Inherit the Wind: Pentecost and the Breath of God

From Creation onward, Scripture often depicts the Holy Spirit as the wind or breath of God. When it swept through Jerusalem at Pentecost, all divisions ceased. 

May 20, 2026 by Father Gordon MacRae

For a hot summer post years ago, I wrote “Hot Town: Summer in the Slammer.” My title was a spoof of “Summer in the City,” the famous 1969 hit single by “The Lovin’ Spoonful.” I was sixteen years old when that song hit the charts, but my post about it decades later was sparked by more current heat in my life: the long, hot summer days in prison.

The sealed and barred window in my prison cell then faced due west, so on the hottest summer days there was a build-up of heat in a sort of greenhouse effect within these stone walls, and it could feel very oppresive at times. The windows let in heat, but no air. There are no curtains or shades in prison, and covering cell windows is forbidden. By late in a typical summer day, that cell could feel like a crucible from which there is no escape. There is no air conditioning in prison, but I bought a little nine-inch fan, which was great at circulating the heat.

Underneath each cell window was a small security grate, a five-inch high double-grated steel slot venting through the stone wall to the outside world. By summer each year, the grates are so clogged with dust that not even a hint of moving air passed through them. Prisoners were always trying to devise new ways to clean the small vent.

On one of the hottest days that summer, I watched with great hope out my cell window as towering thunderclouds built in the west late in a stifling afternoon. They grew denser and darker, and then the rarest of things happened. A blast of cool wind flowed out of the west, through the security grate, and filled this cell with cool air. Then came thunder and a torrential rain that released all the day’s heat built up in these stone walls. Blast after blast, the cool wind kept coming. It felt like the very Breath of God.

This post is about the wind, but first I owe thanks to playwrights Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee for my use of the title of their great 1955 American play, “Inherit the Wind.” The play was based on the so-called “Scopes Monkey Trial” of 1925 in which the famous defense lawyer, Clarence Darrow defended John Scopes in a Tennessee court. A high school biology teacher, John Scopes, was charged with violating state law by teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution in science class. In 1925 Tennessee, this violated a state-sanctioned fundamentalist view of the biblical account of Creation. I wrote about our culture’s conflict between science and religion in “Did Stephen Hawking Sacrifice God on the Altar of Science?”  Religion is not a topic for scientific inquiry, and science should not be refuted in the name of religion. Those are human conflicts, not God’s.

Most people do not know that “Inherit the Wind,” — both the play and the classic 1960 Spencer Tracy film — first borrowed the title from the Book of Proverbs: “He who troubles his household will inherit the wind, and the fool will be a servant to the wise.” (Proverbs 11:29). It is just possible that the Book of Proverbs itself borrowed the phrase from an even more ancient source: the followers of Pazuzu, the Assyrian god of wind and pestilence. In some ancient Mesopotamian religions, “an ill wind” carried the spirits of demons, and so to inherit the wind could mean generations of suffering for one person’s sin.

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On the Day of Pentecost

I borrowed the title, Inherit the Wind, with a very different connotation. There are 181 references to wind in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, and many of them are equated with a sacred wind or with the Breath of God. The Hebrew word for both “breath” and “wind” is “ruah,” and the Hebrew name for the Holy Spirit is “ruah ha-Qodesh,” simultaneously meaning the Spirit of God, the Wind of God, and the Breath of God.

The image of the Spirit of God rendered as a mightly wind is ancient. The very first time I picked up a Bible as a child, I was enthralled by a single image that begins the story of our existence in a created Universe with God. It was told in a few simple sentences that taught nothing about the science of cosmology except the most basic fact that I described in a science post, “A Day Without Yesterday.” It had to do with the fact of Creation, not the mechanics of it, and as a child it filled me with wonder:

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.”

— Genesis 1:1-2 RSV

Some biblical translations render that phrase, “a mighty wind from God was moving over the surface of the waters.” The image this raises is striking. If you have ever seen a film depicting raging winds at sea, the result is chaos.

The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible (NRSV Catholic Edition) translated this more literally: “A Wind of God swept over the face of the waters.” The only thing in existence in the Universe that God did not create is darkness. Darkness is the one reality that was already there at the moment of Creation. The darkness is not a description of something evil, but rather of something absent. The Wind of God moved above its unfathomable depth, and then, with a spoken word, “Let there be light,” there was light, and light overcame the darkness.

