The First Reading for Pentecost Sunday is (finally!) the account of Pentecost
itself, from Acts 2:1-11:
When
the time for Pentecost was fulfilled,
they were all in one place together.
And suddenly there came from the sky
a noise like a strong driving wind,
and it filled the entire house in which they were.
Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire,
which parted and came to rest on each one of them.
And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit
and began to speak in different tongues,
as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem.
At this sound, they gathered in a large crowd,
but they were confused
because each one heard them speaking in his own language.
They were astounded, and in amazement they asked,
“Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans?
Then how does each of us hear them in his native language?
We are Parthians, Medes, and Elamites,
inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia,
Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia,
Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene,
as well as travelers from Rome,
both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs,
yet we hear them speaking in our own tongues
of the mighty acts of God.”
they were all in one place together.
And suddenly there came from the sky
a noise like a strong driving wind,
and it filled the entire house in which they were.
Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire,
which parted and came to rest on each one of them.
And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit
and began to speak in different tongues,
as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem.
At this sound, they gathered in a large crowd,
but they were confused
because each one heard them speaking in his own language.
They were astounded, and in amazement they asked,
“Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans?
Then how does each of us hear them in his native language?
We are Parthians, Medes, and Elamites,
inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia,
Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia,
Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene,
as well as travelers from Rome,
both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs,
yet we hear them speaking in our own tongues
of the mighty acts of God.”
We have
already remarked on the intimate relationship between this event and Babel in
Genesis 10-11 (Pentecost is the Un-Babel) and Sinai in Exodus 19-20 (Pentecost
is the giving of the New Law of the New Covenant). It is important to note that the congregation
gathered around the apostles comes not only from a wide variety of nations of
the earth, but also consists of “Jews and converts to Judaism.” In other words, there are both ethnic Jews
and ethnic Gentiles here: those who hear the apostles are truly a
representative cross-section of humanity.
It is
unfortunate, though understandable, that the rest of Acts 2 is not read for
this Mass. A reading of the rest of the
chapter should be obligatory for every homilist or teacher and would allow the
following points to be made: (1) the close association of the giving of the
Spirit with the ministry of Peter, the spokesman to and for the Body of
Christ. One of the goals of the Church
is the reunification of the human family.
Denominationalism and nationalism among non-Catholic Christians defeats
this goal. Like him or not, the
successor of Peter remains the central figure of world Christianity. All Catholics are united in their fidelity to
him, and the only thing that unites all non-Catholics is their opposition to
him. Thus he is the great unifier. See this article by Protestant theologian Stephen
Long. (2) The close association of
the giving of the Spirit with baptism, and by extension the sacramental
ministry of the Church: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name
of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the
gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). (3) The correlation of the worship of the
early Church and Mass: “And they devoted themselves to (1) the apostles’
teaching and (2) fellowship, to the (3) breaking of bread and the (4) prayers
(Acts 2:42).” This is a perennial
description of the life of the Church. We see all these same elements in the
Mass, respectively, in (1) the readings and homily, the (2) passing of the
peace, (3) the Liturgy of the Eucharist, and (4) the Collect and the
Eucharistic Prayer. St. Luke records the
life of the early Church in such a way that we can recognize our continuity
with them, because we are the same Body extended in time.
The
Responsorial Psalm is the same as that for the Vigil. See my comments on the vigil below.
The
Second Reading (1 Cor 12:3-13) raises several interesting points:
Brothers and sisters:
No one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.
There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit;
there are different forms of service but the same Lord;
there are different workings but the same God
who produces all of them in everyone.
To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit
is given for some benefit.
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.
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.
No one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.
There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit;
there are different forms of service but the same Lord;
there are different workings but the same God
who produces all of them in everyone.
To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit
is given for some benefit.
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.
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.
St. Paul
says, “No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.”
