homily notes: Pentecost

We mention the Holy Spirit quite a lot.


Every week in the Creed we say, "I believe in the Holy Spirit." At the end of most of the priest's prayers in Mass we hear, "in the unity of the Holy Spirit." Every time we make the sign of the cross, we start prayer or liturgy, "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."


But despite all that, the Spirit is mysterious.


Who is the Holy Spirit?


First, the Holy Spirit is a person. Not some kind of impersonal force or power, but a person - the third person of the Trinity. From all eternity, the Holy Spirit has existed in the relationship between the Father and the Son. In fact you could say that the Spirit is the relationship between the Father and the Son.


The Father gives everything to the Son, the Son gives everything back to the Father and that Love is so real that it is actually a person, the Holy Spirit.


But all this wasn't revealed right away.


Throughout the Old Testament, the people of Israel gradually learned and accepted that there was one God. He made a covenant with them and made them his people. That's actually the meaning of Pentecost for the Jewish people - it was a celebration of God giving Israel the Law on Mount Sinai.


In Jesus, God got a human face. Jesus was the Father's revelation of Himself - his Word. Everything he had to say to humanity, everything that he offered to us, was shown in the person of Jesus. In the Easter season that we finish today we celebrated that gift, that Jesus lived a life completely offered to the Father and through that brought new life, salvation into the world.


But that wasn't the end. Before he ascended into heaven, he told the disciples to wait for the "promise of the Father," the advocate, the Holy Spirit. They waited in prayer and on Pentecost, received that gift. The Spirit came down on them with a great wind and tongues of fire.


We often call Pentecost the birthday of the Church - and it is. But we don't want to lose the sense of the power of what happened on that day. Pentecost was an explosion.
The apostles burst out of that room in Jerusalem and out into the whole world. The fire that started on that day spread to every land of the Roman Empire, to every country in the world, and it hasn't stopped yet.


That fire of the Holy Spirit is what was given to each one of us at our baptism. It was sealed and strengthened at our confirmation. And the Holy Spirit is still here, inspiring us today.


Just as the disciples spoke in the language of every nation, the Church lives in every part of the world - still proclaiming that Jesus is Lord.
In all it's different ministries, in ordained people and lay people, the Spirit is moving the Church. We just have to be open to that movement.


We do that by doing what the disciples did: they waited in prayer and openness, and when the Spirit inspired them, they acted.


The Spirit moves us too, so that the fire in our hearts can go out to the whole world.