The winds of Pentecost began to blow the night before Jesus’ death. There, in his last hours of teaching his disciples and friends, Jesus told them about the coming of the Spirit. “If I do not go, the Helper will not come” (John 16:7). Though months earlier he had already warned his disciples that he was going to be betrayed, killed, and, three days later, rise again, the disciples did not understand. So, that night in the upper room, it’s no surprise that they also could not fully fathom what being filled with the Holy Spirit might mean. As their evening of sharing the Passover meal unraveled into the incomprehensible arrest of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, the promise of the Spirit must have seemed very far away.

Among those assembled and waiting at Pentecost, only Mary already knew what it meant to be filled with the Holy Spirit.