From ‘Come, Holy Spirit!’ to Following the Spirit, Pentecost Sunday, May 20, 2018

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Monastery of Our Lady of the Rosary, Summit, NJ
Pentecost Sunday 2018
May 20, 2018
Acts 2:1-11, Ps 104, Gal 5:16-25, Jn 20:19-23

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

The Long Advent of the Holy Spirit

On Ascension Thursday, the whole Church pondered how Jesus, at his Ascension, enjoined the apostles not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the “promise of the Father” about which they had heard him speak, for “in a few days,” he said, “you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” The apostles and the other followers of Jesus very wisely huddled around Mary in the same Upper Room in which Jesus had given them his Body and Blood, the same Upper Room in which they had barricaded themselves after Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion, the same place wherein he had appeared to them on Easter Sunday. And it was there that the all “devoted themselves with one accord to prayer.” They prayed together with Mary in order to learn from her how to get ready to receive the Holy Spirit, for it was she who was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit at Jesus’ virginal conception and who continually lived as a Spouse of the Holy Spirit, receiving and responding to his inspirations in an exemplary way. United with her they prayed and they waited. Jesus hadn’t told them how long they were to wait in prayerful expectation of that pneumatological baptism. So their first holy hour stretched into a day of recollection. They eventually went to bed and awakened and prayed a whole second day. They might have thought that, just as God the Father had had them wait until the third day for Jesus’ resurrection, the Holy Spirit would come after three days that seemed like an eternity. But he didn’t come. So they prayed a fourth day. A fifth day. Now this was taking on the form of a retreat. A sixth day. They were doubtless wondering if the Holy Spirit would come on the seventh day, the day of divine rest. But they were thwarted again. The eighth day. Were they going to have to do this forever? The ninth day. They kept praying and waiting. The tenth day. And it was finally on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit burst through the windows of the upper room like the noise of a strong driving wind, came down upon each of them as tongues of fire, filled them with himself, and sent them forth to change renew the face of the earth.

It’s important for us to ask why God had made them wait so long in prayerful vigil. Some might say that he wanted to wait until Pentecost, the day on which the Jews celebrated their harvest festival and the giving of the law on Mt. Sinai, to show that the Holy Spirit was the law of the New Covenant being placed within their hearts and was going to be the driving force of the harvest of men and women, boys and girls, for Christ’s kingdom until the end of time. Some might say because it gave them a chance to learn from Mary about Jesus’ early days, his conception, birth, flight to Egypt, finding in the Temple, and his hidden years working as a construction worker with St. Joseph in Nazareth. Both of those reasons make sense. But I think the most fitting explanation is that God wanted the early Church to grow in desire for this baptism of the Holy Spirit, to long for the Holy Spirit’s presence, to discover the reasons why they really, really, really need his guidance and assistance, so that they would be totally receptive and responsive like Mary to the divine ignition he was going to turn on in them.

God’s greatest gift

Since that time the Church has wanted us to learn from the experience of the early Church how to desire the Holy Spirit. There are two facts that we need to confront. The first is Jesus’ words from the Last Supper when he 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” (Jn 16:7). Jesus was saying — and we couldn’t believe it unless Truth himself was affirming it — that if we had to choose between him and the Holy Spirit, it is better to have the Holy Spirit. Thanks be to God as Christians, we don’t have to choose, but if we did, he’s telling us just how important the Holy Spirit is. Pope Benedict said a decade ago that the Holy Spirit is the “greatest gift of God to mankind.” The second truth is that, nevertheless, the Holy Spirit remains the “great unknown.” There’s a famous scene in the Acts of the Apostles, when St. Paul asked those in Ephesus whether they had received the Holy Spirit when they first became believers, they replied, “We never even knew that there is a Holy Spirit!” (Acts 19:2). Pope Benedict called the Holy Spirit the “most neglected Person” of the Holy Spirit. So despite being God’s greatest gift to us, he remains unknown to most of us. That’s why it’s necessary for us to increase our longing for this gift. Just like the season of Advent helps all of us, especially children, learn to long for Christmas, so the Advent of the Holy Spirit, this period of prayerful waiting between the Ascension and Pentecost, is meant to help us to hunger for the Holy Spirit even more.

The word that the Church puts on our lips more than any other with regard to the Holy Spirit — during this period of waiting and throughout the year — is “Come!” We pray, “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and enkindle in them the fire of your love!” We sing, “Veni, Creator Spiritus!,” “Come, Holy Spirit,” and we beg the Holy Spirit to take up his rest in our hearts, to come with his grace and heavenly aid, to fill the hearts which he has made, to give us his sevenfold gift of grace, to illumine our minds, inflame our hearts, strengthen our bodies, repel our enemies, give us peace, and help us to know God the Father and the Son. We sing today in the Sequence, “Veni, Sancte Spiritus,” begging the Holy Spirit anew to come with heavenly radiance as the guest of our soul, comforting us, giving us rest in labor, refreshment in heat, solace in woe, cleansing what is impure, irrigating what is desiccated, healing what is wounded, bending to him whatever is stubborn, warming whatever is ice-cold, putting back on the narrow way whatever leads us astray, granting us the reward of virtue, the end of salvation and eternal joy. The great word of the Church, the great longing, is “come!”

