Pentecost Sunday

May 23, 2021

Send your Spirit, Lord, and repopulate the face of the earth.

There are diversity of gifts, but the same Spirit.

Jesus breathed his breath on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

 

 

Readings

 

First reading

A reading from the book of Acts of the Apostles 2, 1-11

 

When the day of Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all together in the same place. Suddenly, there was a roar from heaven, like a strong wind blowing, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. They saw tongues appear, like flames, that divided, settling on top of each one of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit allowed them to manifest.
At that time, devout Jews from all the peoples under heaven resided in Jerusalem. When this noise was heard, the crowd came and were puzzled, because each one could hear them speaking in their own language. They were all dumbfounded and amazed, saying:
“Are not all those who are speaking Galileans? So how is it that each of us hear them speak in our native language?
Among us there are Parthians, Medes and Elamites and inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the area of ​​Libya that borders Cyrene; there are foreign Roman citizens, as many Jews as proselytes; there are also Cretans and Arabs; and each one of us heard them speak of the greatness of God in our own language ”.

 

Psalm

Ps 103, 1ab and 24ac. 29bc 30. 31 and 34

Send your Spirit, Lord, and repopulate the face of the earth.

Bless, my soul, the Lord: my God, how great you are!
How many are your works, Lord; The earth is full of your creatures. R.

You take their breath away, and they expire and become dust again;
send your spirit, and create them, and repopulate the face of the earth. R.

Glory to God forever, may the Lord rejoice in his works;
May my poem be pleasant to you, and I will rejoice with the Lord. R.

 

Second lecture

A reading from the first letter of Saint Paul to Corinthians 12, 3-7. 12-13

Brothers:
No one can say: “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit.
And there are diversity of gifts, but the same Spirit; there are diversity of ministries, but the same Lord; and there are diversity of functions, but the same God who works everything in everyone. But to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is granted for the common good.
Well, just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, despite being many, are one body, so is Christ also.
For all of us, Jews and Greeks, slave and free, have been baptized in the same Spirit, to form a single body. And we have all drunk of one Spirit.

 

Gospel

A reading from the holy gospel according to John 20: 19-23

At dusk on that day, the first of the week, the disciples were in a house, with the doors closed for fear of the Jews. And into this Jesus entered, stood in the middle, and said to them:
“Peace to you.”
And, saying this, he showed them his hands and his side. And the disciples were overjoyed to see the Lord. Jesus repeated:
“Peace to you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you ”.
And, having said this, he breathed his breath on them and said:
Receive the Holy Spirit; those who forgive their sins are forgiven; those who are retained are retained ”.

 

Commentary

 

Today the Easter liturgical season concludes with Pentecost Sunday, Sunday of the Holy Spirit, fifty days after the Resurrection of the Lord. Today also ends the great baptismal catechesis in which we have renewed our Christian faith, which began on Ash Wednesday with the beginning of Lent and which has reached today, Pentecost day, with the end of Easter, having as its axis the Christ’s victory over sin and death, that is, his resurrection. Looking back, we remember how at the beginning of this path we were asked for penance, austerity, inner emptying, fasting, almsgiving and prayer. Now we understand that this was necessary in order to receive the great gift that God the Father, through his Son, Jesus Christ, wants to give us: the gift of the Holy Spirit from him. The path of Christian life consists of constantly emptying ourselves to make room and give way to the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of God, who encourages us, animates, strengthens, illuminates, pushes us in the fulfillment of what God He wants the same from each one of us. We already receive it in baptism and, fully and definitively, in the sacrament of confirmation, but we have to update it every day, living in God’s grace through participation in the other sacraments of the Church, mainly in the Eucharist. .

It has been repeatedly said that the Holy Spirit is the great unknown of Catholic Christians. And that statement may have some truth. The figures of the Father and the Son, more anthropomorphic and easy to understand, have been filling our faith and relationship with God, in such a way that the reference to the Holy Spirit has been somewhat supplanted by them. It is more comfortable and easy for us to pray and talk with God the Father, and of course, with Jesus, than with the Holy Spirit. The human figure of Jesus, as the Son of God made man, constantly inspires us in our Christian thinking and acting, perhaps much more than the figures under which the Holy Spirit appears in Scripture: fire, wind, dove, oil … We can even ask: then what or who is the Holy Spirit.

The Catechism tells us that the Holy Spirit is not something but someone, he is the third person of the Holy Trinity, together with the Father and the Son. We say in the Creed that he is “Lord and giver of life, that he proceeds from the Father and the Son and that with the Father and the Son he receives the same adoration and glory and that he spoke through the prophets.” The word “spirit”, which in Latin is said “spiritus”, in Greek “pneuma” and in Hebrew “ruah”, means air, wind, breath, breath. In short, they are images that help us to understand the very being of God, who is Spirit, who cannot be seen or touched like air, but is there, it gives us life, we breathe it, oxygenates us and drives us with its strength to go ahead.

The Holy Spirit is the same Spirit of love that unites Jesus with the Father, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Jesus. Jesus Christ, in his earthly life, gradually manifested to his disciples his divine condition, at the same time that he showed them that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who accompanies and comforts Jesus in his journey towards the offering of his own life in fulfillment of the Father’s will. And it is Jesus himself who, having conquered death and from his glorification, becomes the giver of the Spirit to his disciples. The Gospel reminds us like this … Christ himself tells them: “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

If Jesus Christ is called Immanuel, which means “God with us,” the Holy Spirit could be called and understood as “God in us.” God the Father, who has created us in his image, who has given us being, at the same time, offers us the possibility of filling us with his own Spirit in order to divinize us, allowing us to be possessed by him without annulling us or expropriating us of our own being with all our potentialities, but quite the opposite. His Spirit in us illuminates our intelligence, strengthens our will, drives our freedom towards truth and good.

The gift of the Holy Spirit was the last great surprise that the risen Jesus had in store for his disciples. He had told them: “I will be with you always.” But he hadn’t explained how. At the moment of his ascension to heaven he asks them to wait for the gift of God and to keep together in his name. And, as the first reading today tells us, it happened that one day, a strong wind broke where they were and filled the whole house. “They saw tongues appear, like flames, that divided, settling on each one of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit allowed them to manifest.

Saint Paul reminds us, in today’s second reading, that it is the Holy Spirit who unites the Body of Christ, which is the Church… There are different gifts, ministries and functions, but the same Spirit, which is the same Spirit of Jesus. And each baptized Christian receives the Holy Spirit not for himself but for the common good, to create community, to enrich everyone. He invites us to prayer because no one can say Jesus is Lord but he is under the action of the Holy Spirit. He is the great protagonist in the history of the Church who has been guiding and promoting its missionary action in the world through the apostles and their successors, the bishops. He continues to enlighten the Pope and all the pastors of the People of God to guide and guard him as appropriate.

In today’s Gospel, we observe how the risen Jesus breathed his breath on his disciples and said to them: “Receive the Holy Spirit; those who forgive their sins are forgiven; those who are retained are retained ”. Before he had also said to them: “Peace to you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you ”. That is to say, Jesus makes them participants in his own Spirit, the Spirit of love that unites him to the Father, so that they become continuators of his own mission.

It is the mission of the Church, of each missionary disciple, of each baptized and sent, the mission of evangelizing, announcing the good news of God’s love and mercy for all; the mission to bring out of sin and death all those who are enslaved, the mission to overcome evil with the force of good, illuminate the darkness of lies and deception from the light of truth, heal hearts torn with the balm of God’s love that his Spirit gives us; the mission of putting fraternity, cordiality, kindness, respect, commitment, collaboration where there is coldness and distance, enmity, contempt, pride, disaffection, submission, ideological or racial supremacy.

That is why we need his Spirit, the spirit of wisdom, of understanding, of counsel, of knowledge, of strength, of piety, and of the fear of God. Spirit that keeps us united in diversity and keeps us brothers in adversity. God the Father, through Jesus Christ his beloved Son, wants to renew his Spirit in each one of us at this new Pentecost. In this particular moment of widespread suffering due to the pandemic, of overwhelm and despair due to the consequences of it in broken families, who have lost loved ones, who continue to suffer from the disease, who have lost work and goods necessary for their subsistence, we repeat insistently : Come, Holy Spirit!

Let us prepare our hearts to receive it, let us wait for it with faith and trust, let us receive it with joy and enthusiasm. Let us ask God for it: Send, Lord, your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth! Give us, Lord, your Holy Spirit.

 

Prayer

Come, divine Spirit, send your light from heaven.
Loving father of the poor; gift, in your splendid gifts;
light that penetrates the souls; source of the greatest comfort.

Come, sweet guest of the soul, rest from our effort,
truce in hard work, breeze in fiery hours,

joy that wipes away tears and comforts in duels.

Enter to the bottom of the soul, divine light, and enrich us.
Look at the emptiness of man, if you lack him inside;
look at the power of sin, when you don’t send your breath.

Water the land in drought, heal the sick heart,
washes away stains, infuses warmth of life into ice,
tame the indomitable spirit, guide the one who twists the path.

Divide your seven gifts, according to the faith of your servants;
by your goodness and your grace, give the effort its merit;
save the one who seeks to save himself and give us your eternal joy.

AMEN.