Sunday May 11, 2008
PENTECOST SUNDAY
Readings: Acts of the Apostles 2:1-11; 1 Corinthians 12:3-7,12-13; John 20:19-23
This Sunday, the Solemnity of Pentecost, is focused on the universality of God's love and the powerful presence of that love in our midst through the gifts of God's love poured out on the Church and upon her faithful by the power of the Holy Spirit.
In essence the solemnity recounts the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the apostles and other disciples and the Mother of Jesus ten days after the Lord's Ascension and fifty days after his resurrection. This is traditionally considered the beginning of the Church, the day the Church was born.
Human history constantly speaks to us of the effects of sin. It is enough to look at the pages of history books to see much division between peoples, leading to hate, wars, death and revenge. Salvation history, on the other hand, which we hear recounted in Sacred Scripture, is about the presence of God who constantly invites people to overcome their divisions by an unseen warfare against the consequences of sin. This work is also called the "spiritual combat." It is not about taking up arms against others in the name of God, but of zealously striving to turn one's heart and life over to God, seeking to do good, to love and to forgive, in imitation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In reading the books of the Bible we do in fact find a repetition of secular history books--divisions, wars, hate, death and revenge--but with a difference: in the Bible we repeatedly hear about the distinct call from God. That call is to turn from sin and the invitation from God to form one's life by the law of God, a law of love and forgiveness. God makes that possible by constant intervention in human lives and by communicating to those who will hear.
Christians believe that salvation history culminates in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, acknowledged as the Redeemer of the human race. All that Christ promised during his public ministry was fulfilled at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the disciples so they could go forth and bear witness to the promises revealed by Christ for the life of the word. The consequences of sin, the divisions that exist between people, may still be present in the world, but the possibility of overcoming them and living a new life in Christ came to the fore in the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
In the Bible a clear example of the consequences of sin is found in the story of the Tower of Babel, from the Book of Genesis, chapter eleven. It is essentially the story of pride, when people decide to make a name for themselves, building a tower up to the sky to reach God. God rejects the plan, scatters the people over the earth, resulting in confusion of languages and ultimately division between peoples. As cooperation and communication between people is lost in the process, so also their communion with God.
The miracle of Pentecost, recounted in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter two, is the opposite of the Babel story. At Pentecost people of diverse tongues unite. They come to realize they are all in essence equal to each other, meaning everyone is eligible for receiving God's life and being in communion with God and one another. God's grace produces unity and the Lord's disciples experience this concretely at Pentecost in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. "God is a God, not of confusion, but of peace," as Saint Paul reminds the Church at Corinth (1 Cor 14:33).
The message of Pentecost is that the direction of humanity's history has changed. People are forgiven their sins and can be at peace with God, reconciled with God in the forgiveness of sins. God has shared in humanity in order to lift humankind to God. God takes on our nature in order to bring our nature to God and thereby for us to partake of divine life.
Peace is the result of forgiveness. The sacrament of penance traditionally ends with "Go in peace, the Lord has forgiven you your sins." Peace is a gift from God, the fruit of the cooperation of people with the grace of God. Those who act in accord with God's will acquire interior peace.
It is no accident that Jesus clearly stated at the time of the Holy Spirit's coming: "Peace be with you." This above all is what he wishes to give his followers. It is not the peace of the world: absence of war and abundance of material goods. The Lord's peace is something else: a peace which no one can take away, which endures forever, which is without cost but more valuable than any earthly good. In essence peace is linked to the gift of salvation in Jesus Christ.
To his followers, recipients of the Holy Spirit, Jesus gave a particular commandment: to carry his peace, the message of salvation, to the ends of the earth. As the Father sent Jesus into the world, so Jesus sends his followers forth. The forgiveness of sins is at the heart of Jesus' message of peace, entrusted to the Church born at Pentecost.
At Baptism and Confirmation we received the gifts of the Holy Spirit. What becomes of those gifts is dependent on our willing cooperation with God's grace in our life. We have been redeemed in the blood of Christ, and brought to everlasting life by the presence of the Holy Spirit wherein our faith, hope and love will grow.
In the Eucharist we experience over and again the life-giving presence of God's Holy Spirit, who now and always pours out gifts on God's beloved ones in the Church. May we open our hearts so that we may experience the marvelous action of the Holy Spirit leading us from the shadow of death to the house of our Maker, who is our lasting hope.
