Gospel Reflection
Pentecost Sunday
8 June 2025, Church Year C
The Ernstfall
By Fr.
Joseph M.
Rampino
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In celebrating the great
solemnity of
Pentecost today, the church turns her mind to consider perhaps
the most
mysterious, and certainly most overlooked person of the Blessed
Trinity, the
Holy Spirit.
So often, Christians
associate the Holy
Spirit and his action with religious enthusiasm, with exotic
spiritual gifts,
with mystical experiences, with the unexpected, the unforeseen,
the
unpredictable, with that which rules and rigid thoughts cannot
contain. This
perception does certainly touch on some truth; the Holy Spirit
does sometimes
move souls in ways that are outwardly incredible, or defy easy
understanding,
and has led the church through trials of this world along routes
that human
wisdom could not have found. Nevertheless, if we focus too much
on these exotic
effects, we might miss the most profound and pervasive ways in
which he acts.
Thankfully, the Gospel passage for today draws our attention
directly to that
which the Holy Spirit accomplishes among us on a daily basis.
Christ today returns to
his Apostles
after his Resurrection, the first time most have seen him since
they abandoned
him in the garden of Gethsemane, and where they might have
expected reproach
for their failure in friendship and fidelity, he tells them:
“Peace be with
you.” Where there was not peace, where there was the unrest and
interior chaos
of sin, the risen Jesus brings renewal, calm and release.
It is only in this
context that he
mentions the Holy Spirit, and in so doing, enables the Apostles
to offer the
mercy they themselves so needed to others. The effect of the
Apostles’
reception of the Holy Spirt is the forgiveness of sins, the
extension of mercy,
the possibility of new life.
The ancient hymn, “Veni
Sancte
Spirtus,” we sing before today’s Gospel, called in liturgical
language a
“sequence,” calls out to the Spirit asking for this mercy with
deep pleading.
It cries: “Where you are not, we have naught, nothing good in
deed or thought,
nothing free from taint of ill. Heal our wounds, our strength
renew; on our
dryness pour your dew; wash the stains of guilt away.”
To go further, we know
the place in
which the Trinity fulfills this promise to the Apostles and this
prayer to the
Holy Spirit. It is in the sacraments that God provides that
mercy and
refreshment, first in baptism, then in confession and the
anointing of the
sick. He completes that refreshment and reordering of our frail
and wounded
human nature in the gift of himself in the holy Eucharist,
accomplished by the
Holy Spirit through priests, themselves made capable of
celebrating the
sacraments by the same Holy Spirit. And around and through these
sacramental
gifts, the Spirit pours out new draughts of faith, hope,
charity, along with
his sevenfold gifts of wisdom, understanding, counsel,
knowledge, fortitude,
piety, and fear of the Lord, as well as all the supernatural
virtues to point
our whole renewed selves to the Father in heaven.
While it might seem like
we only rarely
see the more exotic actions of the Holy Spirit, wonders that
obviously defy
human capacity, miracles that go beyond what nature can do, the
fact is that he
acts continually in the life of the church, right before our
eyes. While
special moments of inspiration, enthusiasm, and fervor catch our
attention more
easily, it is in the daily celebration of the sacraments, in the
healing of
sin, the feeding of souls, the daily re-ordering of our lives to
the love of
God that the Spirit brings about masterworks of holiness and
glory.