Pentecost Sunday (C), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, June 4, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily in anticipation of Pentecost Sunday
June 4, 2022

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

This is the text that 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. As we celebrate the birthday of the Church and the anniversary of when the Holy Spirit came down upon the apostles and Mary as tongues of fire, the Church this year has us consider the words of Jesus during the Last Supper when he promised, “I will ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always,” adding, “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.”
• The word Advocate, Parakletos in Greek, means a helper, consoler, champion, upholder, supporter, proponent, protector, someone who speaks on our behalf, lawyer or defense attorney, and was used in that context in Roman and Greek settings. In both languages it means literally someone called to stand beside us, to intercede for us. Jesus was our first Advocate and he says that God the Father sends us the Holy Spirit as “another Advocate” to be with us always, to help, console, uphold, support, protect and defend us.
• He will give us a specific form of assistance. Just as Jesus would tell Pontius Pilate the following day that he had come to “give witness to the truth,” so he told the apostles that the help the Holy Spirit would be the “Spirit of truth,” who would “guide you to all truth” (Jn 16:13), “teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you” (Jn 14:26). The Holy Spirit, like Jesus, would be our Advocate not by serving us like a mob attorney tries to defend his criminal mafiosi, but by helping us to know the truth, love the truth, live the truth, spread the truth and enter into communion with Jesus, who said, “I am the Truth.” He will help us to live in the real, real world, together with God, even in the midst of environments that will be filled with lies or following the infernal inspirations of the one Jesus calls the “liar and the father of lies” (Jn 8:44).
• How much we need the Holy Spirit’s help! How grateful we need to be for the gift of the Holy Spirit to tell the truth about God, about us, about others, about the world. We’re living at a time of assaults against the truth, not just opposition to revealed truths or the truths of the natural law, but a time of spin, of fake news, of believing and spreading lies. We see this attack against the truth not only in the disinformation campaigns of communist governments, but we also in the euphemisms that support the practice of abortion or in the attempt not only to allow those who are confused about their identity to think that they’re girls trapped in boys’ bodies and vice versa and to force everyone else to lie by pretending that they really are what they confusedly think they are.
• That’s why the great refrain of Pentecost, taken from Psalm 104, is, “Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth!” In the context of so much pain and violence flowing from hatred like we have seen recently in Uvalde, Buffalo and the Ukraine, so much despair, pain and suicides flowing from meaninglessness, so much confusion flowing from politically correct lies as well as the failure boldly to teach the truth, we need the Holy Spirit to come to renew us and through us the Church and the world. We beg for this renewal in the beautiful sequence, the Veni, Sancte Spiritus, we sing before the Gospel. In it we beg the Holy Spirit to come with divine light to shine within us, to fill the hearts of the faithful with rest in the midst of fatigue and solace in the midst of tears, to cleanse what’s dirty, irrigate what’s arid, heal what’s wounded, bend what’s rigid, warm what’s frigid and put back on the straight path what’s gone astray, ultimately to give us the gifts of wisdom, understanding, knowledge, prudence, courage, reverence and awe of the Lord so that we might live a virtuous life, grow in holiness and come to eternal joy. The Holy Spirit is ever the source of renewal in the Church.
• How does he renew us?
  • First, he renews our prayer life. 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 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. 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. The Holy Spirit wants to renew us, we can say, by blowing his strong driving wind within us the way a trumpeter makes music.
  • Second, he wants to renew our life through the guidance he gives us through his gifts and fruit. 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.
  • Third, he wants to renew our loving service of others by helping us transform our gifts into spiritual weapons for the good of 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. 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. The Holy Spirit 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 and help it fulfill its mission in the world, to build up our neighborhoods, cities and towns, and our country. The Holy Spirit wants to renew us by helping us 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 continuation of Christ’s work.
  • Finally, he wants to renew us specifically in our capacity to share the Gospel. The Holy Spirit 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 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, we might burst through the doors of homes and Churches and use every means we have announce Christ’s kingdom. The world needs the Gospel if the face of the earth is going to be renewed and the Holy Spirit wants to use us for that renewal. That’s why the Spirit of truth comes to teach us everything, to guide us to all truth, to remind us of everything Jesus taught us. That’s why he comes as helper, consoler, champion, upholder, supporter, proponent, and protector.
• It’s not by coincidence that the Holy Spirit came down upon the apostles in the Upper Room, where 53 days before Jesus celebrated the Last Supper. Pentecost is not a past reality for the Church but an ever-present one. Pope Benedict said, “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 in the Liturgy of the Word the Holy Spirit seeks to lead us more deeply into the truth. It’s during the Mass when he helps us to pray as we ought, to set our minds on the things of the spirit, to recognize our God-given gifts and commit to use them for God’s glory and other’s salvation. It’s during the Mass we have the epiclesis in which we, together with Mary and all the saints, 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 after the consecration to change men and women into “one body, one spirit in Christ.” It’s at the end of Mass that we are sent out, inflamed by the Spirit, to proclaim the Gospel with passion. As we prepare to go to Mass on Pentecost, let us prepare ourselves for the way the Lord will send out the Holy Spirit, to renew us and through us seek to renew the face of the earth.

The Gospel on which the homily was based (preceded by the Sequence referred to) was: 

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