Mass Readings for Pentecost Sunday:
Acts 2.1-11 Psalm 104.1 7 24, 29b-30, 31, 34 1 Corinthians 12.3b-7, 12-13
Pentecost is the Church’s birthday. This is the commemoration of the gift of the Holy Spirit to the disciples that constitutes them as the Church. Now, we might ask about Jesus’ appearance after the Resurrection — he breathed the Holy Spirit onto the apostles. Yes. But Pentecost is not about individuals or a select group receiving the Holy Spirit; it’s about the Church as a whole receiving it. We might say, “that’s pretty fine distinction to be making,” but it is an important one. This is about us as a community, not as individual followers of Christ. It’s not a matter of keeping the faith personally, but manifesting it in a visible fellowship that the world can see in action. Christianity is not, and has never been, a “Jesus and me” movement, but rather “Christ with us.”
We’ve had confirmations this past week, and that illustrates this conferral of the spirit on individuals who by baptism are already members, and so already have the Holy Spirit – we say that confirmands are receiving a special gift of the Spirit to strengthen them – to firm them up as they begin to grow into adults of faith.
The corporate dimension of Pentecost is different from baptisms and confirmation, ordinations, and blessings at weddings – the Holy Spirit at Pentecost comes to subsist within the Church as its necessary underpinning that has us endure as a community across space and through time.
Consider what our St. Augustine said of the Holy Spirit and the Church. Just as Christ himself was made incarnate in the world by the power of the Holy Spirit through the obedience of Mary; the Church is made the Body of Christ in the world by this same Holy Spirit who we obediently receive in every generation of the baptized. Together we resemble Jesus Christ in a way more profound than most imagine. Together we embody Christ’s ministries of healing, reconciliation, prayer, prophetic speech and action toward justice and peace, and so on.
It is possible for me as an individual to shut myself off from the Holy Spirit, turn away from his sanctifying influence even though a priest; but the Holy Spirit never leaves the Church. There’s that old joke that illustrates the point: the Church has been so badly run, has had so much scandals among its clergy, hypocrisy among the laity, been subject to persecution; the only way to account for surviving for 2000 years is that God must be with her.
The Holy Spirit, within the Church is a flame of love that cannot be extinguished, though it may perilously die down through a decline of faith. It never goes out as Christ always keeps some by grace to tend the fire as faith is rekindled among the lost. This should be a source of confident hope and present joy.
Now, there’s a lot of discouraging news out there about the state of the world, about the condition of our own country. I’ve touched on it before. I’ve quoted Pope Francis about the scandal of the enormous debt that besets the richest countries and cripples the developing world. And yet, look around the world at its leading governments, they keep borrowing.
God gave us a mandate to be fruitful, and that’s not just about having children, but in creating a productive and virtuous society. Yet birth rates, economic productivity, and virtue in Canada has been in decline for the past decade and more, accelerating in the past the six years.
Social cohesion is breaking down throughout the western world. Communities defining themselves according to religion and ethnicity are not integrating into national life. They keep apart and seek to recreate what they left behind, indeed fled. And so, foreign conflicts are brought here, thousands of miles from their source. What a world we have made; how can the Holy Spirit help us now? What relevance is Pentecost?
To give you some context for Pentecost as an event two thousand years ago, I’ll remind us all of the desperate situation of Israel at the time of Christ’s coming. I say “desperate” in the proper sense of “lacking hope.” If you know your ancient history, the situation only gets worse, particularly through the early years of the Church. Christ came and offered humanity, and Israel in particular, a way out of the impending disaster, yet only a few took it – those who created this catholic (that is “universal”) community of faith. Most looked to the world for the answer, how to get rid of the Romans, reconstitute Israel as God’s people and as a kingdom on Earth.
They first had Herod the Great, the paranoid strong man we know from the story of Jesus’ birth. We may forget he was an international celebrity; he hobnobbed with people like Marc Anthony and Cleopatra! Does he get the job done? No, he dies, and his children all vie to take over the kingdom in a process adjudicated by the Romans.
We know about Herod Antipas, the one son, who gets called out by John the Baptist for his notorious adultery. He was an incompetent; more flash than substance. Another son, Herod Agrippa, is briefly king of all Israel. He’s heralded as the saviour, and some quietly think he’s the Messiah. After all, he was so well-connected, a personal friend to the Roman imperial family. Indeed, he spent most of his childhood and youth in Rome and only reluctantly went back to Jerusalem at the urging of the Roman Emperor. But he enters into a veritable snake pit, and just as tensions ratchet up in opposition to him, he dies; likely poisoned by his enemies. The politics grow worse; a revolt against Rome breaks out, the Empire responds and destroys Jerusalem, the Temple, and ends the project of a Jewish nation for two thousand years. Through all this is the Church who understands herself to be the new Israel. And its mission is not to realize the political ambitions of an ethnic or religious group, but to be that means by which the Holy Spirit transforms the world. You know that hymn, “Send forth your Spirit, O Lord; and renew the face of the Earth?” That’s Christ’s mandate to us. By being the Church, a fellowship on the road to the kingdom of God, preaching and teaching, feeding and healing, baptizing in the name of the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit, we take on the work of renewing this world.
The powerful of this world are bereft of anything but the same plan we’ve had for the last couple of generations stretching back to the 1960s or even before. They fail to understand that patriotic slogans, carefully crafted economic statements, government programs, subsidies, regulations, whatever, will not be the source of our revival. It’s never been the source of life as a community or as individuals. It’s always a matter of spirit.
What is needed is spiritual renewal, rebirth for those who know only this world and so, must die to it; resurrection for those who’ve spiritually died out of discouragement. In the Holy Spirit is refreshment for the faithful grown weary, repair for a community run down, and a place of repose for those who’ve lost the optimistic perspective of belief.
This will come from us. As I recently reiterated Pope Leo’s call to us, and do so again: it’s not down the pope, nor to me, the pastor. It won’t come from one or two members of the parish council, or the choir, not from any longtime parishioner in their usual pew or the newcomer who isn’t sure where to sit – that is, none of these fine people alone, but together, as the home of the Holy Spirit who inspires and guides. But we must let him into our hearts and minds, join first in common worship, then in common cause; step up in our self-offering, but do so in hope and faith that whatever we might offer, God will make of it something splendid beyond our imagination. The challenge was enormous 2000 years ago in Jerusalem; we are so fortunate in our basic circumstances in Dundas today. Receive the Holy Spirit, and His peace will be with us, and by that we are made ready to be sent into the world, there to renew it in Christ’s name.
Amen.