SUNDAY REFLECTIONS - PENTECOST SUNDAY

Acts 2:1-11; 1 Corinthians 12: 3b-7, 12-13; John 20: 19-23

(Rev. Dr. Francis Perry Azah)

Dearly Beloved in Christ, we all know how difficult it is to learn another language. We all know how difficult it is to speak and write in another language. It takes years of listening to the phonetics and exercising the composition structures of a language before we feel at ease in another language. Yet we are told that the Apostles, these illiterates, spoke, and people from various nations understood them. It is the hearers, not the speakers, who make this claim! This was the novel experience of the new harvest, Pentecost!

Why is it that we rarely experience such a harvest today? St Paul gives us a clue. No one can say, "Jesus is Lord" unless he is under the influence of the Holy Spirit. (I Cor. 12:3) The Apostles, Mary the Mother of Jesus, and some other disciples "were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit." (Acts 2:1-4)

The Feast of Pentecost is the birthday of the Church as it is sent forth, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to proclaim the praises of God and to forgive sins. All of this gives this day a special meaning for me. Before he returned to his Father, he gave them their formal commission. “Go into the whole world; make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you. And behold, I am with you always until the end of the ages.” (Matt. 28:19-20)

Then He told them to go to Jerusalem and wait until they received the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, who would remind them of all He had commanded, and He would remain with them forever. Then just as the human body of Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit at the Annunciation, so too the Mystical Body of Jesus, the Church, was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. And just as the human Jesus lived his entire life under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, so too the Mystical Body of Jesus lives its entire life under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It was by the power of the Holy Spirit that the Gospel of Christ crucified, so incredible and inscrutable in itself, so contrary to human nature, and preached by such simple, unlettered men, conquered the known world in a few centuries.

The Church is on fire and alive. Today, this moment is ours too, to be on fire and alive in the Spirit. We are the same Church today. We are the Church of the Apostles, still alive, still on fire, forever young with the exuberance of the Holy Spirit. God, the Holy Spirit wants to fill us, too. He wants us to receive the same fullness of Himself that the Apostles received on this very day, over 2000 years ago. In fact, He has already done this. He infused in our souls: faith, hope, and love through the waters of our baptism, and he enhanced and completed these gifts when we were confirmed. But He has not stopped there. The Holy Spirit wants to fill our souls every single day so that the Church 2000 years from now will still be on fire and alive.

We have our own part to play in this. Most importantly, I think, would be to simply pray to God, the Holy Spirit. Oftentimes, we have no problem praying to God the Father because we can imagine a fatherly figure with gray hair and a beard. And we can pray to God, the Son, because Jesus Christ is so vividly depicted in the Gospels and in artwork. But the reigning image of the Holy Spirit is a dove. Most of the time, we think of God, the Holy Spirit, simply as a force or a power that comes and goes. If you have not been in the habit of praying to God, the Holy Spirit today is the perfect day to start, the day when we celebrate how generously He filled the apostles, and us, with courage and zeal.

The Holy Spirit works in each of us to help us recognize the hand of God in our lives, inspire us, and see the blessings we receive. The Spirit gives these gifts because the Father wills it, and gives them in the name of the Son. So, the entire mystery of the Trinity is wrapped up in every gift we receive from the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit continues to operate, but only if people will release that Spirit into the community. For example, parents are challenged to transform their family by breathing the Spirit on them through daily Christian living. Children are to cooperate with the Spirit by listening respectfully and soberly to their parents' God-given advice. The unmarried are asked to use their talents to reach out to the Babel of their world. After all, gifts are for the community, no matter what they are. To speak a consoling word, to offer a helping hand, to recreate through the arts, these are gifts and hence for others. To refuse to use gifts for others is to revert to chaos. Today is the day to begin to be more open, more daring, more giving as we reveal to the world what God has done for us through the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.