The feast of Pentecost brings to a close the season of Easter because the gift of the Spirit is the inevitable outcome of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The church understood clearly that what happened to Jesus on Easter Sunday was not just an amazing miracle to prove that he really was the Son of God. It was rather the next step in God’s desire to heal, once and for all, the relationship between God and a broken humanity. Now the outpouring of the Spirit of Jesus means that our relationship with God is fundamentally transformed. We celebrate today our new life as we rejoice in the knowledge that the Spirit is moving in each of our hearts making us anew people, inspiring us to understand the mystery of our faith, and strengthening us to follow Jesus the Christ.
When we think of Pentecost, the image we have is of the eleven apostles together with Mary gathered together in a room praying and the Holy Spirit descending upon them in tongues of fire, filling them with the gift of tongues. This is true, for this is the image that has come down to us describing the events that took place on that day. But today when we celebrate Pentecost, we will not expecting a dramatic descent of the Holy Spirit upon us as tongues of fire as it did on that day. Rather, we are commemorating that event by celebrating the already present Holy Spirit in our midst. Our belief is that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, is given us at the moment of our creation, when God breathes upon us the breath of life. It is that very Spirit that is “energized,” if you will, when we are baptized, and whenever we receive the graces of the sacraments. We will receive the Holy Spirit today, just as we receive him every other Sunday when we gather for Mass. We will be filled with the Holy Spirit today, for we believe that the Spirit is continually coming upon us, every single day of our life, because it is he who is ‘Lord and giver of life.’ The Spirit of God will indeed descend upon us today, to strengthen and empower us so that we can go out and witness to the presence of the Spirit in us-in every good thought and action that will come from us.
We celebrate this feast today to remind ourselves of this unseen presence of the Spirit in our lives, and to invite ourselves to call on him to empower and enlighten us. We celebrate the Spirit as the life-giving core of our lives as a local church, gathered now for a meal to strengthen us to continue in our work of building the kingdom. We are celebrating someone who is already within us, or we would not be here are all. It is the Holy Spirit who animates the Church, and who enables us to gather as a family.
We become aware of the presence of the Holy Spirit among us when we celebrate the various ministries that exist within our community-in our Church community but also in the wider society. Our various ministries are results of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God is present in the Church when the Church promotes justice and equality, when the Church is at the forefront in combating poverty, hunger, illiteracy. The Spirit is present in our community whenever we see the men and women dedicated in their professions for the good of the society. The Spirit is present when we promote forgiveness and reconciliation, peace and harmony, and when we seek and promote truth and justice. The Spirit is present when we promote a culture of life, when we ensure that the most vulnerable in our society are well taken care of and protected.
The question that we should ask ourselves today as we celebrate the presence of the Holy Spirit in our community is this: do I believe that the Holy Spirit is animating our community? Are my actions and words proof enough that the Spirit of God is in me?