Imploring and Receiving the Holy Spirit, Pentecost (C), June 5, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Pentecost Sunday
June 5, 2022
Acts 2:1-11, Ps 104, Rom 8:8-17, Jn 14:15-16.23-26

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

The following text guided the homily: 

• Ten days ago, we pondered how Jesus, before he ascended to the Father, 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” (Acts 1:5). 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 they all “devoted themselves with one accord to prayer.” They prayed together with Mary to learn from her how to get ready to receive the “promise of the Father,” 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.
• During these days they doubtless contemplated the words of Sacred Scripture, how the Spirit of God hovered over surface of the deep and helped bring creation out of chaos (Gen 1:2), how God through the Prophet Joel had promised, “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh and your sons and your daughters will prophesy” (Joel 3:1-2), how God through the Prophet Ezekiel had said, “I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes” (Ez 36:26-28), how through the Prophet Jeremiah God had declared, “I will put my law within them and I will write it upon my hearts.” During these days they similarly would have pondered Jesus’ words about how he had first told the Samaritan woman and later those present in the Temple area, “Let the one who believes in me drink. Just as Scripture says, ‘From within him will flow rivers of living water,’” and St. John tells us, “He said this about the Spirit whom those who believed in him were going to receive” (Jn 4:10.13-14, 7:37). They would have meditated on the many things he had said to them at the Last Supper, including the passage we have in today’s Gospel, that the Father and He would send them another Advocate or Paraclete, who would teach them all things, remind them of everything Jesus taught, guide them into all truth, teach us what we ought to say, bear witness to and glorify Jesus, convict the world about sin, righteousness and condemnation, and dwell in us and be in us (Jn 14:6,16,26; Jn 15:26; Jn 16:8,13-14; Mt 10:17-20). They would also have prayed what Jesus said and did on the night of the Resurrection, when he walked through the closed doors of the Upper Room, breathed on them just like God had breathed into Adam at the beginning of Creation, and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
• United with Mary as their retreat director, they prayed and they waited. Jesus hadn’t told them how long they were to remain in prayerful expectation of the fulfillment of the Father’s promise. 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 it 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 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 the world.
• 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 he wanted them them to have plenty of time 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, as well as to learn from her about how to cooperate with the Holy Spirit, who had been part of her life since her Immaculate Conception. 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 Jesus had promised, 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.
• Since that time the Church has wanted us to learn from the experience of the early Church how to desire the Holy Spirit. The word that the Church puts on our lips more than any other with regard to the Holy Spirit 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!,” throughout this decenarium of preparation, “Come, Holy Spirit,” and 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,” imploring the Holy Spirit anew to come with heavenly radiance as the guest of our soul, comforting us, giving us rest in labor, refreshment in stifling heat, solace in tribulation, cleansing what is impure, irrigating what is desiccated, healing what is wounded, bending 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!
• And after all of that waiting for the coming of the promise of the Father, the Church wants to help us to accept that divine Gift profoundly and let him change our life. Jesus tells us on Easter Sunday night in the Upper Room, with a Gospel that is heard during Year A of the Sunday Lectionary but can be used each year at Mass, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Jesus had told us during the Last Supper three days before that it was to our advantage that he go, because if he didn’t go, the Spirit wouldn’t come to us, but if he did, he would send him to us (Jn 14:26). And immediately after his departure in the new and eternal Passover, the first thing he did was to breathe on the apostles the Holy Spirit and tell them to receive that gift, a gift that would be fulfilled 50 days later. The same Jesus says to us, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” He wants us to open our hearts and align our lives, like Mary, to the work of the Holy Spirit within us.
• The reality is that many of us, even though we confess each Sunday and every time we pray the Rosary, “I believe in the Holy Spirit,” often this faith is more conceptual than life-changing — the Holy Spirit remains an “it” rather than becomes a life-changing “Thou.” St. Josemaria taught that for many of the faithful, the Holy Spirit remains the “Great Unknown.” This has been a problem for the Church since the beginning. There’s a scene in the Acts of the Apostles when St. Paul came to Ephesus and met some disciples. He asked, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” They responded, “We have never even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” Pope-emeritus Benedict, at World Youth Day in Australia in 2008, said, “The Holy Spirit has been in some ways the neglected person of the Blessed Trinity,” and confessed that it was only as a 37-year-old priest teaching theology not only that he began to grasp the importance that the Holy Spirit should play in his life as a priest and professor but that he came to know him intimately. He said, “It is not enough to know the Spirit; we must welcome Him as the guide of our souls, as the ‘Teacher of the interior life’ who introduces us to the Mystery of the Trinity, because He alone can open us up to faith and allow us to live it each day to the full.” And we don’t have to be a card-carrying member of the Charismatic Renewal to allow the Holy Spirit to become that teacher and guide. If we wish to understand the faith, if we wish to live it, if we wish to pass it on, we must allow ourselves to be led by the Holy Spirit, even if we, like Joseph Ratzinger, are beginning as adults. For us, the “great unknown” must become the “great known,” the teacher, the leader, the consoler, the advocate. “The Holy Spirit,” Pope Benedict summarized, “is the highest gift of God to humankind” and he wants to establish with us a personal relationship, an I-Thou, of the greatest intimacy.
• So today it’s not enough for us to focus on the Holy Spirit, to think about him and even to pray to him a little. Jesus instructs us anew to receive him. To let him do his work. To fill us with his gifts. To help us experience his fruit. To sanctify us from within. To fulfill in us what he has been sent to accomplish. To receive the Holy Spirit well means to cooperate with him as perfectly as we can.
