Pentecost Sunday, May 28, 2023 – Acts 2:1-11; 1 Corinthians 12:3B-7, 12-13; John 20:19-23

About thirty years ago, when I was working in another parish, the pastor decided that he liked a certain youth program very much and he picked several lay men and women to be part of it and sent me, also, to learn about it. And the learning was to be done at a weekend retreat. And, in this program, they had separate weekend retreats for the young boys and for the young girls. And so, this group of 40- and 50-something men took part in the program as though they were teenagers, doing all the same things that the kids were doing. And, on one particular night, late in the evening, we all gathered in one room and, after a brief prayer to the Holy Spirit, we began to walk around the room, in formation, reciting the Our Father over and over again. And as we did that, something began to happen in that room until finally, I needed to sit down because I felt all disorientated. And I really disliked what they did because it was manipulative. They were creating an artificial spiritual experience. Or were they, I said to myself. At the end of that experience, I was different from before we started that exercise. And it took me all weekend to try and figure out what it was that happened. The best thing that I could come up with was not something happened, but someone happened in that room. But extraordinary experiences of the Holy Spirit, if that’s what it was, are not the norm for Catholic people, nor should they be. That’s why I asked you to listen carefully to the readings this morning, to find the contradiction between the first reading and the gospel. 

In the first reading, St. John, the gospel writer, tells us that, on the night of Resurrection, in the locked room, Jesus bestowed the Holy Spirit that he had promised his disciples. Our first reading, from the pen of the gospel writer, Luke, his second book, The Book of Acts, tells us that it was fifty days after the Resurrection that the Holy Spirit finally came to the eleven assembled apostles and their close friends and relatives. It couldn’t have been both at the same time. If you were here for Mass last night, there was a third contradiction. And that is that last night the same gospel writer, John, who just described how Jesus gave the Holy Spirit on Easter night, says to a crowd of people, before His Crucifixion, that the Holy Spirit has not yet come because the Son of Man has not yet been glorified. And last night, our first reading was from the Old Testament, from The Book of Job, where the prophet promises that God will bestow his Spirit.

And I tried to figure out what’s the difference. How do we reconcile the contradiction? Before the coming of Christ, when the word “Spirit” was used in the Old Testament, it usually referred to a power. The Jewish people had no concept of a triune God, and so, anything about God was an emanation of God’s self. God was completely unknowable in God’s self, but he manifested Himself in various ways in the created world. In nature and in events that took place among God’s chosen people. Events that were otherwise inexplicable. And there was a great expectation that that would happen once more at the end of the ages.

What the New Testament writers attempted to do was to show in various ways that the so called “end of the ages” had come in Jesus. But it was difficult, difficult for them to understand what, precisely, the gift of the Spirit was. The one distinguishing mark that you find throughout the New Testament writings is that, when they talk about the Holy Spirit, if they don’t use the words “the Holy Spirit” or “the Spirit,” they use the male pronoun, He. Not because they think the Holy Spirit was a guy and not a gal, but because they want to make sure that everybody understands they’re not talking about some power, some mysterious thing. They’re talking about a real live person. And so, what takes place in that shift between the time before Christ and the time after Christ is that the Spirit goes from being a power to being an empowerment. St. Paul gets it precisely right in today’s second reading when he talks about why the Corinthians are experiencing all these strange phenomena, sort of like the one I described at the beginning of my homily. He says, “Every manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.” Every manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit. 

Which brings us back to, where is the Holy Spirit in your life and mine on an ordinary day? You and I were baptized. We were confirmed. I was ordained. Some of you received the Anointing of the Sick at some point or points in your life. Many of you married in a church ceremony. Each time that happened, the gift of the Holy Spirit was renewed within us. And that gift is a person. It is empowerment for dialogue, for conversation. What our faith calls us to, is a continuing dialogue with this person, who is given to us for some benefit. 

We frequently talk about our gifts. You know, this person is a gifted singer, that one is a great carpenter, and this one is really great with figures, and so on, and so forth. That’s not precisely what we mean but, also, not precisely not what we mean. Because all of the natural gifts that we have are given to us for some benefit. But the benefit doesn’t come to its full fruition unless we figure out how it enters into that dialogue with the Holy Spirit. 

Jesus said to his disciples, on that evening, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive men’s sins, they are forgiven them.” We can use all of our gifts toward a great reconciliation. And that is really the mystery of Pentecost.