The Breath of God has stirred throughout human history ever since, and each time it does, we change dramatically. In the moment man became man, God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7) in the image and likeness of God. That same image is reflected in the account of the Resurrection appearances of Jesus in the Gospel of John before Pentecost:

“He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’ ”

— John 20:22

I will forever think of that blast of cool wind through my cell as I read the story of Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles:

“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled the house where they were sitting. There appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each of them, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit.”

— Acts 2:2-4

Saint Luke was a great writer. In three matter-of-fact sentences, with no flourish whatsoever, he conveyed a meeting between God and humankind that would be told for thousands of years. Understanding its setting explains a lot about its meaning, and what happened next.

Some people mistakenly assume that the “Day of Pentecost” referred to is the coming of the Holy Spirit that Saint Luke goes on to describe, but it does not. The “Day of Pentecost” was the reason the Apostles were in Jerusalem in the first place, and “all together in one place,” and it is the reason why “devout men from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5) were there. They had all come because Shavuot required a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Shavuot is the second of three “pilgrimage festivals” in Jewish tradition. The other two are Passover itself, and “Sukkot,” the Feast of Booths (or “Tents”), which was the Jewish autumn festival marking the harvest of wheat. The Sukkot pilgrimage to Jerusalem was set down in the Book of Leviticus (23:42) and recalls the forty years of wandering and encampment in the desert after the Exodus (hence the “booths” or tents). Sukkot was the setting for the Gospel account of the Transfiguration of Jesus (eg., Mark 9:2-13). Each of the three pilgrimage festivals — as described in the Book of Deuteronomy (16:16) — required adult men of Israel to travel to Jerusalem to mark the feast.

The Shavuot festival, known in Greek as Pentecost (meaning “fifty days”), is also called the “Festival of Weeks” because it is celebrated on the day after the passage of seven full weeks from Passover. Shavuot originally marked the end of the barley season and the beginning of the wheat season. The pilgrimage required that the first fruits of wheat be brought to Jerusalem as an offering, as described in the Book of Leviticus (23:15-17). The feast fell on the Sixth day of the Hebrew month, Sivan. In Rabbinic legend, that was also the date marking the giving of the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai described in Exodus 8, and that became the main reason for the pilgrimage feast. At Shavuot, specially baked twin loaves made from newly cut wheat were presented in the Jerusalem Temple with great ceremony to commemorate the Tablets of the Law given to Moses on Mount Sinai. In our Gregorian calendar, the Sixth day of Sivan falls on our Feast of Pentecost.

This is the setting for Pentecost in the Book of Acts, Chapter Two. As that driving wind filled the room where the Apostles were gathered, “men of every race and tongue, of every people and nation” emptied into the street at the strange and powerful noise. The mighty wind and tongues of fire described by Saint Luke were reminiscent of the loud wind and fiery descent of the Spirit of God on Mount Sinai at the time of the Exodus:

“On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightning and a thick cloud upon the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. And Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in a fire.”

— Exodus 19:16-19

The First Catholic Scandal!

Filled with the Holy Spirit, the Apostles began to address the bewildered crowd gathered in Acts Chapter Two. Each person heard them speaking in his own native tongue, an event that in effect reversed the “tragedy of Babel” described in the Book of Genesis (11:1-9), in which men became divided by foreign languages. In Acts, the Holy Spirit filled not only the Apostles, but many of the crowd as well, “and there were added that day about three thousand souls.” (Acts 2:41).

It was on that day that the Church was born, and before it was even ten minutes old, scandal broke out. Those in the crowd who did not “inherit the wind” immediately accused the Apostles of being drunk at 9:00 in the morning on a major holy day that required a morning fast. Their claims forced Saint Peter into the first Papal defense of the Church:

“Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. For these men are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day.”

— Acts 2:14-15

Saint Peter went on to preach the Church’s first homily, relying on the Prophet Joel (2:28-32) to explain that God poured out His Spirit because the Messianic Age had begun. The meaning of The Passion of the Christ was revealed, and the Apostolic Succession that first preached Christ continues even today in Salvation History as expressed in Catholic Tradition. There is no human institution on earth that has endured for so long in human history. For me, this is the real evidence that the Church inherits the wind. There is no human language, culture, or government that has existed in linear succession for so long. It is safe to say that no human conflict can put asunder what God Himself has joined. To suggest that a 21st Century tabloid sex scandal can destroy the Church is pure folly.

