In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today is the feast of Pentecost, fifty days after Easter, when the Lord rose victorious from the dead. In the book of Acts, St. Luke describes the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Twelve, the event we remember today:
“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit…” (Acts 2.1-4)
Jesus called this gift, this “baptism” of the Holy Spirit, “the promise of the Father” – and he had told the Twelve to expect it, and prayerfully to wait for it in Jerusalem. Moreover, Acts tells us what the Twelve DID once they had received the Holy Spirit:
“[They] began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. And they were amazed and wondered, saying, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Par'thians and Medes and E'lamites and residents of Mesopota'mia, Judea and Cappado'cia, Pontus and Asia, Phryg'ia and Pamphyl'ia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyre'ne, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.’” (Acts 4.4-11)
What – or who – is the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Holy Trinity. This we know. Yet what does it mean to say that? Scripture speaks of the Holy Spirit as “the paraclete”, from the Greek word “parakletos”, which is often translated the advocate, the counselor, the comforter, or the helper. But all of these words describe essentially the operations of the Holy Spirit – what the Holy Spirit DOES for us. Namely, he advocates for us, he counsels us, comforts, and helps us.
We say in the creed that we believe that the Holy Spirit is himself God – God of the same divinity – the same “godness” as the Father and the Son; that he is “the Lord, the giver of life” and that he is sent to us by the Father and the Son, and that we rightly worship and glorify the Holy Spirit with the same worship and glory that we give to the Father and the Son.
I think St. Augustine of Hippo has the most helpful clarification of who the Holy Spirit is. In his great work “On the Trinity”, St. Augustine says that “the Holy Spirit is [that] unutterable communion of the Father and the Son” and that the Holy Spirit is “the love by which the Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father.”
To receive the Holy Spirit is therefore to receive the “unutterable communion of the Father and the Son”. It is to receive “the love by which the Father loves the Son and the Son love the Father.” To receive the Holy Spirit means to receive within ourselves the abiding and divine communion that is the same thing as the very life of God. And in this regard, let us remember that the word for spirit in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, also means “life” and “breath”. So there are three terms, really, for that which we receive from the Lord, three terms naming a single reality: (1) the Holy Spirit, which is (2) the eternally abiding communion-in-love of Father and Son that is (3) the very life of God.
For us to receive the Holy Spirit therefore means for us to receive divine life, the eternal communion, the mutual delight, of the three persons of the Godhead. It is quite a gift. To understand this mystery of Pentecost enables us to draw further implications about Christ’s gift of life in the Spirit. In 2008 Pope Benedict addressed 400,000 young people gathered for World Youth Day in Australia. He said:
“Love is the sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit! Ideas or voices which lack love – even if they seem sophisticated or knowledgeable – cannot be ‘of the Spirit’. Furthermore, love has a particular trait: far from being indulgent or fickle, it has a task or purpose to fulfill: to abide. By its nature love is enduring. Again… we catch a further glimpse of how much the Holy Spirit offers our world: love which dispels uncertainty; love which overcomes the fear of betrayal; love which carries eternity within [itself]; the true love which draws us into a unity that abides!”
The gift of the Holy Spirit is a gift of intimacy with God and with one another, a gift which dispels fear, and opens the mysteries of God to our understanding. But how do we receive this gift from God? Well, all who have been baptized have received the Holy Spirit sacramentally – objectively – in their baptism. Likewise, the sacrament of Confirmation objectively “confirms”, actualizes, seals, and brings to fulfillment the gift of the Holy Spirit in Baptism.
But gifts must not only be given, they must be received as well. And here we must cooperate with the work that God has done in our lives. He works outside of us and apart from us, but we must cooperate with his work to see it bear fruit in our lives. The one thing that God cannot do is violate our freedom. And so we must pray – asking God to renew in us the gift of his Spirit; we must cultivate within ourselves dispositions that are susceptive to the gift of the Holy Spirit; and we must exercise our wills and act in ways that are congruous with the Spirit’s initiatives. This means loving God, loving our neighbors and even our enemies; it means we must have a joyful heart and countenance in all circumstances, remembering all that we have been given in Christ; we must be peacemakers and witnesses of peace, never intentionally harming anyone for any reason; we must be patient when we are ourselves afflicted or maligned or abused; we must be kind to everyone; we must dwell on what is good and practice it in all we do; we must be faithful to Christ, obeying the mandates of the Gospel and keeping the Church’s moral law; we must be gentle with all men, particularly those who are weak or suffering or disadvantaged; and we must exercise self-control, never allowing fear or jealousy or anger or vanity or our sensual appetites to dictate our actions to us (cf. Galatians 5.22f).
Lastly, we must remember to do what the apostles did on the day of Pentecost: proclaim the mighty works of God in Christ (Acts 4.11). And we must proclaim this good news with the way we live – as unashamed and conspicuous disciples of Jesus – and also with our SPEECH. We must be willing to share our faith in Christ with others, with those in our lives who are hungry for meaning or direction, or who are sorrowful or who feel lost. But in order to be able to share the mighty works of God in Christ, we must first know what these works are. So we have a duty to inform ourselves, not only by reading and re-reading, and marinating in holy Scripture, but also by looking at our own lives and reminding ourselves (or maybe realizing for the first time) how God has made known his deliverance in our own personal histories, the particular ways we have known his mercy, and asking forgiveness for our failures to acknowledge it and to cooperate with it.
This is how we participate in God’s action within the world, in calling all people into the communion of his love. This was his purpose from the beginning; this was why he called Abraham, gave the law, sent the prophets, elected Mary, and sent his Son to live and die as one of us: in order to reconcile the whole world to himself. We are called to God in Christ, and we have been filled with his own life-giving Spirit, so that we may participate in his saving action within the world, and ourselves be caught up in the abiding unity of the one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
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