PENTECOST
SUNDAY (B)
(Acts of the Apostles 2:1-11;
Galatians 5:16-25; John 15:26-27; 16:12-15)
Jesus promised His
Apostles:
When the Advocate comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the
Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father, He will testify to Me.
How would the Spirit
testify, bear witness, to Jesus with regard to the Apostles?
He, the Spirit of truth, will guide you to all truth; He will declare to
you the things that are coming. He will
glorify Me, because He will take from what is Mine and declare it to you. Everything that the Father has is Mine.
Here we should
notice that the Spirit will not speak of Himself, as Jesus explicitly declares:
He will not speak on His own, but He will speak what He hears.
And so we gather
that the Spirit will speak to the Apostles about the things Jesus taught and
did, as revealed by the Father. Notice
also, People of God, how careful Jesus is to confirm the oneness of divine
witness by explicitly declaring:
The Spirit will not speak on His own, but He will speak what He hears. He
will take from what is Mine and declare it to you. Everything that the Father has is Mine.
Thus there will be
no opportunity for individuals in later years to claim private revelations from
the Spirit in imitation of pagan oracles and practices in Greek and Roman
times: the Spirit leading Mother Church would inspire the Apostles to recall
and proclaim, exclusively, all that Jesus had taught in word and deed as revealed by the Father:
He will testify to Me; and you also testify (He will testify so that you also may testify) because you have been
with Me from the beginning.
In the Church of
Christ, since the Holy Spirit of Truth Himself does not speak on His own
authority, most certainly, private individuals cannot do so: the authentic
teaching of the Church on faith and morals is divine, both in its authority
and, ultimately, in its origin, being the truth about God’s intimate nature,
and His Personal will for human life on earth and for mankind’s eternal
destiny.
How does the Spirit
move the faithful in the Church? Since
He guides the Apostles into all truth, correspondingly He guides the faithful
in Mother Church to appreciate all truth, clearly recognizing it and lovingly responding
to it. And this He does by informing our
lives in such a way that we gradually develop an affinity with divine truth and
beauty, love and strength. It was of
such guidance of the Church by the Spirit that St. Paul spoke in the second
reading:
I say then: Live by the Spirit, and you will certainly not gratify the
desire of the flesh. If you are guided
by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
Those words do
indeed make living by the Spirit sound most attractive for many modern men and
women who do not want to be obliged by any law that might interfere with or
intrude upon their personal choice of life style.
On the other hand
however, further on in our second reading St. Paul reveals what many consider
to be the true, and most objectionable, aspect of his character when he says:
Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified their flesh with its
passions and desires.
Now such crucifying
of the flesh does not sound quite so attractive to modern
sensitivities! What therefore are we to
think of living (walking) by the Spirit which seems first of all to
promise freedom from oppressive and constraining law but yet involves us in
crucifying the flesh?
I suppose many,
perhaps most, nominal Christians in our modern society have shown, by the fact
of declining church attendances and the lowering of public morals, that they
have, in fact, decided to ignore what they consider a somewhat vague and
uncertain promise of spiritual freedom in order to avoid an uncompromisingly
physical prospect of moral discipline and observance.
Such a decision is
not made easier or more comfortable, however, when those words of Jesus are
called to mind:
Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in
heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden
is light. (Matt
11:29-12:1)
And again, St. John
tells us in the name of Jesus:
This is the love of God: that
we keep His commandments; and His commandments
are not burdensome. (1 John
5:3)
It would appear then
that either there is some confusion in the Gospel or else many people today are
wrong in their understanding of St. Paul whom they regard as being both harsh
and unfeeling, indeed even exclusive, as exemplified by what they consider to
be his teaching in our second reading today: ‘no one can belong to Christ Jesus
unless he crucifies all self-indulgent passions and desires’ … a teaching which
many say leads them to reject Christianity.
Perhaps, however, in
many cases, that reason is more truly an excuse, proffered by those attempting
to justify their rejection -- not of what is impossible, but -- of something
they would consider to be unattractive, restrictive or difficult. For St. Paul does not use those exclusive
words ‘you cannot belong to Christ Jesus’ and no modern bible attributes such
words to Him; in fact he actually says:
Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions
and desires.