But as these prayers indicate, we are praying for more than the Holy Spirit’s arrival. We’re praying for the Holy Spirit to come and change us and through us change the world. “Lord, send out your Spirit,” we implore God the Father in today’s Responsorial Psalm, “and renew the face of the earth!” The Holy Spirit comes to renew us not just once but constantly. During the Confirmation Rite, we beg God the Father through Jesus to send the Holy Spirit upon us as our “helper and guide.” He comes to assist us and to lead us. To pray, “Come!” implies that we’re ready to be led and helped by him as he comes. When we’re “sealed with the Gift of the Holy Spirit” at Confirmation, we reply “Amen!,” the Hebrew verb meaning to “uphold,” which signifies that we want the Holy Spirit to be the foundation of our life, that we want the sacred character imparted by our own personal Pentecost thoroughly to change our character.

Conforming us to Christ

There’s a special role of the Holy Spirit in the life of every believer, but, since we’re here at the Monastery of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, please permit me, brothers and sisters, to say a few words about how the Holy Spirit wants to help and guide the nuns, how he wishes to conform them in a particular way to Jesus the Bridegroom. “Like the whole of Christian life,” St. John Paul II wrote in his 1996 apostolic exhortation on the consecrated life, “the call to the consecrated life is closely linked to the working of the Holy Spirit. In every age, the Spirit enables new men and women to recognize the appeal of such a demanding choice. Through his power, they relive, in a way, the experience of the Prophet Jeremiah: ‘You have seduced me, Lord, and I have let myself be seduced’ (Jer 20:7). It is the Spirit who awakens the desire to respond fully; it is he who guides the growth of this desire, helping it to mature into a positive response and sustaining it as it is faithfully translated into action; it is he who shapes and moulds the hearts of those who are called, configuring them to Christ, the chaste, poor and obedient One, and prompting them to make his mission their own. By allowing themselves to be guided by the Spirit on an endless journey of purification, they become, day after day, conformed to Christ, the prolongation in history of a special presence of the Risen Lord. …Those who by the power of the Holy Spirit are led progressively into full configuration to Christ reflect in themselves a ray of the unapproachable light. During their earthly pilgrimage, they press on towards the inexhaustible Source of light. The consecrated life thus becomes a particularly profound expression of the Church as the Bride who, prompted by the Spirit to imitate her Spouse, stands before him ‘in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish’ (Eph 5:27).”

The Holy Spirit similarly wants to help and guide us to a particular conformity to Christ no matter what our state of life. Today we can focus on five ways he seeks to do this.

Praying by the Spirit

The first is in our prayer. St. Paul reminds us that we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. The Holy Spirit helps us to cry out “Abba, Father!” and pray as beloved sons and daughters who know that the Father cares for us more than for the lilies or sparrows and will never give us a stone when we ask for bread. I can’t stress this point enough. We do not know how to pray as we ought. The nuns here in the Monastery do not know how to pray as they ought. I don’t know how to pray as I ought. Pope Francis doesn’t know how to pray as he ought. We can’t even say, “Jesus is Lord!,” as St. Paul tells the Corinthians, except by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:3). We all need the Holy Spirit’s help. To pray, “Come, Holy Spirit!,” means that we’re ready to cooperate in our prayer and allow him to change the way we pray, so that he can, in a sense, blow his strong driving wind within us the way a trumpeter makes music. With regard to our prayer, we say, “Come, Holy Spirit!”

Learning by the Spirit

The second way the Holy Spirit wants to conform ourselves more to Christ is through helping and guiding us to grow in our knowledge of the faith. Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel that he will send us the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth and to remind us of everything he taught us. Jesus himself hadn’t taught us everything because, he said, we couldn’t handle it all. To say, “Come Holy Spirit,” means that we are going to do the work to learn our faith better, to get to know intimately the Sacred Scripture he inspired, to become familiar with and live according to the teaching of the magisterium of the Church he guides. With regard to our continued growth in faith, we pray, “Come, Holy Spirit!”

