Sunday, May 19, 2024
The Church celebrates the Feast Day of Pentecost this weekend. Pentecost is taken from the Greek Pentecoste, meaning 50th. It refers to the 50th day, seven weeks after Christ’s resurrection on Easter morning. This week’s first reading tells us that all the disciples gathered on this day in one place. Sometimes, we can be critical of them when we read that they fell asleep when Jesus asked them to stay awake and pray, that they scattered after He was arrested, or that one of them denied knowing Him multiple times. Now, they are together, knowing that life as followers of Christ would most likely bring them a similar fate to His. Being followers of Christ could bring them ridicule, persecution, and perhaps even death! But they gathered because their faith united them. They believed Christ’s words when He said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6). We can imagine that they were afraid and felt uncertain, but Jesus came to them, greeted them, ate with them, and offered them peace. He promised them the Holy Spirit. Fifty days later, we read that the promise was fulfilled. The Holy Spirit descended on them as tongues of fire and filled them.
At Confirmation, we receive the Holy Spirit. As the Bishop extends his hands over us and prays for God to send the Holy Spirit to become our Helper and Guide, he invokes the Spirit’s gifts of wisdom, knowledge, understanding, right judgment, courage, and reverence. Just as fire transforms what it consumes, the disciples’ lives were profoundly transformed when the Spirit filled them. This transformation is not limited to those disciples. If we open our hearts to the Holy Spirit, our lives, too, can be transformed as we build a personal relationship with Christ, deepening our understanding through prayer and reflection on the Scriptures and receiving the Eucharist and sacraments.
The Church reaffirms the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which St. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians Chapter 12. “The moral life of Christians is sustained by the gifts of the Holy Spirit. These are permanent dispositions which make man docile in following the promptings of the Holy Spirit. The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. They belong in their fullness to Christ, Son of David. They complete and perfect the virtues of those who receive them. They make the faithful docile in readily obeying divine inspirations. The fruits of the Spirit are perfections that the Holy Spirit forms in us as the first fruits of eternal glory. The tradition of the Church lists twelve of them: “charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, chastity.”” (Catechism §1830-1832). We ought to strive for the formation of this perfection, to live a life directed by the Holy Spirit and personified by charity, joy, peace, and all the fruits of the Holy Spirit.
Go in Peace to Love and Serve the Lord.