And he follows that
up immediately with the words:
If we live in the Spirit,
let us also follow the Spirit.
We should,
therefore, understand Paul in this way:
Those who are Christ’s, who live by the Spirit and follow the Spirit, have
crucified the flesh.
There all of us are
afforded hope, because it is by our living and walking in the Spirit, Paul
says, that the Spirit will be able to crucify in us and for us ‘the flesh with
its passions and desires’; whereby the ultimate aim and purpose of the
Christian revelation and life may be attained, which is the supreme glory of
God and the salvation of mankind, together with our individual, personal,
fulfilment in knowledge of, commitment to, and love for the One God revealed in
Himself by Jesus as a Trinity of Persons Father, Son and Holy Spirit, while in
us and for us as my Father and yours;
the Brother, Lord, and Saviour of each and every one of us; mankind’s Advocate
and our individual Comforter and Help.
Of course we have to co-operate with the Spirit by following His lead,
but that is a far different prospect from having to set about, ‘off our own
bat’ or ‘under our own steam’ so to speak, crucifying the flesh. The fact is that we cannot, of ourselves,
crucify our flesh in any saving way, for St. Paul himself tells us:
Things done according to the commandments and doctrines of men indeed have
(at times) an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility,
and neglect of the body, but (such practices)
are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh. (Col 2:22-23)
The great fault of
lapsing, faint-hearted, Christians today, the great mistake of the critics of
Mother Church’s moral teaching today, is the fact that they neglect or ignore
the presence -- the active presence and power -- of the Holy Spirit in our
lives. We, of ourselves, can do nothing
that leads to salvation, and God does not in any way command that we should, of
ourselves, try to do anything of that nature.
Jesus, the risen and ascended Lord, sends the Spirit promised by the
Father to enable us to do what He, Jesus, commands in order that we might be
raised up, in Him, ultimately to take our place -- in Him and with Him -- at
the right hand of the Father.
The Apostles had
received a commission and a command from the risen Lord to proclaim the Good
News to the whole world, but they first went back to their fishing, awaiting
Jesus’ promise of ‘power from on high’, and only began their task of
evangelisation after they had received that Gift of God, the Spirit of Jesus,
the Spirit of holiness and power, on His very first outpouring upon the Church,
as we heard in the first reading. The
Apostles could do nothing until He came into their lives to enable them to live
in the power and holiness of the Risen Lord.
People of God, we
should, on this wonderful day of celebration and hope, beg the Holy Spirit to
come upon us, beseech Jesus to send His Spirit into our lives, ever more and
more, for He is, indeed, our strength, our joy, and above all -- being the Bond
of Love between Father and Son -- our ‘new-life love’ as St. Paul tells us:
God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who
has been given to us. (Romans 5:5)
Now, all activities
of whatever sort in the Christian life are to be related to His loving,
Personal purpose. And so, first of all
we must learn from the Spirit to love Jesus; for, by loving Him we will be
enabled, in the Spirit, both to obey His commands with a measure of sweetness
and to walk in His ways with due reverence and perseverance. In that way, we will gradually find Him more
and more lovable, because of our growing likeness to Him; and thus appreciating
Him more we will be able to hear His Spirit speaking ever more intimately in
our hearts and guiding us along ways that are increasingly personal to our
relationship with Jesus. We will never,
of course, desert or set aside the common way of His commandments for all; but
experiencing the great delight of finding ourselves growing in intimacy with
the Lord and in responsiveness to His Spirit, we will, indeed, gradually become
aware of the Person of the Father Himself in our lives. For Jesus did promise that supreme delight
and joy as St. John tells us in his Gospel:
Jesus said, "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. (14:23)
People of God, this
day is the birthday of the Church, it is the day which commemorates and renews
the birth of hope in our hearts, purpose and power in our lives: for the Spirit
offers us a common goal and an eternal destiny of glory and joy 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, with the Father.
