Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for Pentecost Sunday
May 27, 2023
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.
- I’ve just returned from leading a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. On Ascension Thursday, with Catholic students from Columbia University and Focus Missionaries, I was in a very crowded Upper Room where we pondered how Jesus there gave us four Sacraments: the Eucharist and Holy Orders on Holy Thursday, Confession on Easter Sunday and Confirmation on Pentecost. We spoke about what Jesus said in his valedictory right before ascending to the Father’s right side. He 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 returned to the Upper Room where they huddled around Mary and “devoted themselves with one accord to prayer.” She taught them 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, day after day, until on the tenth day, the Holy Spirit burst through the windows of the upper room like the noise of a strong driving wind and came down upon each of them as tongues of fire. As we were in the Upper Room, we sang together the Veni Creator Spiritus, the Church’s most famous and traditional prayer beseeching the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, as others stopped to listen. And we pondered the scene from this Sunday’s Gospel, a prelude to Pentecost, when Jesus on the night he rose from the dead, entered the closed doors of the Upper Room, breathed on the apostles and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
- This Pentecost, we will all be in the Upper Room of our parish Churches and Jesus will say to 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 he would testify to Jesus and help us testify, and that he 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 and holiness, and to rejoice in the condemnation of the ruler of this world.
- Many have not received the Holy Spirit. There’s a famous 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.” Our recently deceased Pope Benedict XVI, 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 young priest and professor teaching theology that he began not only to recognize the importance that the Holy Spirit should play in his life but came to know him intimately. He added, “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 member of the Charismatic Renewal to allow the Holy Spirit to become that guide and teacher. To receive the Holy Spirit means to allow ourselves to be led and taught by the Holy Spirit, even if we, like the future Pope Benedict, are beginning as adults. To receive the Holy Spirit means that the “great unknown” must become the “great known.”
- During the Last Supper, Jesus said something truly shocking about the Holy Spirit. 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.” Jesus basically declares that if we have a choice between Him and the Holy Spirit, we should choose the latter. That’s how important he says the Holy Spirit is.The great joy is that we don’t have to have to choose between the two. It is crucial, however, for us to ponder the role of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life and to examine whether we’ve received the Holy Spirit within us at the depth at which he wants to go.
- For us to receive the Holy Spirit as he wants, we must long for him like Mary and the apostles and then we must allow him, as our guide and teacher, to transform us. How does he wish to do that? We can focus on 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 cares for us more than the lilies or sparrows and 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 beautiful 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 Holy Spirit wants to give us his gifts of reverence and awe so that we can better love God and others, of knowledge and understanding so that we can better grasp our faith, live it and pass it on, of wisdom and prudence so that we can make better choices, and courage so that we may do all of these things unafraid. To receive the Holy Spirit means to live by these gifts.
- 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 wants 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. In Baptism and Confirmation, we’ve all received the same Holy Spirit that the apostles received on Pentecost. To receive the Holy Spirit well means, just as the apostles left the Upper Room, that we’re ready to burst through the doors of homes and Churches and use every means we have to 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, which we’ll hear this Sunday, 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.
- 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 others’ salvation. It’s during the Mass we have the epiclesis in which we, together with Mary and all the saints, prayerfully call down the Holy Spirit upon the priest and the altar totally to change bread and wine into Jesus’ body and blood, and then ask him 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. Happy Pentecost!
The Gospel on which the homily was based was:
Gospel
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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