Solemnity of Pentecost
May 24, 2015
Acts 2: 1-11
Gal 5: 16-25
John 15: 26-27; 16: 12-15
Holy Cross, Fairfield, Conn.
“When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they
were all in one place together. And
suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it
filled the entire house in which they were.
Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to
rest on each one of them. And they were
all filled with the Holy Spirit…” (Acts 2: 1-3).
 |
| Coming of the Holy Spirit (source unknown) |
Pentecost is also one of the 3 Sundays of the
year when we have a sequence that follows the 2d reading. The sequences were originally intended as hymns
to accompany a long procession with the book of the gospels from the altar to
the ambo. Our processions usually aren’t
very long any more, if there’s a procession at all. The liturgy has preserved 3 sequences—for
Easter, Pentecost, and Corpus Christi—which are magnificent poetically,
musically, and theologically.
About the Spirit’s coming recorded in the Acts
of the Apostles, we can note these points:
1st, the Spirit descends upon the entire Church
gathered as one, i.e., upon the community.
There is no Spirit and no Church without community, without our
gathering as one body of Jesus Christ.
We must come together to
worship; we must believe together the one
faith proclaimed in the Scriptures and taught to us by the apostles.
2d, the Spirit “rests on each one of them,” upon
the 120 individuals gathered together in that upper room. Altho the Spirit comes upon the group, the
Spirit also infuses himself into the heart and mind and soul of each of
them. Each Christian, each baptized
person, has a share of the Spirit and must do as this 1st body of Christians
did: go out and proclaim the Gospel of
Jesus. Each Christian is a public witness
of the resurrection of Jesus and the eternal life that Jesus offers to us thru
the forgiveness of our sins. “You also
testify, because you have been with me from the beginning,” Jesus says in the
gospel (John 15:27).
3d, the Spirit is a force for unity. Jesus prayed that all his disciples would be
one, one with himself and the Father, one among themselves. It’s the Spirit that draws us all
together. You were brought here by the
Holy Spirit! Filled with the Holy
Spirit, the Church goes out to bring the whole world—represented by all the
different nationalities evidenced in the reading—into union with God thru
Jesus. No one can be excluded from God’s
redeeming love—not on account of ethnicity or language or color or gender or
culture or place of birth.
In the reading from Galatians, St. Paul reminds
the Christians of the Roman province of Galatia—in modern Turkey—that the Holy
Spirit is opposed to sinful attitudes and behavior, what Paul calls “the
flesh.” The “flesh” means not just
impurity and lust and gluttony and drunkenness, but all sorts of selfishness
and idolatry; Paul provides a list in what we read, and he has other lists in
other letters.
That famous phrase of Pope Francis, “Who am I to
judge?” is usually quoted out of context.
The context—in that press conference on the plane returning from Rio—was,
“If someone is truly trying to follow the Lord,” who am I to judge his
failures? Only the Lord knows the
heart. None of us knows any individual’s
standing before God. In fact, St. Paul
tells the Corinthians that he doesn’t “even pass judgment on” himself (I,
4:3). God alone can judge our attitudes,
motivations, words, and actions.
And he will!
“The Spirit and the flesh are opposed to each other” (Gal 5:17), and “those
who do the works of the flesh … will not inherit the kingdom of God,” Paul
tells us (5:19,21), whereas “those who belong to Christ Jesus,” i.e., who “live
by the Spirit” of Jesus, “have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires”
(5:24). The Spirit helps us to know
right and wrong attitudes and behaviors, helps us correct the wrong ones, helps
us live in accordance with the teaching of Jesus.
In fact, if we were to continue reading Acts 2,
we’d hear St. Peter preaching to all those “devout Jews from every nation under
heaven” who, hearing the roar of the Spirit’s “strong driving wind,” came
running to the house where Jesus’ disciples were staying—Peter preaching that
God had raised Jesus from the dead, and therefore they should “repent and be
converted, that [their] sins may be wiped away” (2:15,19) and they be granted
salvation.
We noted above that the Spirit is a spirit of
unity. Repentance, conversion, is
necessary for unity. If we continue in
our selfishness, in the works of the flesh—be they sins of sexual immorality or
of ethnic hatred or of financial greed or whatever else—we work against
unity: our unity with God’s goodness, our
unity with the rest of humanity. In some
fashion we all sin against that unity, and the Gospel calls us to constant
conversion. The works of the flesh are
evident in the mayhem of the Middle East, in the drug trade, in human
trafficking, in racism and sexism, in abortion, in the porn industry, in the
abuse of children, in adulterous and homosexual and non-committed relations, and
in a whole lot of social ills. Pope
Francis would add gossip as a work of the flesh. Here are a few things he’s said about that:
It’s
so rotten, gossip. At the beginning it
seems to be something enjoyable and fun, like a piece of candy. But at the end, it fills the heart with
bitterness and also poisons us.
Those
who live judging their neighbor, speaking ill of their neighbor, are
hypocrites, because they lack the strength and the courage to look at their own
shortcomings.
I
tell you the truth: I am convinced that
if each one of us would purposely avoid gossip, at the end, we would become a
saint! It’s a beautiful path![1]
When one is converted, then the works of the
Spirit become evident; Paul list 9 of them, including peace, kindness, and
faithfulness.
Speaking to the apostles at the Last
Supper—which is where today’s gospel reading comes from—Jesus calls the Spirit
“the Spirit of truth” (John 15:26) and promises that the Spirit “will guide you
to all truth” (16:13). The Spirit that
descended upon the Church at Pentecost guides the Church in knowing and
proclaiming the truth. The Church has
that mission: to proclaim the goodness
and mercy of God, to name sin and call us to conversion, as Peter did on the
1st Pentecost, as Paul did thruout his long career, as the Church has been
doing for 20 centuries. Every Christian
is called to stick to the truth of the Gospel, to live it, to testify to it, to
try to infuse it into society, e.g., thru respect for the dignity of every
human being, thru forgiveness of those who injure us, thru generosity toward
the needy, etc.
If we “follow the Spirit,” as Paul urges us,
then we may be confident that the Spirit will (in the English translation of
today’s Sequence) “give us virtue’s sure reward; give us his salvation, give us
joys that never end.” Our union with God
and with all God’s people will be perfected in eternal friendship, eternal
life, eternal joy.
No comments:
Post a Comment