North of the Shire

Here’s a post that I brought over from a blog I had started last year and abandoned.

First Reading;

Acts
Chapter 2

1

When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together.

2

And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were.

3

Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them.

4

And they were all filled with the holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.

5

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem.

6

At this sound, they gathered in a large crowd, but they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language.

7

They were astounded, and in amazement they asked, “Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans?

8

Then how does each of us hear them in his own native language?

9

We are Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,

10

Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene, as well as travelers from Rome,

11

both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs, yet we hear them speaking in our own tongues of the mighty acts of God.”

Psalm;

Psalms
Chapter 104

1

Bless the LORD, my soul! LORD, my God, you are great indeed! You are clothed with majesty and glory,

24

How varied are your works, LORD! In wisdom you have wrought them all; the earth is full of your creatures.

29

When you hide your face, they are lost. When you take away their breath, they perish and return to the dust from which they came.

30

When you send forth your breath, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth.

31

May the glory of the LORD endure forever; may the LORD be glad in these works!

34

May my theme be pleasing to God; I will rejoice in the LORD.

Second Reading;

1 Corinthians
Chapter 12

3

Therefore, I tell you that nobody speaking by the spirit of God says, “Jesus be accursed.” And no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the holy Spirit.

4

There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit;

5

there are different forms of service but the same Lord;

6

there are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone.

7

To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.

12

As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ.

13

For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons, and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.

Gospel;

John
Chapter 20

19

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.”

20

When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. ³ The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.

21

(Jesus) said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

22

And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the holy Spirit.

23

 Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”

Some thoughts;

It is reported that in Genoa in 1350, St. Vincent Ferrer spoke to a group of people of mixed linguistic backgrounds and each one of them heard him speak in their own native language with precision and nuance. He himself said that he was only speaking in his native Valencian, a dialect of Spanish.
Apparently, the Holy Spirit caused all those who heard him to hear their own language, because in his case St. Vincent only spoke the once. He did not repeat in other languages, but rather they all heard him at once.
Some have speculated that the miracle at Pentecost was of the same order. In other words, the apostles were only speaking in their own language, Aramaic, and the Holy Spirit caused the hearers to hear their own language. The more common accepted explanation of this gift of the Holy Spirit was that each Apostle was speaking in another language other than his own, a language he did not otherwise know, and this by the power of the Holy Spirit that had just descended upon them.

It is interesting to note that as we look back to the Gospel reading, Jesus had already breathed upon them and said, “receive the Holy Spirit.” He accompanied this with the statement that they would be able to retain and/or forgive sins. We might well ask, if they had already received the Holy Spirit from Jesus while he was physically with them, why would they then need to receive the Holy Spirit once more at Pentecost?
The answer perhaps is in the statement of authority that Jesus made at the time. This was the beginning of the sacrament of Penance. It was the giving of authority to the Apostles, the same authority that has been passed down ever since through the sacrament of Holy Orders, which was actually what Jesus was performing upon the Apostles for the very first time, the first Holy orders.
But we see that it is the Holy Spirit that empowers for each and every service in the Church as St. Paul points out in the second reading. When the Apostles received the authority from Jesus, it was the action of the Holy Spirit that completed that sacrament. Later, at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit once more empowered them, this time to evangelize. It would seem that for every step of the Christian life, for every sacrament, there is specific action by the Holy Spirit for that specific purpose. Thus, when we are baptized, the Holy Spirit acts upon us to cleanse us from all sin, which in the case of infants is only the original sin they were born into as human children. When we receive Confirmation, the Holy Spirit acts to strengthen us, to empower us, much like the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that occurred for the Apostles at Pentecost. In all of the other sacraments, the Holy Spirit is the one who acts so that the sacrament effects what it signifies (ex opere operato). We bring the form and the matter as prescribed and the Holy Spirit acts.

This reading from the Acts of the Apostles is a journalistic account, much like we would see in the newspaper. If we stop to ponder this for a moment, we realize that the same is true of the Gospels, although St. John gives us much of the theology that connects the prophecies of the Old Testament to Christ. What we are seeing here is the accounting of real events, historical yet news events. Much of the way we view all of this can be at arms length for much of our lives. That is to say that perhaps we have heard it and heard it so often that we tend to place it all out “there” in a place that does not mean that we don’t believe it but we perhaps haven’t realized that it happened, in our own world, in our own history, just as surely as Napoleon was the Emporer of France at one time, just as surely as Columbus crossed the Atlantic to find America, just as surely as George W. Bush was elected President of the United States in the year 2000, and just as surely as I got out of bed this morning.
This is more real than all of those events, in fact. This is the central drama of all of history, the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus, his ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit as promised.
What this means, this coming of the Holy Spirit, Pentecost is that Jesus has never really left, because the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity and where one Person of God is, there also are the other Persons. He is in us, he is near us, he is beside us, he is always with us. If we are tempted to separate Sunday at Mass from the rest of the week as two different worlds, two different parts of our lives totally disconnected, then we need to reflect and remove the time that has elapsed since the events and think about them as though they were in yesterday’s newspaper until it clicks once more that this is all very real and critically important. That is why Holy Mother Church keeps this day every year on the calendar, to remind us of those events, that the Holy Spirit was sent into the world and is still here, has not left and is waiting to empower us to serve, if we just allow Him to do so.