Pentecost Sunday
(Sunday 4th June 2017)
Open your lives and hearts to the fire of the Holy Spirit – (John 20:19-23)
So often in the feasts of the Church we are recalling events of the past, like Christmas or the Transfiguration but his feast of Pentecost is completely different.
True to say that we are remembering what happened in Jerusalem one Sunday during the Jewish feast of Weeks, when the Jews celebrated the giving of the Law by God to Moses on Mount Sinai and how in the midst of that feast the Holy Spirit descended in great power upon the early Church sending it out on mission. But it would be to greatly misunderstand this particular feast as if it was stuck in the past. For what happened on that day in the Upper room in Jerusalem continues today.
The Holy Spirit is still being poured into the heart of the Church and sending the members out on mission. The fact that I am writing this reflection and that you are reading it is the direct result of the action of the Holy Spirit. The mission of Youth 2000 is the direct action of the Holy Spirit. St. Paul teaches us in the very opening of the second reading in the liturgy of today’s feast: No one can say, “Jesus is Lord” unless he is under the influence of the Holy Spirit.
Nothing true happens in the life of a Christian that is not the result of Pentecost. Those mysterious tongues of fire are what fills you heart when you read the Scriptures and they speak to you, that same fire enlightens your mind when you hear a homily on Sunday and it causes you to listen more deeply or maybe even change your live-style. Each time you kneel before the Blessed Sacrament and acknowledge the real presence of Jesus in the monstrance is the fire of the Holy Spirit in the very depth of your being.
What started on that first Christian Pentecost continues today. Often we hear people speaking about a New Pentecost in the Church and I have to admit it always causes me some concern, as if the breathing forth of the Holy Spirit of love from the heart of the Most Blessed Trinity has stopped and we need it to begin again.
What we must all, pray for this feast of Pentecost is that we be more open to the fire of the Holy Spirit in our lives and hearts. We must pray that we be the disciples of today as the Apostles were of their day. Ask the power of the Holy Spirit that we in our turn would have the Spirit-filled courage to speak to our world in all the various ways that our world needs for today.
The Fire of the Holy Spirit continues to descend upon us from heaven, may we be consumed by it.
Fr. John Harris O.P.