  • To receive the Holy Spirit means to cooperate with him as he seeks to teach us all things, guide us into all truth, declare to us the things that are to come and remind us of everything Jesus has taught us. This means a hunger to learn, to treasure Sacred Scripture, to pour ourselves into the Catechism, which documents the way he has guided the Church throughout centuries. We pray in the Veni Creator, “Accende lumen sensibus,” and receiving the Holy Spirit means to seek to live by the light of truth he inflames.
  • To receive the Holy Spirit means to cooperate with him as he seeks, as Jesus says, to “dwell in us and be in us.” The means that we take the reality of our being a Temple of the Holy Spirit seriously and try to keep our Temple as beautiful and clean as the most zealous nuns keep their chapels and the most hardworking sacristans keep the marble, bronze and wood of their cathedrals sparkling. We call him, “Dulcis hospes animae” and tell him “mentes tuorum visita,” asking this sweet guest of the soul to visit and take up residence within us.
  • To receive the Holy Spirit means to cooperate with him in prayer. As St. Paul says, the Holy Spirit comes “to the aid of our weakness for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit intercedes for us” (Rom 8:26). He helps us learn how to pray so that our life might become an existence made prayer and enable us to live our whole life in union with God. In today’s second reading, St. Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words, that he helps us to cry out “Abba, Father!” and pray as beloved sons and daughters who know that the Father who cares for us more than the lilies or sparrows will never give us a stone when we ask for bread. We say to him, “Per te sciamus da Patrem, noscamus atque Filium,” and it is through the Holy Spirit that we learn the Trinitarian shape of Christian prayer that St. John Paul II says is the source of a truly vital Christianity.
  • To receive the Holy Spirit means to cooperate with him as he seeks to convict us and the world of sin, righteousness and condemnation. Sin, Jesus defines, as the failure to believe in him, ultimately the rejection of God, to help us and others to see the many ways we haven’t let him into our life. In the Gospel, right after Jesus says, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” he sends the apostles out to forgive and retain sins in his name. We pray in the Sequence, “Lava quod est sordidum,” “sana quod est saucium,” and “rege quod est devium,” and we bathe in those cleansing, healing, restorative waters.
  • To receive the Holy Spirit means to allow him to change the whole principal of our life. St. Paul tells us in his letters to the Galatians and Romans that there are two basic ways to live, to live according to the Spirit or to live 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. To live by the flesh means to place our heart, our treasure, in the things of this world, in money and material possessions, in carnal pleasures, in fame, power, influence, in superficialities. The Holy Spirit wants to renew us by helping 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, the apostles and the saints have, receive his gifts and bear his fruit. We pray, “Ductore sic te praevio,” and ask him to lead us through life and all of its challenges.
  • To receive the Holy Spirit means to allow him to make of us a gift to others. In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit has given each of us a “manifestation of the Spirit” for the benefit of the whole. The Holy Spirit has given each of us “spiritual gifts” so that we may carry out the “different forms of service” and “different workings” necessary to make Christ’s Body the Church strong. The Holy Spirit wants to help us to recognize what our gifts are and, just as importantly, to use them to build up the Church, both domestic and universal, and renew the face of the earth. The Holy Spirit calls us to be contributors rather than consumers, givers rather than takers, co-responsible participants rather than seated spectators in the continuation of Christ’s work. We call him, “Pater pauperum” and “Dator munerum,” and we ask him to give us a true fatherly and motherly love for the poor and to use the gifts he has given us as principles of life for others.
  • To receive the Holy Spirit means to receive his tongue of fire so that we may proclaim our faith to others with ardent love, even if we should have to suffer for spreading the love of God. We see how the Holy Spirit helped simple men like Peter and the apostles speak powerfully and effectively in front of vast crowds. He wants to do the same with us. By Baptism and by our Confirmation, we’ve all received the same Holy Spirit that the apostles received on Pentecost, so that, just like the apostles left the Upper Room — relying less on our own wits and more on his wisdom, who teaches us what we are to say — we might burst through the doors of homes, convents, chapels and Churches and use every means we have announce Christ’s kingdom. We pray, “Sermone ditans guttura,” and ask him to fill our threats with his word!
• To receive the Holy Spirit means ultimately to allow the Holy Spirit to come and change us and through us change the world. In the Responsorial Psalm today, we sing out repeatedly, “Lord, send out your Spirit and renew the face of the earth!” How much our world needs renewal. We need that renewal in the Ukraine and in all places torn by war. We need it in Uvalde, Texas, Buffalo, Tulsa and all those who have experienced atrocities. We need it so much here in New York, with its rising crime, its blasphemous parades, and its ignominious distinction as the abortion capital of the US. Our world needs renewal because of the ever present problem of sin in all its forms that disfigure God’s gifts, our relationship to him, to each other, to ourselves and to the gift of creation. On Pentecost we implore God the Father and the Son to send the Spirit to renew us and renew his world … and God responds, but we need to long for that gift and receive that gift.
• St. John Paul II said that Pentecost is not a past reality for the Church but an ever-present one. And we enter into that ongoing reality of Pentecost when we enter the Upper Room, surround Mary and the apostles and the other members of the Church, and implore the promise of the Father at Mass. Pope Benedict said in Australia, “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 anew to change men and women into Christ’s mystical body. To say, “Come, Holy Spirit!” means to allow him to do this work. To receive the Holy Spirit means to cooperate first with the miraculous metamorphosis the Spirit wants to do in us as we receive Jesus. Today, 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 they send the Holy Spirit to change us the way he changed the apostles on that first Pentecost, on this feast of the birthday of the Church, to give us and the entire Church a spiritual rebirth. Today is the answer to our prayers and the long vigil of the Church in the Upper Room throughout the centuries down to our own time! Let us receive the Holy Spirit at the life-changing depth he desires and the grateful love he deserves!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download