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
On Sunday, May 31, 50 days after Easter, we celebrate the Solemnity of Pentecost. The apostles (and, by tradition, Our Lady) were all together when “suddenly from Heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind,” which “filled the entire house”; “divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them”; and “all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.”
“By his coming, which never ceases,” the Holy Spirit causes the world to enter “the time of the Church,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Pentecost is therefore the Church’s birthday. Henceforth, she is not only “the Body of Christ,” but also “the temple of the Holy Spirit.”
Just as Christ is the head of his body, the Church, so the Holy Spirit is its soul. Through him, “all the parts of the body are joined” with one another and with their head. He is the source of the body’s “life, of its unity in diversity, and of the riches of its gifts.”
For just as “all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ,” St. Paul says. “For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body – Jews or Greek, slaves or free – and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”
“All of us who have received one and the same Spirit, that is, the Holy Spirit, are in a sense blended together with one another and with God,” said St. Cyril of Alexandria.
It was through the Holy Spirit that the apostles overcame their fear of the Jewish authorities and began to teach openly. It is through the Holy Spirit that priests can forgive sins, as we hear in the Gospel Reading. It is only through the Holy Spirit that any of us can recognize Jesus as Lord, St. Paul says in the Second Reading.
Accordingly, we pray, “Come, Holy Spirit; fill the hearts of thy faithful.”
The Holy Spirit “sustains the moral life” of Christians through seven gifts: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. These gifts “complete and perfect” our virtues, making us “docile in readily obeying divine inspirations.”
Most people find it easy to imagine God the Son, the second person of the Blessed Trinity; after all, he became a man, just like us in all things except sin. Many of us find it relatively easy to imagine God the Father, the source of all fatherhood in heaven and on earth.
However, we find it difficult to imagine the Holy Spirit, despite the many symbols under which he appears: cloud, light, fire, water, breath. Perhaps it is because he is everywhere: all around us as well as in our inmost being. He is as ubiquitous as the air we breathe, and therefore just as unnoticeable – but also just as necessary.
“Left without your presence here, life itself would disappear,” we sing in the Sequence of the Mass this Sunday. “Nothing thrives apart from you!”
“The Spirit prepares men and goes out to them with his grace, in order to draw them to Christ,” the Catechism explains. “The Spirit manifests the risen Lord to them, recalls his word to them, and opens their minds to the understanding of his death and resurrection. He makes present the mystery of Christ, supremely in the Eucharist, in order to reconcile them, to bring them into communion with God, that they may bear much fruit.”
The Holy Spirit has always worked with the Father and the Son in God’s plan for our salvation, the Catechism says. However, since Pentecost, in the “time of the Church,” he is “revealed and given, recognized and welcomed as a person.”
Let us recognize and welcome him this Sunday: Lord divine, Father of the poor, best and wisest of consolers, most welcome Guest, sweet refreshment, sweet repose, light most blessed!