Readings of the day: Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 104:1, 24, 29-30, 31, 34; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13; John 20:19-23
John’s Gospel is peculiar in many ways, not least of which is John’s account of Pentecost, Jesus breathing the Holy Spirit on his disciples, which we hear today.
Remember that, one week ago, for our celebration of Jesus’ ascension to heaven, we heard Luke’s version of these events. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus asks his disciples to remain in Jerusalem until he ascends to heaven, and then he sends the Holy Spirit upon them: “Stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”
In John’s Gospel, Jesus’ appearances after his resurrection and his gift of the Holy Spirit to his disciples happen all at once. We hear today how, on the very day Jesus rises from the dead, he stands among his disciples in a house where they had gathered, behind locked doors “for fear of the” Jewish leaders who had handed Jesus over to the Romans to die. Jesus appears in his disciples’ space, despite the locked doors, and greets them, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And Jesus sends his disciples, as John makes a point of saying, with the gift of the Holy Spirit that he had promised them during his ministry and at the Last Supper: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
So, which is it? Did Pentecost—Jesus’ sending of the Holy Spirit upon his disciples; the birth of the Church—happen after or before Jesus’ ascension? Or did Pentecost happen more than once?
The renowned Sulpician Bible scholar Fr. Raymond Brown caused no small controversy at the time when he wrote that Christians should consider that Pentecost has happened not only once; not twice, before and after Jesus’ ascension to heaven, but many times. And the Holy Spirit still descends upon and inspires our Church to action, to mission today. We have all experienced Pentecost-like moments, sisters and brothers, many times in our own lives. I am not only speaking of our celebration of Pentecost once a year, fifty days after Easter, but much more often than that. And, most of the time, we are not even aware when we are experiencing an encounter with the Holy Spirit; a Pentecost-like moment.
The first Pentecost-like moment in each of our lives as Christians is at baptism. Now, at baptism if, as most of us are, we have been baptized as infants, we will not have been aware that we have just encountered the Holy Spirit. But our parents and godparents will have been aware of this Pentecost-like moment. They will have spoken for us at our baptism, when they respond, “It is,” to the question of the priest or deacon just before the baptism: “Is it your will that [this child] should be baptized in the faith of the Church, which we have all professed with you”? At the anointing with chrism after baptism, the Rite of Baptism clearly speaks of the effects of this sacrament: “The God of power and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has freed you from sin, given you a new birth by water and the Holy Spirit, and welcomed you into his holy people.” The moment of our baptism is our first encounter with the Holy Spirit as members of “God’s holy people,” the Church. It is our first Pentecost-like moment.
In baptism we (or our parents and godparents for us) make our first profession of faith, one St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians says today is only possible by the grace of the Holy Spirit: “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” And St. Paul connects the moment of our baptism back to those first Pentecost moments Jesus’ apostles experienced, in the locked room when Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit upon them; in Acts when tongues “as of fire” descended upon them. St. Paul says, “For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body… and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”
In confirmation we are again anointed with the chrism oil we received at baptism: “Be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit.” If, for most of us, our parents and godparents witnessed for us and assented to the work of the Holy Spirit in us from the moment of our baptism, in confirmation we have the chance to assent; to agree to, witness and consciously receive the Holy Spirit for ourselves. For us, as St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians, the singular “gift of the Holy Spirit” becomes a remarkable diversity of gifts that spur us on to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ by all we say and do. In confirmation, this vast array of gifts of the Holy Spirit is summed up in a formula of seven: “The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of right judgment and courage, the spirit of knowledge and reverence… the spirit of wonder and awe in [God’s] presence.”
We may sum up the gifts of the Holy Spirit in this kind of list of seven but, as St. Paul knew and we know, the Holy Spirit’s gifts to us are unlimited by any of our human categories or language. Still, all these gifts of the Holy Spirit, without number, is meant to serve one purpose in us; in the Church. St. Paul says, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” And our ultimate good, sisters and brothers—the good God desires for all of us together—is eternal life.
Each of our Church’s sacramental rituals include a moment when we call upon the Holy Spirit and his gifts without number to direct us toward this “common good” and ultimately toward eternal life with God. I will not analyze each time in our sacramental rites when we call upon the Holy Spirit. This would take me far too much time, and I would be keeping us from (eventually) leaving here to proclaim the Gospel to the world with the gifts the Spirit has given us. And I do not wish to do this.
But I want to draw our attention simply to the Mass, since we are in the midst of it now. Most of us, if we are paying attention, know the first major moment at which we call upon the Holy Spirit during the Eucharistic Prayer at Mass: The priest extends his hands over the bread and wine and prays that the Holy Spirit transform this bread and wine into “the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Yet I often wonder if even the most faithful, attentive Catholics at Mass realize that there is a second moment during the Eucharistic Prayer when we call upon the Holy Spirit. There is no change in the position of the priest’s hands, or much of anything, to indicate when this happens, except that the priest prays that the Holy Spirit might descend not upon the bread and wine a second time, but upon us. We pray that the Holy Spirit might transform us to “become one body, one spirit in Christ.”
“Just as the body is one and has many members,” St. Paul says, “all the members of the body, though many, are one body.” We pray, every time we celebrate our Eucharist, that the Holy Spirit might transform us to make this unity in multiplicity of gifts and members of the Church a reality.
I find it astounding, every time I hear our reading today from Acts, that “every nation under heaven,” people speaking and hearing the Gospel in their own languages, were “all drawn together in one place.” All witnessed together, in unity yet phenomenal diversity, that first Pentecost when the Holy Spirit descended like wind and in tongues of fire on Jesus’ first apostles.
They—Jesus’ first apostles; the vast multitude of people, each speaking and hearing the Gospel in their own language—are a lot like us: Gathered together in one place before God; gathered to receive gifts of the Holy Spirit without number but all oriented toward “the common good” and toward our eternal life with God. That, if anything, is amazing. Only the Holy Spirit of God can do this. Only the Holy Spirit can gather us together “in one place” to hear the Gospel; gather us together to be transformed, more and more, into “one body, one spirit in Christ”; gather us together where we may receive the strength and inspiration to proclaim the Good News and communicate the Spirit of God to our world.
This is our Pentecost: Not only a one or two-time communication of the Spirit to Jesus’ first apostles, but a Pentecost moment projected into our history and our memory as a people of God. We celebrate here and now an ongoing Pentecost; our encounter now and forever with the Holy Spirit that draws us all “together in one place”; that orients us toward the common good and that will bring us to eternal life.
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