Pentecost (B)

Acts 2:1-11
Ps 104:1, 24, 29-30, 31, 34
1 Cor 12:3b-7, 12-13 or Rm 8:8-17
Jn 20:19-23 or Jn 14:15-16, 23b-26

Hello, I’m Franciscan Father Greg Friedman, with the “Sunday Soundbite” for the Feast of Pentecost. Shortly after Easter one year, a woman in my parish who had been received into the Church at the Easter Vigil told me how welcomed she felt in the Catholic family. The sense of openness and tolerance she experienced was especially important to her.

It’s a characteristic of Catholicism to see God’s goodness in all of creation, in various human endeavors, and in the cultures and histories of human beings wherever the Gospel is preached. While we haven’t always lived up to that ideal, I was happy that my new parishioner experienced something of that spirit.

That universal dimension is also one of the themes of Pentecost. The dramatic story of the descent of the Holy Spirit tells us how the Holy Spirit can break down walls we may put up between peoples, races, cultures. What we see as obstacles, the Spirit can use to create a new unity, a reversal of the Babel story in Genesis, when people let human arrogance lead to disunity, as one human language fractured into many different tongues.

Today, across our world, a myriad of voices, different languages, and many cultural expressions will celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit. Let’s join our voices with that Pentecost chorus.

Scripture:

•And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:4)

•When you send forth your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth. (Psalm 104:30)

•For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, (1 Corinthians 12:13)

•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.” (John 20:21, 22)

Reflection:

•Is Jesus’ mission on Earth possible without the Holy Spirit?

•Is Jesus’ mission possible without you?

•How have you encountered the Holy Spirit?

•How does God renew the face of the earth?

I become a new man and this new man, spiritually and mystically one identity, is at once Christ and myself. The language of the New Testament and the teaching of the Church explain, to the mind of the believer, that this spiritual union of my being with Christ in one “new man” is the work of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Love, the spirit of Christ.