• Acts 2:1-11. The awesome descent of the Spirit, so that all are caught up in wonder and hear the marvels of God spoken in their own tongues.
• 1 Corinthians 12: 3-7, 12-13. There are different gifts but the same Spirit. In the one Spirit all of us were baptized into one body [and] have been given to drink of the one Spirit.
• John 20: 19-23 Jesus breathed upon the disciples, gathered together in a locked room; he conferred the Holy Spirit and the power of forgiving sin.

Thoughts for your consideration: by John Gonzalez

The message of Pentecost Sunday offers us a curious lesson on the virtue of unity. Whoever attend the Pentecost vigil mass will hear the famous Hebrew account of Babel. In this account God is seemingly nervous of human ambition and He sows chaos by fragmenting the unified human community through the use of different languages. In the first reading for the Sunday Mass however we encounter God unifying the human community by the power of the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Apostles. Language becomes the instrument that is used to sow division in Babel while for the Apostles language becomes the instrument of unity in preaching to the people of Jerusalem. How are we to understand God’s apparent contradiction during these two historical moments?

In the story of Babel the early Hebrew community tries to explain how the human community eventually migrated everywhere and became such a fragmented group. No social or ecological phenomenon could be explained without God’s intervention so of course in trying to respond to this reality they employed God’s divine intervention. Without taking this story as a literal historical account one can reflect on the spiritual lesson that is to be learned here. Of course God does not fear our human capabilities; instead we see what happens when the human community is organized on a project that goes against the will of God.

Babel may or may not have happened, but Babel like moments have happened in our human history where civilizations and societies have developed unifying agendas that goes against the will of God. For a time a particular culture or group may achieve great projects and pursue a policy of dominance based on the achievements. But such power that is wielded outside of the will of God or the Holy Spirit becomes corrupted and divisive. Consider for example the situations of the Athenians and the birth of democratic Greece. This was a noble and virtuous endeavor. The immediate result of this revolutionary achievement was that they were able to organize the Greek peninsula to defend themselves from the overpowering tyranny of the Persian Empire. Yet no sooner had they reached their own moment of power when they began to make plans to overpower others with their perceived supremacy. Their downfall came soon enough with the start of the Peloponnesian war.

St. Paul declares that all our gifts and talents are given to us by the one Spirit. These gifts are not given to us to serve our own interest but to serve the one Body. These gifts that we each have can certainly profit us and our own communities but they are not put to their authentic use if they do not serve the common good of the one Body. If we use these talents toward that purpose then we will achieve an authentic unity where our motivation is for the service of God and all of creation.

The Gospel passage tells us that an essential element of this authentic unity is a spirit of peace. As he shows the wound on his hands and side Jesus keeps offering the disciples this spirit of peace. If you had seen a friend inflicted with terrible and unjust wounds what feelings would surface? Possibly anger and revenge, a desire to see that justice is served perhaps. I would like to assume that is why Jesus keeps enforcing this call to peace. He wants his disciples to witness the truth but to do so through an attitude of peace and compassionate love. Only through a spirit of peace can the disciples begin to approach the wisdom and understanding of God’s plan through the Holy Spirit. In breathing the Holy Spirit to the disciples Jesus’ first instruction is to have them forgive others. In this way they truly become a witness to God’s love.

The readings for Pentecost Sunday invite us to adopt this spirit of peace and forgiveness and to contemplate the authentic unity of the human family. In order to be open to the wisdom of the Holy Spirit we need to recognize the power of that one Great Spirit within each and every one of us.

• Acts 2:1-11. The Awesome descent of the Spirit, so that all are caught up in wonder and hear the marvels of God spoken in their own tongue.
• 1 Corinthian 12:3-7, 12-13. There are different gifts but the same Spirit. In the one Spirit all of us were baptized into one body [and] have been given to drink of the one Spirit.
• John 20:19-23. Jesus breathed upon the disciples, gathered together in a locked room; he conferred the Holy Spirit and the power of forgiving sin.