Living by the Spirit

The third way is in how we live our Christian life. The Holy Spirit is sent to guide us. In St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, he stresses “To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit” (1 Cor 12:4). The Holy Spirit gives each of us a special gift to help in the building up of Christ’s kingdom. To live in accordance with this gift is to live according to the Spirit. St. Paul tells us in today’s second reading that there are two basic ways to live, either according to the Spirit or according to the flesh (Gal 5; Rom 8). To live by the Spirit means that we’re constantly seeking what God the Holy Spirit seeks. It means to have the desires of the Spirit and it will be manifested in the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-mastery. To the extent that we don’t yet have all of those fruits, it shows our need for the Holy Spirit and where he wishes to lead us. To live by the flesh, on the other hand, means to place our heart, our treasure, in the things of this world, in money and material possession, in carnal pleasures, in fame, power, influence, in superficialities. It means to give in, as he tells the Galatians, to immorality, impurity, lust, idolatry, hatred, rivalry, jealousy and envy, anger, selfishness, dissensions, drunkenness, debauchery and to life not consistent with the kingdom of God. Life according to the flesh divides us: it divides us from God, from others, and tears us up within. Life according to the Spirit, on the other hand, brings us into communion: communion with God, communion with others through loving them as God has loved us first; and communion within, through the interior harmony the Spirit gives. To say “Come, Holy Spirit” means that we want him to help us to put to death in us whatever lives by the flesh so that we may totally live by his inspiration, his in-breathing, as Mary and the apostles did, and as the saints have ever since. To say “Come, Holy Spirit” means to allow him to raise us from the dead and living for God in Christ Jesus (Rom 6). Today’s second reading concludes, “If we live by the Spirit, let us also follow the Spirit,” and that’s what we do in life according to the Spirit.

Being Forgiven through the Spirit

The fourth way the Holy Spirit seeks to conform us to Christ is with regard to helping us to recognize our need for God’s mercy and to come to receive it. On Easter Sunday night, Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit on the Apostles and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Those whose sins you forgive are forgiven. Those whose sins you retain are retained.” Priests pray in the formula of absolution in the Sacrament of Penance, “God the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son, … has sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit,” which Jesus called the one unforgiveable sin, as impenitence, as a failure to recognize our need for God’s mercy or a failure to think God has the power to forgive our sins. “There are no limits to the mercy of God,” the Catechism declares, “but anyone who deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting, rejects the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit” (CCC 1864). So to say, “Come, Holy Spirit!,” means that we will regularly ask his help to examine our conscience and then run out to meet him as he comes down with God’s mercy in the Sacrament of Penance. If we’re not regularly receiving the gift of God’s mercy in the Sacrament of Confession, we’re not yet living according to the Spirit and following his promptings.

Giving Witness with the Spirit

The fifth and last way I’ll mention is with regard to the missionary dimension of the Christian life, to our boldly and confidently sharing of the faith with others, to our living out well, in all the ways possible to us, “holy preaching.” The Holy Spirit came down as tongues of fire upon the early Church, rather than ice cold eyeballs or tepid big toes, to symbolize that he wanted us, strengthened by him, to use our tongues to proclaim the Gospel with ardent love. Jesus says in today’s Gospel that the Holy Spirit would be sent to give witness and that we would give witness with Him. Jesus elsewhere promised us that we would not need to worry about what we would say, because at that moment the Holy Spirit would be speaking in and through us. To say, “Come, Holy Spirit!,” is, for nuns, to get ready to burst spiritually through the monastic grill, and for the rest of us, to explode through doors of this Chapel, and go out to announce Christ’s kingdom just like the apostles left the Upper Room.

The Continual Pentecost of Pentecosts

What is the best way to receive the Holy Spirit’s help and guidance? It’s here at Mass. Pope Benedict XVI said ten years ago, “The Eucharist is a ‘perpetual Pentecost’ since every time we celebrate Mass we receive the Holy Spirit who unites us more deeply with Christ and transforms us into Him.” It’s during Mass that we have the epiclesis in which we call down the Holy Spirit upon the priest and the altar totally to change bread and wine into Jesus’ body and blood, and then we call him down to change men and women into Christ’s mystical body. To say, “Come, Holy Spirit!” means to allow him to do this work. Today, on this Pentecost of Pentecosts, in response to our vigil and to our invocation, God the Father and God the Son send the Holy Spirit to fill us with fire, a fire that is meant to spread to all parts of our life, bringing all of it in an inextinguishable flame like the burning bush. Today God the Father and the Son sends the Holy Spirit to change us the way he changed the apostles on that first Pentecost. Today on this feast of the birthday of the Church, God wants to give us and the entire Church a spiritual rebirth. Today is the answer to our prayers and the long vigil prayers of the Church in the Upper Room throughout the centuries down to our own time, “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and enkindle in us the fire of your love!” “Come Holy Spirit, renew us, and through our renewal, renew the Church, and renew and the face of the earth! Veni, Sancte Spiritus!He’s worth the wait! Amen!

The readings for today’s Mass were: