Pentecost Sunday
Scripture:
Acts 2:1-11
1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13 or Galatians 5:16-25
John 20:19-23 or John 15:26-27; 16:12-15
Reflection:
If you take away their breath, they perish and return to their dust.
When you send forth your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth.
-Psalm 104:29-30
On this Solemnity of Pentecost, we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit and the beginning of the Church’s mission of evangelization. When Jesus spoke of the sending of the Spirit to His Apostles, He regularly proclaimed two things. First, the Spirit would come when He returns to His Father, and second, the gift of the Spirit was to be desired greatly. The Third Person of the Holy Trinity is the fruit of the love that flows between the Father and the Son.
When Christ returned to the Father, the Spirit was sent out so we could participate in this Divine love. It is said that God created us by love for love. As such, we were created to receive the Holy Spirit! As the psalmist proclaims, without the Spirit, we die. We can be sure that the Lord continues to send forth the Spirit upon the Church, but how ardently are we desiring to receive it?
In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul writes that we were made to drink of one Spirit and that no one can say “Jesus is Lord.” except by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:13, 3). If we truly want to be alive in faith, if we truly want to be heralds of the Gospel, we must thirst for the Spirit and drink in the grace He bestows. It is only when the members of the body of Christ are united in the Spirit that we are created anew as the Church. It is only through the Spirit that we can be part of renewing the face of the earth.
Megan Silas is a Lay Passionist at Holy Name Passionist Retreat Center in Houston, Texas.