PENTECOST SUNDAY (B2)
(Acts of the Apostles 2:1-11; Galatians 5:16-25; John
15:26-27; 16:12-15)
Jesus, speaking to His apostles
before His Passion, Death, and Resurrection, and wishing to both comfort and
strengthen them, said (John 14:16–18):
I will ask the Father, and He will give you another
Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, Whom the world cannot
receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you know Him, because He
remains with you, and will be in you. I
will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.
The Holy Spirit is, indeed, our very own – and in that
sense -- secret treasure for:
The world cannot receive Him,
because it neither sees Him nor knows Him.
However, He is ours because He
remains with us in Mother Church by the fact of our abiding membership
of Mother Church, the Body of Christ; and He is in
us by our personal reception of the sacramental Body and Blood of Christ
at Holy Mass.
Today we
celebrate His abiding in Mother Church with deep joy and hope as the crowd of
pilgrims-cum-converts celebrated with wonder and amazement the first Pentecost
when:
Suddenly there
came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire
house in which they were. Then there
appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one
of them. And they were all filled with
the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled
them to proclaim. Now there were devout
Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem. At this sound, they gathered in a large
crowd, but they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own
language. They were astounded, and in
amazement they asked, “Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans? Then how does each of us hear them in his own
native language?” They were all astounded and bewildered, and said to one
another, “What does this mean?” (Acts
2:2–12)
Our rejoicing is, of course, for different motives today
since we do not actually hear Apostles speaking miraculously to people of many
nations; but we do hear – with most humble admiration – of so many apparently
ordinary Catholics and Christians heroically suffering mockery, loss of homes
and property, personal hatred, and public persecution even to death, for the
Name of Jesus throughout the world today.
We do, indeed, through their witness recognize the fact that the Spirit
is still -- and indeed most manifestly -- in Mother Church today; and we
celebrate His abiding presence with fitting pomp and glory, giving expression to
the gratitude and praise that fills us all for such a Divine Presence of Power
and Truth with us in the Catholic and universal Church of Jesus.
We must, however, on this special day celebrate, quite
deliberately, the fact of His being in us personally and
individually through Jesus’ timeless and enduring promise I
will come to you in Holy Communion; for this personal and most intimate
celebration is absolutely necessary for Mother Church herself, since without
such ever greater delight in, and commitment to, the Person of Jesus we will not
be able to serve and succour her in all her needs in the increasingly deviant,
hostile, and sinful world surrounding us today. He comes to us from the Father indeed -- at
Jesus’ request -- but most secretly, because He is the supreme Personal treasure
of both Father and Son being the Spirit of their mutual Love; He comes almost
unnoticed … on the coat-tails of Jesus so to speak … only to those who
have come to believe in, and learned to love and obey, Jesus Whom alone we
explicitly welcome in Holy Communion. At
Jesus’ request He comes from the Father with but one supreme purpose expressive
of His Mission, He comes as the invisible bond of Love to make us, individually,
one with Jesus for the Father.
He, Who alone knows the Father and the Son in the
fullness of Truth and Love, comes to form each of us in Jesus for the
Father.
Jesus in the course of His Public Ministry once, with
both manifest indignation and great courage, cleansed the Jewish Temple for His
Father:
He made a whip
out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area, money-changers and those
who sold doves saying, "Take these out of here, and stop making my Father's
house a marketplace." His disciples recalled the words of scripture, "Zeal for
your house -- which shall be a house of prayer for all nations -- will consume
me." (cf.
John 2:14ss. Mark 11:15ss.)
That same zeal for God’s house, a house of prayer, still
consumes Our Blessed Lord; but now, in Holy Communion, He
comes:
(As) it says:
“(Having) ascended on high and taken prisoners captive; He gives gifts to men.”
(cf. Ephesians 4:8)
Yes, and His most sublime Gift is -- with Himself -- His
Own Most Holy Spirit of Love and Truth, that He, the Spirit, might in His
uniquely Personal way, purify our souls -- already partially prepared by faith
and charity -- for the indwelling of Father and Son:
He who receives
Me receives Him Who sent Me.
