The oldest predecessor of Pentecost is the harvest festival. In May, the grain ripened in Palestine, and Pentecost was a thanksgiving for the wheat harvest. People perceive fertility, which unfolds in the harmony of heaven and earth, as a miracle from which they live, and they know that gratitude is the true response to this miracle. Thus, the harvest transforms into a celebration.
Does it still make sense to us today? Our worldview becomes schizophrenic if we think of the Holy Spirit only in terms of Christian inner life and the harvest only in terms of technology and the market… It is important for us to recognize again during Pentecost: the Holy Spirit that descended upon the apostles is the same Spirit that created the world.
(Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, God's Light in Our Time)
