Pentecost Sunday, Year C
First reading: Gn 11:1-9; Ex 19:3-8a, 16-20b; Ez 37:1-14; Jl 3:1-5; Acts 2:1-11
Second reading: Rom 8:8-17; 22-27
Gospel reading: Jn 14:15-16, 23b-26; 7:37-39

When Pentecost came – 50 days after Jesus had risen from the dead and 10 days after he had ascended to heaven – the apostles were “filled with the Holy Spirit,” as he had promised.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that “by communicating his Spirit,” Christ “mystically” constituted as his body those whom he calls together “from every nation.”

“Just as the body is one and has many members [or organs],” St. Paul says, “and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body.”

That body is the Church, and Pentecost is her birthday. She is not just an assembly (in Greek, ekklesia) of believers gathered around Christ. She is a body, with Christ as her head, the Holy Spirit as her soul, and us as her members.

Through the Holy Spirit, “the whole body grows,” says the Catechism, “and with the proper functioning of the members joined firmly together by each supporting ligament, builds itself up in love.”

In the phrase “proper functioning,” “proper” means more than just “correct”; it means “belonging or relating exclusively or distinctively.”

The one Spirit gives the body’s members a variety of gifts to fit them for a variety of activities and services, St. Paul says. Our “proper functioning” in Christ’s mystical body, then, means our functioning according to the gifts the Holy Spirit bestows on us and the activities he inspires in us.

As organs in Christ’s mystical body, we are each unique, but we are not separate. Through the Holy Spirit, “all the parts of the body are joined one with the other and with their exalted head,” says the Catechism.

“To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good,” St. Paul says. Just as our human soul animates our own organs so that they work together for the good of our whole body, so the Holy Spirit gives Christ’s mystical body “unity in diversity.” When we pray, “Come, Holy Spirit,” we ask him, as the soul of that body and the source of its life, to animate us as its organs.

In fact, our eternal identity – our lasting personality – comes from our place in Christ’s body. We shall be true persons only when we have allowed ourselves to be fitted into it.

Moreover, it is only as members of Christ’s body that we can live its divine life, communicated to us through the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and the Holy Eucharist.

The Catechism says that Jesus proclaimed “a real communion between his own body and ours” when he said, “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.”

“Communion” means “union with.” We call our reception of the Eucharist “Holy Communion” because when we eat Christ’s flesh and drink his blood, we enter into the most intimate possible union with him and with each other – like organs in a body.

The Church is holy, the Catechism says, because her head and her soul are holy, she teaches a holy doctrine, she offers everyone the means of holiness, and a great many of her children – past and present – are holy.

However, she “will not be perfected in glory” until Christ comes again. In the meantime, many of her members, including us, are not holy – as the world notes so often.

We must remember that Christ came for sinners, not the righteous; the sick, not the healthy; those who beg God for mercy, not those who boast that they do not need it.

Christ loves the Church so much that he “gave himself up to make her holy,” so that he might “present to himself,” as his bride, “a glorious Church, holy and immaculate, without stain or wrinkle.”

Like him, let us love her and honour her all the days of our life.

Father Hawkswell is again teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English. The whole course is available in written form and Sessions 1–35 in YouTube form at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. Session 36, “The Question of Suffering,” will be available in YouTube form starting June 5.


Let us know your thoughts about this article. Click here to send a letter to the editor.