Homily — Pentecost Sunday (2004)

Fr. Timothy W. Castor

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of Pentecost—a day known as the birthday of the Church. That’s because on this day an ancient Jewish festival commemorating the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai was the occasion for the giving of a far greater gift—the gift of the Holy Spirit and the law of love, engraved, not on tablets of stone, but on human hearts. As such, we think of this as the feast of the Holy Spirit, and Pentecost provides us with an opportunity to reflect on the operation of the Holy Spirit in the Church and in our individual lives as sons and daughters of God.

St. Paul, in today’s second reading from his letter to the Romans, gives us some choice words to help us understand just who the Holy Spirit is and what he does in our lives. He calls him the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ, thereby showing that he is coequal with the Father and the Son. Paul describes him as the Spirit of Life in contrast with the death that comes from living by the principles of this world—living according to the flesh: "For if you live according to the flesh, you will die," he writes, "but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." He also writes that the Holy Spirit is the "Spirit of adoption, through which we cry, Abba, Father!" And that this Spirit is witness to the fact that we are children of God and joint heirs with Christ Jesus.

In a word, the Holy Spirit is given to us in order to fill our lives with the life of God—to empower us and embolden us to live the vocation to which we are called, the vocation of holiness. We are engaged in spiritual warfare, battling forces of evil around us and within us, because we fight primarily against sin in our own lives.

This year, and especially this weekend, we commemorate the 60^th anniversary of the Second World War. At the close of that war, a magazine ran two photographs which depicted the confrontation between a soldier and a tank. The first showed a huge tank bearing down on a tiny soldier, about to crush him. The picture was proportioned to show the odds involved when a footsoldier with nothing but a rifle faced the armored might of a tank. The next picture showed what happened to that soldier’s odds with a bazooka, or rocket launcher, in his hands. This time the tank appeared to be shrunken and the soldier at least equal in size, if not a little larger. Without the Holy Spirit at work in our lives, we are like an infantry soldier in the presence of a tank if we try to fight against sin and evil. We cannot do a thing on our own. But relying upon the power of the living Spirit of God within us, we can say no and make it stick. We can turn from sin and begin to live as God intended us to live—because God himself has given us the power to do so.

And that is the message of Pentecost for us today: God will give us whatever we need to serve him and to love him. He will always provide for his Church. Too often, when people think of the gifts of the Holy Spirit nowadays, they think of the extraordinary gifts—gifts like tongues and healing. Certainly God can give these gifts, but this is not the ordinary course of events. Take tongues for example. Today there are many folks who regard this as a manifestation of divine favor or blessing, as a method of prayer or a way to praise God. But tongues as it is known today bears little or no resemblance to the gift received by the apostles on the day of Pentecost, 2000 years ago. This gift was given to the apostles for a very practical and useful purpose. They did not speak in some unknown heavenly language, rather they spoke in the languages understood by those who had gathered in Jerusalem for the feast. The Holy Spirit gave the apostles the ability to communicate to as many people as possible. And so to spread the message of salvation as quickly as possible.

The point is, God gives us whatever gifts we might need to accomplish the tasks with which he entrusts us. And so the feast of Pentecost is a feast of God’s love for us—a celebration of his gracious provision for all our needs. As we turn to the Holy Spirit in prayer today, we turn in confidence, not seeking extraordinary or miraculous abilities, but simply seeking what we need to turn from sin, to live for God, to serve one another. "If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it," Jesus promises in today’s Gospel. "I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth."

© 2004, The Rev. Timothy W. Castor