 Thoughts for your Consideration:

This week is Pentecost Sunday. The lectionary readings focus on the awesome power of the Holy Spirit as it descends upon the disciples and as it is expressed by members of the early Christian community. In the Acts of the Apostles the event is described in the midst of powerful and richly symbolic natural events. The manifestation of the Holy Spirit produces great confusion among the Jewish bystanders who happen to witness this event; some are curiously impressed while many scoff at what they perceive as an apparent drunken stupor.  Peter is left defending himself and his colleagues from this accusation by suggesting that it is too early in the day to be drunk and then he places this confusing event within the context of the prophetic tradition by citing the words of the prophet Joel. The conclusion of this citation ends with a salvific message for all of God’s people, “and it shall be that everyone shall be saved who calls on the name of the Lord.”

In his letter to the Corinthians St. Paul describes the great gifts of the Spirit that is shared to the various members of the early church. St. Paul makes a very clear point in highlighting the supreme unity of the One Spirit in the midst of this great diversity of gifts and talents that emanate from it. St. Paul cannot seem to emphasize this point enough. It is suggested in scripture commentaries that the Corinthian church had begun to establish ethnic and social discrimination in its early community. In this passage St. Paul needs to emphasize the unity that exists between the Jews and Greeks as well as the free people and the slaves. In the Gospel reading Jesus prepares his disciples for this event by establishing a culture of peace on them. He keeps emphasizing that they be at peace before they receive the Spirit.

While the first reading describes the event of Pentecost the next two readings remind us that the great and awesome gifts of the Spirit can only serve the mission of promoting unity and it can only be received and utilized through a culture of peace.      

Many of us who are Catholics have gone through the Sacrament of Confirmation. For many of us the wondrous natural events that we read about in Acts did not accompany our own reception of this Sacrament. We may end up spiritualizing this sacramental event or dismissing it altogether. I have come to admire a medieval Catholic theological formula that helps explain our own growth into the gifts of the Holy Spirit and our own orientation towards the supreme good that is God.

Medieval theologians like St. Thomas Aquinas believed that we have an aspect of God within each and every one of us, this divine spark was called synderesis. It was thought (and continues to be studied in contemporary moral theology) that an essence towards the orientation towards God was built within our own DNA structure. This element is what allowed us to believe that some actions and judgments were self-evident in all of humanity. Through synderesis all humanity had deep within themselves an orientation on what was called the first principles of the natural order. The general concepts that most codified laws including the Ten Commandments had, such as regulating against murder and thievery and promoting values of charity and mutual respect, emanate from some kind of self-evident principles that come to us directly from the divine source. Our own American Declaration of Independence suggest three self-evident principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, if these principles are self-evident then they are known to us through the divine knowledge of the good that we have through synderesis.

But synderesis is only one habit within our conscience that judges for us the actions we must take. Our actions towards the good are often clouded by our own self-interest and passions. Thus we require the Holy Spirit to make its impression felt on us so that we can awaken the divine spark within each of us and recognize that divine essence in all others. To do the supreme good (rather than our own good) we must allow the Holy Spirit to affect us. As a sacrament Confirmation offers us the grace to receive the power that will awaken the divine spark in us. The power of the Holy Spirit will then give strength to our own existing orientation to do the supreme good. It will also awaken in us the particular gifts that we are given to fulfill the supreme good. While Confirmation grants us the moment to allow ourselves to be open to this reception we must always pray that the Holy Spirit continue to nurture us with this grace since our other social and personal distractions will continue to cloud our judgments.

Keep in mind however that this can only happen within the context of a couple necessary dispositions. First, we must be aligned under a spirit and culture of peace. Second we must only use these gifts to build up the Kingdom of God in unity and without imposing any barriers of discrimination to the love that we are all entitled to. We all already exist within the supreme unity and orientation to God. We all share a supreme equality with each other through the divine dignity that exists in our very nature. In the spirit of peace and unity let us be receptive to the power of the Holy Spirit in awakening this orientation to do the supreme good and to live in harmony with each other.

• Acts 2:1-11
• 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13 or Galatians 5:16-25
• John 20:19-23 or John 15:26-27; 16:12-15

Thoughts for your Consideration:

If you happen to be in the new St. Gabriel’s church in Toronto (Canada) and turn towards those reading the Scriptures during the liturgy you will always look beyond them into the large garden exposed by the passive solar curtain wall.  That vista could be important for understanding an important meaning of Pentecost for contemporary generations, old and (especially) young.

