19th May 2024: Pentecost Sunday (B)

(Year B but based on optional Year A)
First Reading – Acts 2: 1-11
Second Reading – Galatians 5: 16-25
Gospel – John 15: 26-27; 16: 12-15
In today’s Gospel we hear about the disciples gathered behind closed doors as if shutting out the rest of the world.
They are afraid of those who might come to persecute them as they had persecuted Jesus. But in their fear for their lives and uncertainty for their future Jesus appears standing among them and his first greeting is “Peace be with you” and shows them his hands and his side which go to prove to them that this is the same Jesus who they knew living and dying. We can only imagine how their fear must have turned to elation at seeing Jesus again. Only then when their fear turns to joy, that once more he says ‘Peace be with you’.
Over two thousand years later we hear of so many people living in fear for their lives, living behind closed doors, fearful for their future. How many conflicts between nations are taking place and how many even in our local areas are locked behind the closed doors of mental health issues (and we remember particularly Mental Health Awareness week ending 19 May 2024), family disruption, addictions, homelessness, poverty and lack of opportunity? How wonderful it would be if we could say to all these “Peace be with you?”
But there is always hope. Jesus’ words “As the Father sent me, so am I sending you’ sums up what Pentecost is all about. Jesus breathes on them and says “Receive the Holy Spirit.” We too are given the gift and the peace of the Holy Spirit to share with others: the peace received is the peace given, sharing is caring as we often hear children say. Having received that gift we are sent out to go into the world no matter how near or far to proclaim that peace in our world that is so desperate to receive it.
Mother Teresa recalled that she lived for many years behind closed doors in a cloistered order. India’s independence in 1947 brought violence and bloodshed. Mother Teresa was moved to go out from her cloistered existence and to find food to feed the girls. Returning to her cloister she was surprised, as were the disciples, to feel the Holy Spirit calling her to do something about what she had seen: she left the cloister to live among the people. Observing the sickness and the dying receiving no care to support and help them she took one woman to her rented room to take care of her. From there it blossomed to larger accommodation, more people in need, more volunteers and yet more accommodation. She felt she had been living behind cloistered, closed doors like the disciples but Christ surprised her, he came through locked doors and breathed the Holy Spirit on her to find a second vocation.
Pentecost shows us that Christ can both come to us within our closed lives and the good we can achieve by opening the locked doors of ourselves. One of our children who was received into the Church at Easter two years ago asked me who/what was the Holy Spirit! How about that for a loaded question?! I could answer only simply that the Holy Spirit is the mutual love of the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit inspires us, as it did the disciples, to go out into our world to share peace and joy and love and to bring unity. I hope that wasn’t too heavy a reply for an eleven year old but someone who had sought to become Catholic by her own volition since she was nine!
We are inspired too to proclaim salvation to all nations. Paul warns us that “No-one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’ unless he is under the influence of the Holy Spirit.” Paul admits there are many gifts given but that they all have the same source: the Holy Spirit. These gifts are given for the good of the Church to be used personally but to be shared with others. Paul uses an analogy of the human body made up of many parts likening it to the Church. We are the Church. One body, many parts: what we do the Church does and what we fail to do the Church fails to do. So the Holy Spirit is a unifying force: the Church as we know it is a community of followers of Jesus.
The Gospel message was brought for everyone, ‘…Jews as well as Greeks, slaves as well as citizens, and one Spirit was given to us all to drink.’
In the first reading today the Apostles ‘were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak foreign languages…’ But this is not the miracle: the miracle is that suddenly peoples of many nations and languages hear the message in their own language. So it is today: the word of God is spread throughout the world in all languages to all people. It is God’s will that everyone in every nation be a witness to him and a living witness for him as Jesus’ disciples.
We are asked to go out with the power of the Spirit within us, with an authenticity, to spread the Word of God given by the Word of God made human, Jesus. The action of the Spirit constantly renews the Church, like a candle used to light further candles, it loses no energy of its own, yet has the power for new flame.
Today, this week, can we be the new flame lit by the flame of others and lit to light the candle of others: to be the flame of the Holy Spirit?
As someone said to me after I was ordained, “So you’re a beacon?” “Well actually a deacon, but I know what you mean!”.