For Easter we use a very large number of scripture readings. There are 9 possible for the Vigil Mass and a whole different set for each of the daytime masses. For Pentecost there are almost as many, but we usually hear just 3 as on a “regular” Sunday.
You might feel that Easter gives us almost too much of a good thing, but I’d suggest that we miss out if we focus only on the specific Pentecost story this weekend (Acts 2:1-11). Just as the Resurrection needs to be appreciated not only as a unique, one-off event at a particular time and place, but also as the culmination of centuries of history of God’s revelation to His people – so too Pentecost is more than single event in the life of just a few people, which we observe “from the outside”, as it were.
The idea of “the Spirit of God” is certainly not a new one in the Gospels, and Jesus was by no means the first to speak of it. Those other readings for the Feast of Pentecost illustrate the many ways in which the people of God experienced and spoke about the Spirit before the time of Jesus. And we also know that that experience continued in different ways after the Resurrection, as reflected in the wide range of accounts in the New Testament. It has continued in all the time since, as we see in the lives of the Saints, and in all those who remain faithful to the teaching of Jesus in the particular circumstances of their lives, through whatever trials and troubles they may experience.
Having acknowledged the universality of the Spirit, we can also note that Jesus did bring something new and different to our understanding of who/what/how the Spirit is. In previous times the Spirit was thought of as the power of God acting in the world – but that was an “external” force, God was “outside” us, “on high”, looking down on the world. Jesus gives us a new understanding. The Spirit is within us. We eat and drink Jesus – there could be no stronger description of the internality of that relationship. The Spirit is Jesus with us, and therefore the Father with us, the God within us.
We still struggle to comprehend this reality. No less a saint than San Agustin cried out when he finally got it: Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved You. And see, You were within and I was in the external world and sought You there [big mistake, he goes on to explain].
Those tongues of flame didn’t dance around the outside of the apostles, they burned deep inside them, and changed them totally. We also received that Spirit in our baptism.