to each in their own tongue. They faced the mixed throng with courage. Now it is the Church that is born.

Altar of Veit Stoss, Coming of the Holy Spirit, St Mary’s Church, Krakow, Poland – Photo:  Robert Breuer/GFDL

The naming of Mary the mother of Jesus and the citing of her role in the group is unexpected for a second reason. Luke writes Luke-Acts for an audience part Jewish part Gentile. In the late first century there were communities of Jews across the Roman Empire and a number in Rome itself. These groups carried Christianity and spread it into the Gentile communities which surrounded them. It sounds contrary, but the language most commonly spoken was Greek. And so Luke writes in an elegant , scholarly Greek, to show that these books are for all. But in Graeco-Roman culture the ideal woman was the wife and mother who was so private that she was never discussed outside the home. Women holding any leadership roles was unseemly, and would dismay many of the new Greek or Roman followers.

The point here is that Mary’s gathering role in the group that became the first church was so important that Luke felt that it must be said.

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The three paintings chosen say a great deal about the way Mary’s role at the Birth of the Church has been interpreted.   In Duccio’s late medieval painting of 1308, Mary’s central figure is larger and more solid than the others. Her dark robes imply mourning, but they are sharply and more carefully defined by touches of gold to underscore her significance. This is in contrast to the loose modelling of the others’ robes. The apostles seem pressed together around her in fear.

Second, the marvelous Viet Stoss carved altar piece of 1477 in St Mary’s cathedral in Krakow has been called ‘Late medieval-Baroque’. The figures explode with puzzlement and joy around the character of Mary who, crucially, is teaching the apostles rather than being taught by them. The open bible on her lap and her raised hand show her central role as instructor. They are so alive to what she says and to the Spirit.

The last painting is by El Greco from 1600, but who is now seen as the patriarch of modern thinking. In some ways the figures are ‘out of themselves’.  Again Mary dominates the elongated cluster of  men and women drawn upward in intensity. Her face is ethereal, but instead of her being rigidly central among  apostles, her head is tipped gently toward a female companion  showing that women were at the heart of the first church.

In a lovely footnote, the bald, bearded figure second from the right is a portrait of El Greco himself. He looks out at us, catching our eye, willing us to understand. If only we could.

By:  Sandy Curnow

Pentecost – El Greco, 1597 – photo public domain