Pentecost Sunday 2023
Today’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles is so striking, with its description of the Holy Spirit’s descent in the form of fire, and the resulting prayer in tongues, that it tends to overwhelm the rest of the Scriptures. So let’s look at today’s psalm 104 to start:
This is a psalm of praise and thanks to God for creation. Remember that in the first century, most of the humans on earth were pagan. They were polytheists, or nature worshipers, or something other than what the Jews and Christians were. Jews had been worshiping the one God, whom they called Elohim, for many generations. Jesus came to them with great works of power, even casting out evil spirits and raising the recently dead back to life, and intimated that He was the incarnation of the God the Jews had been praising all those centuries. That was too much, so the leaders engineered a kangaroo trial before the Romans, who crucified Him. But three days later He was seen by hundreds of people over forty days, and on the fiftieth day, when the Jews celebrated the giving of the law on Sinai, Christ’s disciples burst upon them with prayers in their own languages, taken from all over the known world. And they preached the victory of Jesus over death, and His gift of the Holy Spirit. That was the same Spirit who, like a mighty wind, blew chaos into order in the beginning, as Genesis taught. Like a mighty wind, the Spirit blew to change the whole world, in just three centuries, into Christendom.
Jesus had given a less dramatic manifestation of the Holy Spirit on the evening of His Resurrection, as St. John narrates today. What is your biggest problem without Christ? What is mine? What is everybody’s? We are sinners. We know almost instinctively what is right and what is wrong. Men and women who discover “their” pregnancy, unplanned, can’t be ignorant of the fact that the woman is carrying a tiny human being, infinite in human dignity and completely dependent on the mom. They know that taking an abortion pill will cause death of the child and terrible physical and emotional pain to the parents. But some do it anyway. We all know that as citizens, we have to pay our taxes. But some ignore cash income on their tax returns and steal from the rest of us. Whether the ten commandments are posted in classrooms or not, all of us know what is right and what is wrong. But sometimes we choose sin because it’s easier, or seems to be cheaper, or somehow better for us, and hang the law of God and man. Our problem without Christ is, of course, sin.
So the first gift of Jesus at Easter, to his apostles gathered in the upper room, is his word of Peace. And, because sin disturbs the peace of our hearts and minds, the second gift He gives those apostles is the power to forgive sin. But–and this is critical–if the apostle does not discern true repentance in the one confessing sin, if there is no desire to stop sinning, then he can withhold the gift of forgiveness.
This is in itself quite a gift, isn’t it. Our biggest problem can be fixed by repentance and confession. We can be healed through this charism of the Church. So let’s make it a priority to examine our conduct, our actions and thoughts, and confess those areas where we are missing the mark. Then we can be forgiven, and healed, and more effective in spreading the Gospel of Christ.
