Homily orignally presented May 20, 2018
United by the Holy Spirit!
While the Holy Spirit of God is present at every Mass, we celebrate Him in a special way today … on this ... the Solemnity of Pentecost.
Our Banner and our Vestments for this Liturgy are Red in color ...
Red like the tongues of fire on the heads of the Apostles ...
as they received the Holy Spirit ... the Fire of God’s Love.
It was with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost 2000 years ago ...
that the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ ... was brought to its completion.
Hopefully you can articulate what the Paschal Mystery of Jesus is.
We’ve been speaking about it for 90 days now … 40 days before Easter & 50 days after!
The Paschal Mystery is the way in which God accomplished His work of Redemption.
The Paschal Mystery encompasses the life-giving acts of Jesus, namely …
His Passion, His Death, His Resurrection, His Ascension and His Sending of the H.S.
There are 5 events … remember them … they are …
the Suffering, the Death, the Resurrection, the Ascension and the Sending!
These 5 events are individual ... and yet they are inseparable,
they are distinct ... and yet they are one!
The Paschal Mystery is a great mystery … second only to the mystery of the Trinity.
There too, the 3 Persons of God are individual ... and yet they are inseparable.
There too, They are distinct ... and yet they are one.
Well, we human beings are similarly a great mystery ...
because God chose to make us in His own image and likeness.
And so ... oneness of persons and oneness of mission should not be seen as
a surprising characteristic of who we are as children of God.
Actually, what might appear surprising ... is an event that took place very early in time
where God acted ... in opposition to oneness.
Remember the story in Genesis, the first Book of the Bible, of the Tower of Babel.
Scripture says, “The whole world spoke the same language, using the same words.”
But then the people said, “Come, let us build a tower with its top in the sky ...
and so make a name for ourselves, otherwise we shall be scattered all over the earth.”
And so what was their reason for building their tower?
Was it to build a name … for God?
No… their reason for building the tower was to build a name … for themselves!
How arrogant, how prideful! That’s man … still full of the pride of Adam and Eve!
A great Saint once said, “In the beginning, God created man in his image.
And a few minutes later, man returned the favor!”
So, to rebuke man’s pride, God said, “Let us then go down and there confuse their language, so that one will not understand what another says.” As a result, “Thus the Lord scattered them from there all over the earth and they stopped building the (tower).”
God is one … and He wants us to be one … for Him … not against Him!
Which is why the feast of Pentecost is so especially important!
Because, Pentecost can be seen as ... The Tower of Babel in Reverse!
You see at the Tower of Babel, the people were confused because
they couldn’t understand the different languages.
And now at Pentecost, the people were confused because
they could understand the different languages!
Luke says today, “But they were confused
because each one heard them speaking in his own language.”
Pentecost is Babel ... in reverse! Here, God is not scattering … but uniting!
Where at Babel, one language was separated into many .,.
now at Pentecost, many languages were united in speaking the same message.
And what was that message?
Scripture says today that everyone heard the Apostles ...
“speaking in their own tongues of … the mighty acts of God.”
Not the mighty acts of man … but … the mighty acts of God!
Arrogance is gone. Truth is spoken!
That’s the way God wants us united … in our love and our praise and gratitude to Him!
He alone is the One True God who is … Father, Son and Holy Spirit …
He alone is the Creator … the Redeemer ... and the Sanctifier ... of the world!
God who is one,
wants to take away confusion and separation among men and make them one … in Him.
God wants to bring understanding and unity … not separation and division.
You could say that God accomplished this in two steps:
In Bethlehem, at Christmas, God brought about the birth of the physical Body of Christ
In Jerusalem , at Pentecost, God brought about the birth of the mystical Body of Christ … ... which is the Church!
Yes, at Pentecost, God reveals the mystery of the Church, where all are one in Christ!
Jesus is the head and we are His Mystical Body … individual yet united
distinct yet one … in Jesus Christ.
And the Holy Spirit is the agent of all this!
By the great miracle of Pentecost, the Apostles became the sign of the Catholic Church that Jesus established to speak the languages of all nations; a worldwide household of God.
Remember, the word “Catholic” means universal … or the same all over.
Scripture says that all of the Apostles began to preach in different languages …
but they spoke the same message to all the different people all over the world.
This demonstrates the oneness of God!
Now there’s a chance that some person might challenge you and ask ...
why you don’t speak in tongues if you’ve received the Holy Spirit!
Well, you could say, (as a 6th Century theologian did)
“I do indeed speak in the tongues of all men, because I belong to the body of Christ,
that is, the Church, and she speaks all languages.”
St. Irenaeus, who led the early Church as Bishop of Lyons in the late 100’s ...
referred to God’s action of sending the Holy Spirit
as the way for men of every language to be able to sing one song of praise to God.
In our Gospel today, we heard Jesus promise to send the Holy Spirit to us …
It was to make us one with each other on earth and ready to be one with God in Heaven!
