This Sunday the Church celebrates the Solemnity of Pentecost, a feast that’s often overshadowed by Christmas and Easter. Yet Pentecost is not just an appendix to Easter; it’s the fulfillment of the Paschal Mystery.
Just as Easter celebrates the passion, death, and resurrection of the Incarnate Son of God, so Pentecost, fifty days later, marks the completion of that saving work through the gift of the Holy Spirit. The risen Lord bestows his Spirit upon the Church gathered in the Upper Room around Mary, and upon the Church of every age.
Christ does not abandon his disciples. He does not leave his Body without the Spirit of Truth. Through the Holy Spirit, the Church continues his mission: proclaiming God’s saving truth about the human person and authentic human community, offering the sacraments of salvation, and forming a communion of faith and charity that anticipates the communion of saints in heaven.
The Spirit enables the Church to confess Jesus Christ as Lord. St. Paul reminds us that “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” In ancient Israel, the word “Lord” named God himself. So to say “Jesus is Lord” is to confess that Jesus is truly God, and that God has revealed his face in Christ. Through Pentecost, we come to know that the one God who creates in love is the same God who redeems in Christ, the very truth we profess in the Creed.
Each Sunday, as the Church rises at the Creed to profess the Faith, this mystery is renewed. People of every language and nation proclaim in unison that there is one Faith, one Lord, one Baptism. Thus, the confusion of Babel is healed. What was separated and divided by human pride is reunited and reconciled by the gift of the Holy Spirit.
And so the Church prays with hope in that same Spirit who gathered what was scattered at Babel:
Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of thy faithful, and kindle in them the fire of thy love. Send forth thy Spirit and they shall be created, and thou shalt renew the face of the earth. Amen.
-Fr. Richard Hermes, S.J.
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