The point is brought home often in the news headlines, and a great example was in a May 10, 2011 column by Mary Kissel in The Wall Street Journal (“A Cardinal’s Warning on China“). Mary Kissel wrote of China’s Communist regime and its interference in the selection and ordination of Catholic bishops. She summed up the state of affairs quite well:

“The Holy See is thousands of years old; the Chinese Communist Party has ruled for little over six decades, and it faces all kinds of internal instability and challenges to its illegitimate rule. When the regime eventually falls, China will be the holy grail of Catholic missions.”

— WSJ Editorial Page, May 10, 2011

I have a particular challenge as I mark this 32nd Pentecost in prison. As I wrote in “The Last Full Measure of Devotion,” more than the loss of freedom itself, I mourn the passing of the world beyond these stone walls. Sometimes my faith strains under the weight of an unjust imprisonment, but when something as simple as a blast of cool wind through my cell on a blistering summer day can remind me of Pentecost, I have hope. We who have inherited the wind do not measure the weight of our crosses, but rather the strength of our conversion and our identity as True Believers.

In the last words of the Resurrected Christ to the Apostles as they gathered in fear of his Crucifixion and the torment of pursuit, Christ never promised them a rose garden instead, “He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’ ” (John 20:22)

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Join us a three-minute meditation on the event of Pentecost as the Benedictine Monks of the Abbey of Santo Domingo de Silos chant the Pentecostal hymn “Veni Creator Spiritus.”

This post will be added to our Sacred Scripture collection, The Bible Speaks. You may also like these related links from Beyond These Stone Walls:

The Holy Spirit and the Book of Ruth at Pentecost

For Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Pentecost Illumined the Night

Forty Years of Priesthood in the Mighty Wind of Pentecost

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Veni Creator Spiritus

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Upon a Midnight Not So Clear, Some Wise Men from the East Appear

There’s a back story to the Magi of Saint Matthew’s account of the Birth of Christ, and it is the Gospel for the Epiphany of the Lord.

At Christmas by Fr Gordon MacRae

In early December each year, prisoners here can purchase a 20-lb food package from a vendor. They drop hints to their families, and those without families scrape and save their meager prison pay all year. No one here wants to pass up a chance to purchase food they otherwise won’t see again until next year. Most are practical about it. They skip the candy and cookies to buy more sustaining items like real coffee, and meal alternatives they can save for the worst days in the prison chow hall.

The packages arrived last week, and for days prisoners have been bringing me samples of their culinary creations. They come to my cell door with an endless parade of sandwiches, wraps, and pizzas. I learned long ago that refusing the food leaves a lot of hurt feelings. They not only insist that I eat it, but they insist on staying until I declare that their culinary skill surpasses all others. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas when I have to struggle into my pants in the morning.

There’s a point to these visits. Prisoners tell me about their own back stories, and the prospect of another Christmas in prison. They want to hear that they are not without hope. Most of all, they want to know that Christmas means more than the empty, shallow “holiday season” it has become on TV.

But this morning, my Japanese friend, Koji, stopped by with some coffee he brewed using an old sock. (Trust me, you don’t want the gory details!). Koji handed me a cup — it’s pretty good, actually — and asked, “What can you tell me about the Magi?” That was odd because I’ve been thinking of writing about the Magi for Christmas. I told Koji I’ll let him read this post when finished. Maybe he’ll bring me more coffee made with that old sock of his. Lord, give me the strength to bear my blessings! Anyway, there’s no better place to begin the Magi story than St. Matthew’s own words:

“Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East, and have come to worship him.’ When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it is written by the prophet:

‘And you, 0 Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will govern my people, Israel.’

Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared; and he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, ‘Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.’ When they had heard the king, they went their way; and lo, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy; and going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshipped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.”

— Matthew 2: 1-12

Myth, Midrash, or Both?

This story, as Saint Matthew relates it, is a myth. But don’t get me wrong. That does not mean the story isn’t true. In fact, I firmly believe that it is true. The word, “myth,” coming from the Greek “mythos,” simply means “story,” and makes no judgement on whether a story is historical. Myth is not synonymous with falsehood despite how its more modern meaning has been twisted into such a conclusion. In theology and Biblical studies, myth simply denotes a story imbued with rich theological and symbolic meaning, but that does not mean it’s devoid of historical truth.