Fr Christian Leisy, OSB
Monastery of Christ in the Desert
Abiquiu, New Mexico 87510
Readings: Acts of the Apostles 2:1-11; 1 Corinthians 12:3-7,12-13; John 20:19-23
This Sunday, the Solemnity of Pentecost, is focused on the universality of God's love and the powerful presence of that love in our midst through the gifts of God's love poured out on the Church and upon her faithful by the power of the Holy Spirit.
In essence the solemnity recounts the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the apostles and other disciples and the Mother of Jesus ten days after the Lord's Ascension and fifty days after his resurrection. This is traditionally considered the beginning of the Church, the day the Church was born.
Human history constantly speaks to us of the effects of sin. It is enough to look at the pages of history books to see much division between peoples, leading to hate, wars, death and revenge. Salvation history, on the other hand, which we hear recounted in Sacred Scripture, is about the presence of God who constantly invites people to overcome their divisions by an unseen warfare against the consequences of sin. This work is also called the "spiritual combat." It is not about taking up arms against others in the name of God, but of zealously striving to turn one's heart and life over to God, seeking to do good, to love and to forgive, in imitation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In reading the books of the Bible we do in fact find a repetition of secular history books--divisions, wars, hate, death and revenge--but with a difference: in the Bible we repeatedly hear about the distinct call from God. That call is to turn from sin and the invitation from God to form one's life by the law of God, a law of love and forgiveness. God makes that possible by constant intervention in human lives and by communicating to those who will hear.
Christians believe that salvation history culminates in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, acknowledged as the Redeemer of the human race. All that Christ promised during his public ministry was fulfilled at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the disciples so they could go forth and bear witness to the promises revealed by Christ for the life of the word. The consequences of sin, the divisions that exist between people, may still be present in the world, but the possibility of overcoming them and living a new life in Christ came to the fore in the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
In the Bible a clear example of the consequences of sin is found in the story of the Tower of Babel, from the Book of Genesis, chapter eleven. It is essentially the story of pride, when people decide to make a name for themselves, building a tower up to the sky to reach God. God rejects the plan, scatters the people over the earth, resulting in confusion of languages and ultimately division between peoples. As cooperation and communication between people is lost in the process, so also their communion with God.
The miracle of Pentecost, recounted in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter two, is the opposite of the Babel story. At Pentecost people of diverse tongues unite. They come to realize they are all in essence equal to each other, meaning everyone is eligible for receiving God's life and being in communion with God and one another. God's grace produces unity and the Lord's disciples experience this concretely at Pentecost in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. "God is a God, not of confusion, but of peace," as Saint Paul reminds the Church at Corinth (1 Cor 14:33).
The message of Pentecost is that the direction of humanity's history has changed. People are forgiven their sins and can be at peace with God, reconciled with God in the forgiveness of sins. God has shared in humanity in order to lift humankind to God. God takes on our nature in order to bring our nature to God and thereby for us to partake of divine life.
Peace is the result of forgiveness. The sacrament of penance traditionally ends with "Go in peace, the Lord has forgiven you your sins." Peace is a gift from God, the fruit of the cooperation of people with the grace of God. Those who act in accord with God's will acquire interior peace.
It is no accident that Jesus clearly stated at the time of the Holy Spirit's coming: "Peace be with you." This above all is what he wishes to give his followers. It is not the peace of the world: absence of war and abundance of material goods. The Lord's peace is something else: a peace which no one can take away, which endures forever, which is without cost but more valuable than any earthly good. In essence peace is linked to the gift of salvation in Jesus Christ.
To his followers, recipients of the Holy Spirit, Jesus gave a particular commandment: to carry his peace, the message of salvation, to the ends of the earth. As the Father sent Jesus into the world, so Jesus sends his followers forth. The forgiveness of sins is at the heart of Jesus' message of peace, entrusted to the Church born at Pentecost.
At Baptism and Confirmation we received the gifts of the Holy Spirit. What becomes of those gifts is dependent on our willing cooperation with God's grace in our life. We have been redeemed in the blood of Christ, and brought to everlasting life by the presence of the Holy Spirit wherein our faith, hope and love will grow.
In the Eucharist we experience over and again the life-giving presence of God's Holy Spirit, who now and always pours out gifts on God's beloved ones in the Church. May we open our hearts so that we may experience the marvelous action of the Holy Spirit leading us from the shadow of death to the house of our Maker, who is our lasting hope.
Fr Christian Leisy, OSB
Monastery of Christ in the Desert
Abiquiu, New Mexico 87510