What does
it mean to say “Jesus is Lord?” Remember
that Jews like Paul did not pronounce the divine name (YHWH) but substituted adonai in Hebrew and kurios, “Lord,” in Greek. The fullest sense of proclaiming “Jesus is
Lord” is to identify him with the God of Israel who revealed himself to Moses. That is, saying “Jesus is Lord” is the same
as recognizing his divinity. For someone
to recognize that Jesus is God, requires the work of the Holy Spirit.
Further,
Paul’s statement that “No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit,”
reminds us that Pentecost, while a extraordinary event, is not the first
bestowal of the Spirit on mankind. The
Spirit has been active since Creation.
Particularly, a careful reading of the infancy narratives of Luke 1-2,
to mention just one example, shows how active the Spirit was even before the
earthly ministry of Christ. St. Paul’s
statement implies that the Spirit was already active in some way upon certain
individuals who confessed Jesus as Lord in the Gospel narratives (e.g. Matt
15:22, John 20:18,28).
The other
option for the second reading is Gal 5:16-25:
Brothers and sisters, live by the
Spirit
and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh.
For the flesh has desires against the Spirit,
and the Spirit against the flesh;
these are opposed to each other,
so that you may not do what you want.
But if you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
Now the works of the flesh are obvious:
immorality, impurity, lust, idolatry,
sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy,
outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness,
dissensions, factions, occasions of envy,
drinking bouts, orgies, and the like.
I warn you, as I warned you before,
that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
In contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
Against such there is no law.
Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified their flesh
with its passions and desires.
If we live in the Spirit, let us also follow the Spirit.
and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh.
For the flesh has desires against the Spirit,
and the Spirit against the flesh;
these are opposed to each other,
so that you may not do what you want.
But if you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
Now the works of the flesh are obvious:
immorality, impurity, lust, idolatry,
sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy,
outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness,
dissensions, factions, occasions of envy,
drinking bouts, orgies, and the like.
I warn you, as I warned you before,
that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
In contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
Against such there is no law.
Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified their flesh
with its passions and desires.
If we live in the Spirit, let us also follow the Spirit.
This
passage discusses the fruits of the
Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness,
faithfulness, self-control); whereas 1
Cor 12:3-13 discussed the gifts of
the Spirit.
The fruits are virtues enabled by the
Spirit; the gifts are abilities or
empowerments for service within the body of Christ.
In some
movements within the Church that pay special attention to the operation of the
Spirit (e.g. “Pentecostal” or “Charismatic” communities) there can be a great
deal of emphasis on the gifts of the
Spirit, particularly speaking in tongues.
There’s no biblical reason to object to speaking in tongues or other
gifts of the Spirit, nor is there any biblical proof that these manifestations
have “died out” with the apostles.
Nonetheless,
there is also no good reason to think that the gifts rather than the fruits
are a better indication that one has the Spirit! Quite the contrary! Observe how St. Paul and Our Lord stress the
importance of the fruits of the Spirit
as better signs of one’s salvation than the gifts
of the Spirit:
1Cor. 13:1 If I speak
in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a
clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have
prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have
all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
Matt. 7:21 “Not every
one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who
does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in
your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your
name?’ 23 And then will I declare to
them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers.’
The point
is, both the gifts and the fruit of the Spirit are important and
necessary for building up the body of Christ.
Let’s seek them both.
This is
an important point to make in relation to the Gospel Reading (John 20:19-23),
which is John’s record of the initial bestowal of the Spirit on the Apostles:
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.”
When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.
The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,
“Receive the Holy Spirit.
Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,
and whose sins you retain are retained.”
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.”
When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.
The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,
“Receive the Holy Spirit.
Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,
and whose sins you retain are retained.”
Sometimes
this passage is called the “Johannine Pentecost,” but it would be incorrect to
pit these two events against one another, as if John was of the opinion that
the Spirit was given at one time, and Luke of the opinion that it was dispensed
at another. In the Christian life, there
are certainly definitive giftings of the Spirit (for example, in Baptism and
Confirmation), but the Spirit comes to us continually, not just once.