Biblical myth is distinguished from legends and “folklore” by the way it offers explanations about the facts of a story. In myth, the explanations stand whether the facts stand or not, and the value of the story does not depend on its historical accuracy. Perhaps the best example is the Creation story of Genesis, Chapter 1. In my post, “A Day Without Yesterday,” the great Belgian physicist, Father Georges Lemaitre, turned modern cosmology on its head with his theory of the Big Bang. For Pope Pius XI, this proof of a universe that begins and ends in history affirmed the elemental truth of Biblical Creation.

When I say that the story of the Magi is true, however, I mean truth in both senses. The understanding the story conveys is the truth. The historical facts of the story are also the truth, and we have no reason to doubt them.

The account of the Magi is also a “midrash.” Midrash is a Hebrew term meaning “interpretation.” It’s a characteristic of many of the reflections in the Aggadah — which in Hebrew means “narrative.” The Aggadah is a collection of Rabbinic reflection and teaching gathered over a thousand years. Midrash is a type of literature from the Aggadah that interprets Biblical texts by linking them together and discerning their hidden meanings.

Like myth, midrash is not a declaration that a Biblical passage is not historical or true just because it contains elements of other Biblical texts. In Saint Matthew’s Gospel, the Magi story points to many elements in Old Testament Scriptures. Jewish Christians hearing Saint Matthew’s account of the Magi, for example, would connect the Star in the East witnessed by the Magi with the star Balaam (a sort of Magus figure) envisioned arising out of Jacob in a dream-like account described in the Book of Numbers 24:17. Herod’s affront with the idea of a Hebrew King in the Magi account echoes Balaam’s vision as well. Herod is of the Edomite clan. In Balaam’s vision, the star arising out of Jacob is a portent that “Edom shall be dispossessed.” (Numbers 24:18).

The account of wicked King Herod feeling threatened by the life of the infant Jesus recalls clearly the Exodus account of a wicked Pharaoh who, having enslaved the Jews, seeks the life of the infant Moses. And in the Infancy Narrative of Saint Luke’s Gospel, the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth conceiving a child in their old age is clearly an echo of the Genesis story of Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac.

In “Saint Gabriel the Archangel: When the Dawn from On High Broke Upon Us,” I wrote of how St. Luke drew many midrashic links with the Hebrew Scriptures in his account of the Angelic visit to Mary at the Annunciation. The account of Mary visiting Elizabeth in the hill country of Judea recalls David visiting the very same place to retrieve the Ark of the Covenant as told in 2 Samuel, Chapter 6. Even the story of the future John the Baptist leaping in his mother’s womb in the presence of Mary is midrashic. In 2 Samuel, David leaps for joy in the presence of the Ark of the Covenant. I find these echoes of the Old Testament to be fascinating, but they don’t leave the story’s historical truth in question, including the Magi story.

I have a modern analogy in my own family. I wrote about my father’s conversion in “What Do John Wayne and Pornchai Moontri Have in Common?” My father’s parents had four children. He grew up with two brothers and a sister. One of his brothers became a priest. A generation later, my father and mother had four children. I also grew up with two brothers and a sister. Both I and my father’s brother who became a priest were the second son in our families. Many of the stories of my own childhood have eerie echoes in my father’s childhood. This is what is meant by midrash.

The Epiphany is depicted in a mural titled “Adoration of the Magi” in the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception at Conception Abbey in Conception, MO. Painted by Benedictine monks in the late 1800s.

The Gifts of the Magi

There are elements within our popular understanding of the story of the Magi, however, that history has added over the centuries. For example, nothing in Saint Matthew’s account indicates that the Magi were three in number. The sole hint is in the number of their gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And despite the popular Christmas carol, “We Three Kings,” there is nothing in Saint Matthew’s account to indicate that they were kings. This account became linked to a passage in Isaiah:

“And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising . . . they shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.”

— Isaiah 60:3,6

And linked as well was a passage about kings bringing tribute in Psalm 72:

“May the kings of Tarshish and of the isles render him tribute; may the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts”

— Psalm 72:10

Much theological symbolism for the gifts themselves was reflected upon later. Saint Ireneaus held that the Gifts of the Magi signify Christ Incarnate. Gold, a symbol of royalty, signifies Christ the King. Frankincense, used throughout ancient Israel in the worship of God, signifies divinity, and myrrh, an anointing oil for burial, signifies the Passion and death of the Messiah.

