“And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.” This is how Saint Luke describes what took place fifty days after Easter: Jesus fulfilled His promise to send upon the apostles the gift of the Father — the Holy Ghost. The Spirit of God opened both their minds and their tongues, enabling them to understand God’s marvelous plan of salvation and to proclaim it in a way that everyone could comprehend.

“The end of all things is at hand.” This is not an easy truth to accept, for among all these things, we ourselves are included. Saint Peter wrote these words shortly before he was crucified in Rome—upside down, according to Tradition. Nearly two thousand years have passed since then. How much water has flowed into the sea, and how many people have been born, lived, and died...

“Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it you.” These words of Jesus sound almost limitless in their promise, as though a blank check were being placed into our hands. Does this mean that whatever enters our hearts or minds, we may ask of God—and that He must grant it to us because Christ Himself has promised it?

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above.” St. James’ words speak with quiet clarity about both the natural and the supernatural. The idea that the universe sprang from nothing, or that life in all its astonishing richness arose by blind chance, simply doesn’t hold up—either to reason or to genuine science. A world that truly came from nothing would not exist at all, and a universe left entirely to itself would have long since run down and vanished. Nothing exists by accident. Everything has a purpose and  a source—and that source is God.

Jesus was not a revolutionary, though He is sometimes portrayed as one. It is true that the Christian understanding of God and of the human person has profoundly shaped social order, and that modern Western democracies would be unthinkable without it. Yet at the heart of Christianity lies neither the building of a new social order nor the dismantling of the old. As Saint Peter says: “Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors. Honour the king.”