In fact,
Luke does record the same event we find detailed in today’s Gospel Reading,
although the fact is frequently missed.
In Luke 24:49 Jesus says,
“Behold, I send the promise of my
Father upon you.”
The Greek
is present tense: Jesus is giving the
Spirit as he speaks, which is the event recorded in John 20. The rest of Luke 24:49 says, “But stay in the
city until you are clothed with power from high.” So Pentecost is not the first time the
Apostles receive the Spirit. Rather, it is
a special dispensation, a “clothing with power from on high.” We should understand it as an extraordinary
empowerment with gifts and charisms that they will need for their apostolic
ministry. As the Second Reading
emphasized, there are many gifts and forms of ministry inspired by the same
Spirit.
Finally,
the Gospel Reading emphasizes the coordination of the ministry of the Spirit
with the ministry of the Apostles. John
makes the same point as Luke, a point we have remarked on in previous
posts. The Spirit works through the
Apostles and their successors. There is
not, and should not be, a division between the “charismatic” and “hierarchical”
Church. Of course, when the Church’s
officers resist the Holy Spirit, or don’t manifest the “fruit,” it is a sore trial
of faith for the rest of the body, but the answer then is prayer and fasting
(Matt 17:21), not schism.
The gift
of the Spirit in John 20 constitutes the beginning of two sacraments: Holy
Orders and Reconciliation. The ministry
of forgiveness of sins in the Old Testament was mediated through the
priesthood, as one can see in Leviticus 5:10 and many similar passages. In John 20 Jesus grants the Apostles the
essentially priestly authority to mediate forgiveness: “Receive the Holy
Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are
forgiven them, whose sins you retain are retained.” This emphasizes the purpose for which the
Spirit is given: that our sins may be forgiven.
Because
it seems to be an obvious Scriptural basis for the Sacrament of Reconciliation,
John Calvin (who rejected that sacrament) struggled to interpret this verse and
ended up arguing that the “forgiveness of sins” referred to the apostles’
preaching. Through preaching sins were forgiven or retained; not by hearing the sins
of believers and making a judgment to absolve or retain (i.e. Reconciliation).
But one
can see that Calvin’s interpretation is certainly not the obvious meaning of
the text. There’s no mention of
preaching here. Perhaps if the entire Church had always understood the verse
that way, one could accept it as its meaning. But of course, that’s not the
Church’s tradition either. Like many
other passages of Scripture, this was one in which Calvin could not actually
live by the principle of “sola scriptura.”
When
talking with other Christians, Catholics should remember that it is most
certainly not a question of “them”
taking the Bible “literally,” and “us” taking the Bible “figuratively.” Both Catholics and non-catholics use
figurative and literal interpretation strategies. The differences between Catholics and other
Christians revolve around which passages
are to be taken in one way or the other.
As a
Protestant pastor I never even noticed John 20:23; but now I love this verse as
an assurance that those vested with the leadership of the Church have been
granted by Jesus himself the authority to remit sins. I’m not left to battle with my own subjective
judgments on my own behavior, which are invariably self-justifying and biased,
but I can state reality before the man on whom hands have been laid, and
objectively, tangibly hear the voice of the Spirit: “I absolve you …”
The new
alternate Gospel of Year B for Pentecost is taken from Jesus’ Last Supper
Discourse (John 15:26-27; 16:12-15):
Jesus said to his disciples:
“When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father,
the Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father,
he will testify to me.
And you also testify,
because you have been with me from the beginning.
“I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.
But when he comes, the Spirit of truth,
he will guide you to all truth.
He will not speak on his own,
but he will speak what he hears,
and will declare to you the things that are coming.
He will glorify me,
because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.
Everything that the Father has is mine;
for this reason I told you that he will take from what is mine
and declare it to you.”
“When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father,
the Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father,
he will testify to me.
And you also testify,
because you have been with me from the beginning.
“I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.
But when he comes, the Spirit of truth,
he will guide you to all truth.