Saint Gregory the Great added to this interpretation with the Gifts of the Magi symbolizing our duty toward Christ in our daily lives. Gold signifies Christ’s wisdom and our deference. Frankincense signifies our prayer and adoration of Christ, and myrrh signifies our daily sacrifices as a share in the suffering of Christ. The names of the Magi — Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar — came out of a sixth century legend.

East of Eden

It’s widely held in Catholic scholarship that the Magi represent the first Gentiles to come to worship the Christ. There is one strain of scholarship that makes reference to the fact that they were astrologers who represented the world of magic. Most scholars see the Magi as followers of Zoroaster, an Indo-Iranian prophet who lived 12 centuries before Christ. Throughout the eastern world, followers of Zoroaster dominated religious thought for centuries. And yet there they are, kneeling in the presence of Christ. The symbolism is that as Christ reigns supreme, all other magic goes out of the world and loses its power and authority. It’s a beautiful and powerful image of the universal Kingship of Christ for all time, and the vast change his birth brought to the history of humankind.

I have an additional theory of my own about the hidden meaning of the account of the Magi, but I have been unable to find any reference to it in the work of any Biblical scholar, Catholic or otherwise. So I’m on my own in this wilderness of midrashic symbols. It’s true that the Magi represent all the world beyond Judaism coming into a covenant relationship with God through Christ. But great pains are taken by Saint Matthew to remind us repeatedly that the Magi are coming out of the East — and he capitalized “East.” It seems to me to be intended to designate more than just a compass point. The fact that they came from the East, and saw his star in the East, is repeated by Saint Matthew three times in this brief account.

In one of my posts on These Stone Walls — “In the Land of Nod, East of Eden” — I wrote of how both Adam and Eve were banished East of Eden after the Fall of Man (Genesis 3:24). It was both a punishment and a deterrent. God then placed a Cherubim with a flaming sword to the East of Eden to bar Man’s return.

A generation later, after the murder of his brother, Abel, Cain was also banished. Cain “went away from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the Land of Nod, East of Eden (Genesis 4:14). The “Land of Nod” has no other reference in all of Scripture, and is widely interpreted to have its origin in the Hebrew term, “nad,” which means “to wander.” Cain himself described his fate in just this way:

“From thy face I shall be hidden; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.”

— Genesis 4:14

I count 21 references to an ill wind from the East throughout Sacred Scripture, but not one such reference after the Birth of Christ. An example is this one from the Prophet Isaiah:

“Measure by measure, by exile thou didst contend with them; he removed them with his fierce blast in the day of the east wind.”

— Isaiah 27:8

For me, the Magi represent also those who have fallen, who have become alienated from God and banished East of Eden. They saw his star there, and followed its light. I am in a place filled with men who lived their entire lives East of Eden, and for them the Magi are a sign of Good News — the very best news. Freedom can be found in only one place: and the way there is the Star of Bethlehem.

Amid the Encircling Gloom

My cell window faces West so my gaze is always out of the East. On this cold and gray December day, the sun is just now setting behind the high prison wall, and glistening upon the spirals of razor wire like tinsel. Its final glimmer of light is just now fading from view. I am reminded of my favorite prayer, a gift from another wise man, Blessed John Henry Newman, and it has become a tradition of sorts as the Sun sets on These Stone Walls at Christmas. I can hear the Magi praying this as they follow that Star out of the East. On my 18th Christmas in prison, this is my prayer for you as well:

“Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on.
The night is dark, and I am far from home;
Lead Thou me on
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; One step enough for me.

I was not ever thus,
Nor prayed that Thou shouldst lead me on;
I loved to choose and see my path,
But now lead Thou me on.
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will; remember not past years.

So long Thy power hath blessed me,
Sure it still will lead me on
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent
Till the night is gone,
And with the morn those Angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.”

The readers of These Stone Walls have cast a light into the darkness and isolation of prison this year. It’s a light that illuminates the path from East of Eden, and it is magnified ever so brightly, in my life and in yours, by the Birth of Christ. The darkness can never, ever, ever overcome it.

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