In ancient times, long before the apostles, this was a Feast in early Judaism that was completely sensitive to what was happening on the land.  What it signaled was the harvesting of food, a gift of the land and a gift of the Creator.

Other layers of meaning were grafted onto this basic religious awareness. First the gift of the Law, allowing for inner growth of righteousness, then celebrating the further gift of being chosen to make God’s presence evident among the nations.  But the on-going context of Pentecost was harvest time, feasting on the nourishing crops — and tasty, even heady wine adding to the spiritual celebration.

There are indicators of these layers of meaning in the texts of our own liturgy today.  The responsorial psalm is a paean to the mystery of on-going Creation:  “The earth is full of your creatures … When you take away their breath, they die…When you send forth your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth”.  In our day we readily translate “face of the earth” as a global image, usually meaning human habitat.  But in ancient times, it meant the “face of the soil” — that kind of earth. That is precisely where God does the creating.  To feast on the harvest is also to acknowledge that God’s Spirit is active in the soil.  It is not by accident that St. Paul refers to the “fruit of the Spirit”.  Fruit arises from the very dynamism of a plant or tree’s growth.  It is the continuing dynamic of the gift, not some product of our discipline or invention.  St. Paul also uses the interesting phrase: “we were all made to drink of one Spirit”, maintaining the context of harvest feasting, while grafting yet another dimension to this liturgical celebration.

What is predominant for Christians, of course, is the coinciding of this ancient observance and the spectacular emergence of the apostles and disciples on the Jerusalem scene, drawing the interest of peoples from everywhere in the known world to a new creativity of God’s Spirit.  On that Pentecost a new community was born that recognized and honored the gifts of God’s creativity within human relationships:  Saint Paul says “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good”.  This is a whole new vision of human life, breaking down the barriers of race, slavery, sexism, even languages.  And it was bold.  This little group had been closeted away in fear, but now, experiencing a kind of tsunami of Divine creativity, went about very publicly proclaiming that creativity.

St. Paul immortalized the generativity of this fruit of the Spirit’s creativity:

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

While these could be recognized by anyone as positive virtues, now they are identified as the way in which the Spirit is generating the very presence of Christ in the human community.  “For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body – Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit”

The special hymn for today’s liturgy (the Sequence) describes the very down-to-earth ways we can detect and respond to that Spirit:

Father of the poor; of consolers — wisest, best; in our labor, rest… pleasant coolness in the heat; light…shining with grace in our heart’s most secret place.

And the hymn points to specific targets of the Spirit’s creativity in our lives:  “Arid souls refresh within; Wounded lives to health restore… Bend the stubborn heart and will; Melt the frozen, warm the chill; Guide the wayward home once more!”

The Feast of Pentecost we have inherited is rich with all these meanings.  It can be celebrated in a restrictive way, however; rejoicing in the earliest moments of the community we call the Church, and the promise that in the Holy Spirit we have an Advocate who will guide the it through the ages, while neglecting the myriad dimensions of the Spirit’s creativity.

But what if we really pay attention to the garden back-grounding these scriptures?  Today can be a day of heightened sensitivity to all aspects of Divine creativity. Through the awe-inspiring insights of today’s science, we can observe the new spring growth for the miracle that it is. In our contemplation we can savor so much more of what we imply when we ask the Spirit to “take up rest” in our hearts. That “rest” is imaged much better by fire and fierce wind than by repose. Like the first disciples, we might be able to shed our fearfulness and exhibit a bold attitude of trust in the Spirit who renews the face of the soil.  That attitude will fortify us for the demanding work of healing the wounds we have inflicted on the Earth.  Pentecost then, regaining its ancient authentic link to the sacredness of the land, will demonstrate its creativity in hope for future generations.

Questions for Reflection in your Faith Sharing Group:

• When have you been surprised by the creative work of the Spirit in nature?
• Recall a moment when you open yourself to the creative power of the Holy Spirit in your own life and in relationship with others?
• What happened? What were the results? What did you learn?