Homily for Solemnity of Pentecost

Homily for the Solemnity of Pentecost

June 5, 2022
Acts 2: 1-11
St. Joseph, New Rochelle, N.Y.

“They were all filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2: 4).

Pentecost (Bernard van Orley)

The Acts of the Apostles, a history of the beginnings of Christianity composed by St. Luke, narrates the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Church 10 days after the Lord Jesus ascended into heaven.  This is in ch. 2.  Luke tells us in ch. 1 that the disciples of Jesus numbered about 120 men and women, including “Mary the mother of Jesus” (1:14-15), and they spent those 10 days gathering in the same room, the so-called upper room, where Jesus had celebrated Passover with his 12 closest followers, the apostles, and where he had appeared to them after rising from the dead.

The 1st of those appearances after Jesus’ resurrection is the one we read from the gospel of St. John (20:19-23).  While Acts reports that the Holy Spirit came upon all 120 disciples on Pentecost Day, St. John describes Jesus giving the Spirit to the apostles on Easter nite.

In either narrative, what’s important is that Jesus has given the Holy Spirit to the disciples, i.e., to the Church.  Acts tells us, “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit”—all of them together as a united body of followers of Jesus, and all of them as individual members of that body.

Acts brings out that the disciples, filled with the Holy Spirit, at once proclaimed “the mighty acts of God” (2:11).  In John’s Gospel, the Spirit is given for the forgiveness of sins (20:23).  Forgiveness, spiritual healing, is the 1st mighty act of God.

Writing to the Corinthians, St. Paul indicates another individual gift of the Holy Spirit:  “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3).  In Baptism and Confirmation the Holy Spirit has been given to each one of us.  Each of us is empowered to recognize that Jesus is our Savior, Jesus is our Lord.  Each of us is to “proclaim the mighty acts of God,” recognizing that God loves us and God forgives us thru Jesus Christ, and to proclaim that by holy lives based upon our personal relationship with Jesus.  The Spirit leads us into such a personal relationship, enabling us to pray to Jesus, to hear his word, and to act on his word.  In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul writes:  “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.  And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (8:26-27 RSV).

The Spirit is given to the entire body of Christ’s disciples.  Thru the Holy Spirit, the Church celebrates the sacraments.  We don’t celebrate sacraments as individuals but as members of Christ’s body, bonded to him by the Holy Spirit.  In Baptism we are born again by water and the Holy Spirit.  In the Eucharist, we invoke the Spirit upon the bread and wine on our altar that they may become the Body and Blood of Christ—listen for that during the Eucharistic Prayer.  The spiritual gift of marriage unites a man and a woman as a sacramental image of the union between Christ and the Church.  By the laying on of hands, a bishop invokes the Holy Spirit and transforms a man into a priest, into “another Christ,” empowered to preach God’s word like the disciples on Pentecost Day, to forgive sins, to anoint the sick, to celebrate the Eucharist.

The Spirit is given to the entire body of Christ’s disciples, to the universal Church, so that the Church may know and teach the truth.  The Spirit inspires the sacred Scriptures that rule our faith.  God’s Word teaches us that God loves us, teaches the truth that every man and woman has been created by God and bears a personal dignity coming from God, teaches that God intends men and women to live a happy eternity with him because they’ve been sealed with the gift of his Holy Spirit.  The Church teaches these truths with practical applications from age to age, addressing timeless moral issues like honoring and caring for our parents, speaking truthfully, respecting the property of others, and treating every person with respect regardless of sex, color, age, ethnicity, or any other distinction.  The Church addresses new moral questions as they arise, questions of war and peace, with respect for God’s creation (environmental issues), human sexuality, and the migration of peoples.  The Church speaks on these issues with the power of the Holy Spirit given to her by Jesus our Lord.  If someone chooses to ignore the Church, thinking that his or her personal wisdom is greater, then one is despising the Holy Spirit.

Why is our society being ripped apart by racism, by violence, by the killing of unwanted human beings by abortion and ethnic cleansing, by terrorism, by national lust for territory and power?  Because we’re not listening to the truth that God created us as brothers and sisters, the truth that we’re all his beloved children—truths made known to us by the Holy Spirit, truths that we can practice individually by letting the Spirit govern our own lives—“to each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit” (1 Cor 12:7)—truths that every follower of Jesus is empowered to proclaim to the world.