Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for Pentecost Sunday (A), Vigil
May 30, 2020
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
- This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us on Pentecost Sunday.
- The Gospel we have, Jesus tells the first apostles in the Upper Room and all of us, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” What does it mean to receive the Holy Spirit?
- We can ponder several things from Sacred Scripture. For example, on Holy Thursday, during the Last Supper, Jesus said that the Holy Spirit: would teach us everything and remind us of all that Jesus had told us, that the Holy Spirit would testify to Jesus and help us testify, and that the Holy Spirit would convict the world with regard to sin, and righteousness and condemnation. To receive the Holy Spirit, therefore, means that we cooperate with the Holy Spirit’s assistance to get to know Jesus and his teaching much better, to remember it, to share it, to live it, to thank God incessantly for it. To receive the Holy Spirit means to cooperate with him in testifying to Jesus, that he is with us always until the end of time, calling us to joy, to life, to love. To receive the Holy Spirit means to fight against sin, to seek righteousness or holiness, and to rejoice in the condemnation of the ruler of this world.
- To receive the Holy Spirit. We can learn a lot about how to do that through remembering what happened on that first Pentecost. Before his Ascension Jesus had 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 and “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. 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. And it was finally on the tenth day, the feast of Pentecost, that 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.
- 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 needed 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.
- For us to receive the Holy Spirit well, we must long for him, long for him like Mary and the apostles. And then we must allow him to transform us.
- How does the Holy Spirit want to transform us as we receive him? We can focus on a four ways.
- The first way is through our prayer. The Holy Spirit helps us to learn how to pray, coming, as St. Paul says, “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 wants to help 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. 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. To receive the Holy Spirit well 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.
- The second way he wants to transform us as we receive him is in how we live our Christian life. The Holy Spirit is sent to guide us. 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 possession, in carnal pleasures, in fame, power, influence, in superficialities. To receive the 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.
- The third way he wants to transform us is with regard to the missionary dimension of the Christian life, to our boldly and confidently sharing of the faith with others. The Holy Spirit wants to fill us with a fire to light the world ablaze with the Gospel. He came down as tongues of fire upon the early Church to symbolize that he wanted us, strengthened by him, to use our tongues to proclaim the Gospel with ardent love. We see how the Holy Spirit helped simple men speak powerfully and effectively in front of vast crowds. He can do the same with us. By Baptism and Confirmation, we’ve all received the same Holy Spirit that the apostles received on Pentecost. To receive the Holy Spirit is, just like the apostles left the Upper Room, to get ready to burst through the doors of homes and Churches and use every means we have announce Christ’s kingdom.
- The last way the Holy Spirit wants to transform us is by making us aware of his gifts so that we might use them to transform the Church and renew the world. 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. He 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. He wants to help us to recognize what our gifts are and, just as importantly, to use them to build up our family, to build up parishes, to build up the Church as a whole and help it fulfill its mission in the world. The mission of the Church is not just for ordained or consecrated “specialists.” To receive the Holy Spirit well is to recognize that we are called to be contributors rather than consumers, givers rather than takers, co-responsible participants rather than seated spectators in the Mission Christ has given to the Church.
- And so the consequence of the conversation Jesus wants to have with us today is that we will truly receive the Holy Spirit more profoundly than ever and cooperate with him as he seeks, through us, to renew the face of the face of the earth. Happy Pentecost!
The Gospel on which today’s reflection was based was:
Gospel
JN 20:19-23
On the evening of that first day of the week,
when the doors were locked, where the disciples were,
for fear of the Jews,
Jesus came and stood in their midst
and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.
The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,
“Receive the Holy Spirit.
Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,
and whose sins you retain are retained.”
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