(John 13:20)
If anyone loves
Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him
and make Our home with him. (John 14:23)
At the last Supper, when endeavouring to prepare His
Apostles for His Own imminent departure, Jesus said:
I tell you the
truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not
come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you. (John
16:7)
It is as if He were saying, ‘It is to your advantage
that I go, for in your subsequent feelings of abandonment and dereliction, in
that state of humble recognition of your own emptiness, and desire for
fulfilment in and with Me … I will send you the Holy Spirit, My own Spirit. In the past it has been I Who have known
loneliness and dereliction, for although you were mostly by My side, yet your
hearts and minds were at times far from Me; your thoughts were not My thoughts,
for your desires and fears were still carnal and selfish. But when I send you My Spirit He will
enlighten your minds, inflame your hearts, strengthen your wills … so that,
although you will no longer see Me with the eyes of your body, yet, through the
eyes of faith and by the Holy Spirit, you can be truly one with Me in mind and
heart; and thus, a great joy -- a joy this world can never take away from you --
will fill your whole being, at the unheard-of experience, in Me, of oneness with
the Father Himself.
People of God, Jesus made a deliberate choice of
spiritual presence over mere physical proximity; He wanted totally committed
disciples and friends, not just helpers to accompany, obey and serve Him (John
17:11, 13, 21.):
And now, Father,
I will no longer be in the world, but they are in the world, while I am coming
to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your
name that You have given Me, so that they may be one just as We are. But now I am coming to You. I speak this in the world so that they may
share My joy completely. I pray not only
for them, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word, so that
they may all be one, as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may
be in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.
People of God, we should on this wonderful day of
celebration and hope, beg the Holy Spirit to come into our lives ever more and
more, for He is, indeed, our strength, our joy, and above all -- being the Bond
of Love between the Father and His beloved, only-begotten Son -- our new-life
love; and all activities and experiences in our life as Christians should be
related to His most loving, Personal, purposes.
Yesterday I bought the current issue of the periodical
‘New Scientist’ and on the outside of the front cover I read: ‘The Blip at the
start of the universe made everything.
But why did it happen?’
Whoever heard of science answering the question ‘Why?’
? Science can, and most remarkably
does, answer ever more and more fundamental and arcane questions concerning
‘what happened?’, ‘when, or how, did it happen?’, but science can never answer
the question ‘Why, oh! Why did it happen?’, because such a question calls
for, requires, implicitly postulates, the decision of a personal
intelligence. Here we can recall again
Our Blessed Lord’s words:
The world cannot receive Him (the Spirit), because it
neither sees Him nor knows Him.
Ultimate questions, ultimate aspirations are not foreign
to us, dear People of God, they are not inscrutably hidden or forbidden to us,
because the Spirit -- Jesus’ Spirit of Love-and-Truth -- has been given to
Mother Church to cherish and follow and is given to us that we might learn to
share in His Love and live by His Truth.
First of all we must learn from the Spirit to love the
Person of Jesus most humbly and sincerely, and to walk with reverence,
understanding, and perseverance, along the path He traced for us; in so doing we
will enable the Spirit to do His most secret, utterly untraceable, work of
forming, indeed transforming, us personally, ever more and more in the likeness
of Jesus. By such obedience to and love
for Jesus, by such docility to and reverence for the work of the Holy Spirit in
us, we will gradually become more aware of the Father Himself in our lives as
Jesus promised:
If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father
will love him, and
We will come to him and make Our home with
him.
This day is the birthday of Mother Church; it is the day
which commemorates and renews the birth of hope in our hearts, of power and
purpose in our lives: for the Spirit offers us an eternal destiny of joy and
glory as children of God in the Body of Christ, and such a destiny also promises
us an unutterably beautiful personal fulfilment in Jesus, by the Spirit, for the
Father.
