Receive the Holy Spirit, Pentecost, May 31, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Pentecost Sunday 2020
May 31, 2020
Acts 2:1-11, Ps 104, 1 Cor 12:3-7.12-13, Jn 20:19-23

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

The following text guided today’s 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.” 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 in order 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 Jesus 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, 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 over the scene in today’s Gospel, on the night of the Resurrection, when Jesus 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 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 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 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, as well as to learn from her about how to cooperate with the Holy Spirit, who had overshadowed her at the Annunciation and 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, 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 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,” 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 has us focus at Mass on Jesus’ words, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Those words were said on Easter. Jesus had told us during the Last Supper 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. 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 that he began not only 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.”
• So today it’s not enough for us to focus on the Holy Spirit and pray to him. Jesus instructs us 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.
  • 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 pray, to treasure Sacred Scripture.
  • To receive the Holy Spirit means to cooperate with him as he seeks 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.
  • 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. The Holy Spirit, as the beautiful words of absolution in the Sacrament of Penance remind us, has been sent among us by the Father “for the remission of sins.” But in order for our sins to be forgiven, we must know what sin is and truly repent of all of those areas in which we haven’t united our lives to God, so that we might put to death in us whatever is earthly. The Spirit also convinces us of righteousness, which Jesus defines as his going to the Father, where he has prepared a place for us. He helps us, in other words, to long for holiness, heaven, eternal happiness, to seek the things that are above and to set our minds on the things of the Spirit. He also convinces us of condemnation, which Jesus says refers to the prince of this world’s being condemned, so that we no longer need to fear the devil, but to renounce him, his evil works and empty promises.
  • To receive the Holy Spirit means to receive his tongue of fire so that we, like Peter and the apostles, may proclaim our faith to others with ardent love, even if we should have to suffer for spreading the love of God. It means to rely less on our own wits and more on his wisdom, as he teaches us what we are to say, since the same one who guides our words is at work in the lives of others. We can’t receive the Holy Spirit and remain on the sidelines as a spectator. As St. Paul tells us today in his first Letter to the Corinthians, to receive the Holy Spirit means to recognize that each of us has been given a “manifestation of the Spirit” for the benefit of all and to use that gift to build up our families, the family of the Church and the whole world.
• 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. It needs renewal because of the pandemic and all of the associated sufferings. It needs renewal because of the dehumanizing racism that continues to plague our society, the fratricide that took place in the killing of George Floyd and the anarchic chaos and diabolical destruction that has taken place as a result. It 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 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 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 our families, our neighborhoods, our burning cities, our country, our culture and the face of the earth! Veni, Sancte Spiritus!He’s worth the wait! Amen!

The readings for today’s Mass were:  

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