He will not speak on his own,
but he will speak what he hears,
and will declare to you the things that are coming.
He will glorify me,
because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.
Everything that the Father has is mine;
for this reason I told you that he will take from what is mine
and declare it to you.”
The Last
Supper Discourse (John 13-17) contains the largest section of Jesus’ teachings
on the Holy Spirit in any of the Gospels, so the Church has been reading from
this unit quite heavily during Easter, especially as the weeks draw near to
Pentecost.
There are
several observations that we can make about this passage.
First of
all, the Spirit that Christ sends to us is the “Spirit of truth.” The story is told of the little boy whose
father asked him, “What is faith?” The
boy answered, “It’s when you believe things you know aren’t true.” That sums up the popular attitude toward the
Christian faith in modern Western culture.
Both people outside the Church, and many inside as well, think the faith
consists in “holding one’s nose” and believing things that are probably
false.
But
that’s not the teaching of Jesus. Jesus
taught what is true, and taught us to seek the truth. It is not the Church but the culture that
believes things that aren’t true. Years
from now, in hindsight, everyone will recognize how many falsehoods our culture
believes and hold with dogmatic certainty: that there’s no evidence for a God;
that the baby in the womb isn’t a person; that all living things could come to
be by random chance and natural laws; that there’s no such thing as sin; that
sex outside of marriage has no negative consequences; etc. We live in a world of falsehood in which the
truth of Christ seems odd and unrealistic.
But the Gospel message is meant to lead us into the real world and out
of the fantasies of contemporary culture.
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth, not fiction.
Jesus
says, “When he comes, the Spirit of Truth, he will guide you into all
truth.” We have hear an important
teaching that leads ultimately to the doctrine of the infallibility of the
Church. Jesus is speaking here not to
individual Christians, but to the Apostles gathered as a body. They are the nucleus of the Church’s
leadership, represented later by an ecumenical council, when the successors of
the Apostles around the world gather together to reconstitute the Apostolic
college. Christ promises the Spirit will
lead the gathered Apostles “into all truth.”
For this reason we have confidence that when the Apostolic college is
gathered, it will not err. If it did,
then the Spirit would not have lead them “into all truth.” Confidence in the Church is ultimately
confidence in the Holy Spirit. If the
leaders of the whole Church, gathered together properly and in obedience to
Christ, can err in doctrine, then we can really have very little confidence in
the truth of our faith. So we speak of
the infallibility of an ecumenical council, taking a risky step of faith to
believe that Jesus’ promise is true in an objective and tangible way.
Secondly,
“he will not speak on his own … he will take from what is mine and declare it
to you.” This stresses the continuity
between the ministry of Jesus and the ministry of the Spirit. The gift of the Spirit does not enable us to
“surpass” the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and “evolve” into some higher
plane of spirituality. Throughout Church
history, there have been various movements that have arisen—some of a
conservative nature and some of a progressive—that have claimed that the Spirit
has lead them to insights that overturn the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, or
the Gospels, or the Apostles. Some such
movements have abandoned some or all of the sacraments, or the successors of
the Apostles, or various moral teachings of Jesus and the Apostles. There’s a hint of it in the contemporary
movement to change the Church’s teaching on marriage from what Jesus defined
and St. Paul clarified. Some feel the
Spirit is causing us to evolve into a higher state of truth.
But the
Spirit does not overturn the Gospel and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, the
Christ and Son of David. This Jesus is
God. The Spirit leads us deeper into
understanding his teaching. He does not
lead us to surpass or overturn it. There
is a “hermeneutic of continuity” between Christ and the Spirit.
Thirdly,
Jesus says, “you also testify.” And
while that command has its immediate application to the Apostles themselves, nonetheless
it also applies to the whole Church. We
must testify to the truth of the faith in the middle of a culture that is
founded on multiple falsehoods. The
Spirit gives us the power to do that, the power to understand more deeply the
teaching of Christ, and also to proclaim it boldly.
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