St. Cyril of Alexandria, who led the Church as Bishop of Alexandria, in the early 400’s said this, “After Christ had completed his mission on earth, it still remained necessary for us to become sharers in the divine nature of the Word. We had to give up our own life and so be transformed that we would begin to live an entirely new kind of life that would be pleasing to God. This was something we could only do by sharing in the Holy Spirit.
You see, God’s help is required!
And in His great love for us, He sent His help … His Holy Spirit.
St. Irenaeus gives us the following visual:
“Like a pile of dry flour,
which cannot become one lump of dough, one loaf of bread, without moisture,
we who are many
could not become one in Christ Jesus without the water that comes down from heaven.”
And the water that comes down from Heaven …
the water that makes us one … is God’s gift of the Holy Spirit!
Through Baptism … we become one in body;
Through the Holy Spirit we become one in soul.
St. Paul saw the unifying power of the Holy Spirit and wrote about it often.
In our Second Reading today from 1st Corinthians, Paul says,
“For in one spirit we were all baptized into one body … and given to drink of one spirit.”
In a document from the Second Vatican Council of 1965, the Bishops wrote,
“When the Son completed the work with which the Father had entrusted him on earth, the Holy Spirit was sent on the day of Pentecost to sanctify the Church unceasingly,
and thus enable believers to have access to the Father through Christ in the one Spirit.
He is the Spirit of life, the fountain of water welling up to give eternal life.
Through Him, the Father gives life to men, dead because of sin, until he raises up their mortal bodies in Christ.”
Recall Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well ... he asked her for a cup of water.
She was annoyed to think that Jesus, a Jew, would ask her, a Gentile, for a drink.
Jesus said, “If you only knew who it was that asked you for a cup of water,
you would have asked him for a drink and He would have given you “living water”.
When Jesus spoke of living water, He was referring to the Holy Spirit,
water that springs up in you to eternal life where you will never thirst again!
How do we get living water? We ask for it!
Jesus is still sending the Holy Spirit through the 7 sacraments that He established for us.
He sends His Holy Spirit into the souls of those that desire Him.
Last Monday, 70 of our youth received the full outpouring of the Holy Spirit
in the Sacrament of Confirmation. They asked for it!
Each time you go to Confession you receive forgiveness for sin by the power of the Holy Spirit. “God the Father of Mercies, through the death and resurrection of His Son has reconciled the world to Himself and sent the Holy Spirit for the forgiveness of sins.”
Each time you attend Mass, the Bread and Wine are transubstantiated by the power of the Holy Spirit. “Let your Spirit come upon them like the dewfall …” Amen!
God is still sending the Holy Spirit to help us. We just have to ask and be open to Him.
In our Gospel today, when Jesus promised to send His Holy Spirit to us ...
He called Him the Advocate and the Spirit of Truth, who “will guide us in all truth.”
The Holy Spirit is our Advocate, He is our Comforter, He’s on our side and He can guide us to lead good lives so that we can merit to be with God forever in Heaven.
We received the full outpouring of the gifts of the Holy Spirit when we were confirmed. Now what we need to do is to open our hearts to let them blossom into fruits of God.
The Power is here, we just need to connect to it! Like electricity, it is waiting at the outlet for us to plug in a cord or turn on a switch to let it flow.
God reverences your free will. He wants you to ask … so ask!
In our Gospel Acclamation today we responded,
“Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love.”
What a beautiful invocation; what a beautiful invitation! It’s Pentecost day after day!
Pentecost is about Almighty God coming to live in human hearts and making ordinary people into extraordinary saints.
The goal is to become one with the Mystical Body of Christ and one with God in Heaven.
Let’s let that be the prayer that we say over and over throughout the day.
Then we’ll be able to pick up the impulses, the promptings, the inspirations, of the Holy Spirit to help us in every situation.
We’ve been given the gift to make us one with each other and one with God.
We’ve been given Living Water … God’s Holy Spirit.
Lets’ call forward that gift every day saying
“Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love.”
“By the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, Christ’s paschal mystery was brought to completion, the Holy Trinity was fully revealed and the church was made manifest to the world.” Magnificat
St. Thomas Aquinas says that “the Holy Spirit interiorly perfects our spirit, communicating to it a new dynamism so that it refrains from evil for love.”
“With the Holy Spirit within us, it is quite natural for people who had been absorbed by the things of this world to become entirely other-worldly in outlook, and for cowards to become people of great courage.” St Cyril of Alexandria
“The Holy Spirit not only sanctifies and guides God’s people by the sacraments and the ministries, and enriches it with the virtues,
He also distributes special graces among the faithful … assigning gifts as He chooses … to benefit the Church in its renewal or its increase.” Dogmatic Constitution on the Church
St. Basil, who led the Church as Bishop of Caesarea until his death in 379, said this:
“Like the sunshine, which permeates all the atmosphere, spreading over land and sea, and yet is enjoyed by each person as though it were for him alone,
so the Spirit pours forth his grace in full measure, sufficient for all, and yet is present as though exclusively to everyone who can receive Him. To all creatures that share in Him, He gives a delight limited only by their own nature, not by his ability to give.
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