Pentecost Sunday, Year A
First Reading: Gn 11:1-9 or Ex 19:3-8a, 16-20 or Ez 37:1-14 or Jl 2:28-30; Acts 2:1-11
Second Reading: Rom 8:22-27; 1 Cor 12:3b-7, 12-13
Gospel Reading: Jn 7:37-39; Jn 20:19-23

The summary of salvation history in the Fourth Eucharistic Prayer ends by saying that Christ “sent the Holy Spirit” as “the first fruits for those who believe, so that, bringing to perfection his work in the world, he might sanctify creation to the full.”

That gift is what we celebrate this Sunday.

God is One, but he is three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We know God the Son, for he became man; in him, God was made visible to us. We know God the Father, for the Son is his image.

How can we know the Holy Spirit? In the Nicene Creed, we call him “the Lord and Giver of life,” the one who spoke “through the prophets.” In this Sunday’s Sequence, we say that without his presence, “life itself would disappear.”

In the First Reading, we see his effect on the apostles: they “began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” In the Second Reading, St. Paul says that “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” In the Gospel Reading, Jesus authorized his apostles to forgive sins by breathing his Holy Spirit into them.

It was by the “overshadowing” of the Holy Spirit that Mary conceived Jesus. It was “by the will of the Father and the work of the Holy Spirit” that Christ’s death “brought life to the world,” as the priest says at Mass. It is by the power of the Holy Spirit, whom the priest invokes, that bread and wine become Christ’s Body and Blood.

The Holy Spirit is at work in every sacrament. “Baptism gives us the grace of new birth in God the Father, through his Son, in the Holy Spirit,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. “For those who bear God’s Spirit are led to the Word, that is, to the Son, and the Son presents them to the Father, and the Father confers incorruptibility on them; and it is impossible to see God’s Son without the Spirit, and no one can approach the Father without the Son, for the knowledge of the Father is the Son, and the knowledge of God’s Son is obtained through the Holy Spirit.”

It is the Holy Spirit who preserves Christ’s Church from error in faith and morals. “This much I have told you while I was still with you,” Christ said to his apostles the night before he died. “The Paraclete, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, will instruct you in everything, and remind you of all that I told you…. I have much to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. When he comes, however, being the Spirit of truth, he will guide you into all truth.”

Accordingly, the Church celebrates Pentecost as her birthday, when “this same Spirit opened to all peoples the knowledge of God and brought together the many languages of the earth in profession of the one faith,” as she says in the Preface.

The Church has always believed in the Holy Spirit, Pope St. John Paul II said in his encyclical Dominum et Vivificantem (“Lord and Giver of Life”). However, that belief must be “constantly reawakened and deepened in the consciousness of the people of God.”

We can strengthen our belief in the Holy Spirit by studying relevant Church teaching, such as Pope Leo XIII’s Divinum Illud Munus, Pope Pius XII’s Mystici Corporis, or Pope John Paul’s general audiences from May 13 to Dec. 9, 1998, the Year of the Holy Spirit.

Above all, we can pray: “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and enkindle in them the fire of your love…. O God, you have taught the hearts of the faithful by the light of the Holy Spirit; grant that by the same Spirit we may be always truly wise and ever rejoice in his consolation.”

Father Hawkswell is again teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English, with new insights. The whole course is available in written form and, one session per week, in YouTube form at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. Father is also teaching the course in person on Sundays at 2 p.m. in the John Paul II Pastoral Centre, 4885 St. John Paul II Way, Vancouver (33rd and Willow), and on Mondays at 10 a.m. in St. Anthony’s Church hall, 2347 Inglewood Ave., West Vancouver. The title of the next session is The Question of Suffering.

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