Homily: The Solemnity of Pentecost – Cycle B
Friends,
last week I invited us to recognize that the Ascension, as the culminating
moment of our redemption, is also the invitation to prepare for the coming of the
Holy Spirit who will send us out on mission.
I noted that, after watching Jesus ascend, the disciples didn’t stand
around in amazement that our glorified human nature had been taken up into
heaven, but rather went out to proclaim the utterly strange and powerful
message that, through Christ, God has made it possible for us to be glorified
with him. The feast that we call
Pentecost is the celebration of the beginning of that mission and a call for
each of us to be renewed in our response to this call.
This
week, I would like to suggest where we might begin in our response to this
call. We know, of course, that the
mission that Jesus gave us is to “go and make disciples of all peoples,
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit”. This, of course, is the
perennial mission of the Church: perennial because it is constitutive of the
Church itself. In other words, the
Church is the mission. Perennial also
because in every age, for every generation, this message needs to be proclaimed
because no one receives the gospel innately (that is, by natural generation),
but rather by hearing it proclaimed and accepting it in free will. Nevertheless, in our present age we see that
the gospel has been proclaimed widely.
So what, perhaps, is the more specific mission to which this Pentecost
is calling us?
I’d
like to suggest that this Pentecost is calling us to a specific mission to work
towards unity among Christians. Over
this last year, as I have been contemplating Bishop Doherty’s pastoral plan for
our diocese, Uniting in Heart, I’ve
been trying to imagine the steps we may need to take to fulfill this plan to
become a truly missionary Church once again.
In this last month, I’ve often felt convicted that one of the obstacles
that we will face is our disunity with other Christians. One of the characteristics of God’s true
Church is that it is one: that is, that there is unity among believers. Yet, if we look around us, we see many
communities who claim to be “God’s true Church”. If “God’s true Church” is one, then how can
there be so many diverse and ununified communities that claim this title? This is a scandal: one that discredits the
Gospel and thus is an obstacle to our mission “to make disciples of all people”.
Recently,
I’ve often had to drive by an open plot of land in Kokomo in which there is a
sign that says “future home of Zion Tabernacle”. I don’t know much about this organization,
but my guess is that it is an evangelical Christian community and that it is a
distinct community: that is, not one that already exists in Kokomo. It made me sad to see this because I thought,
“of all of the Christian communities in Kokomo, these people—who identify as
Christian—didn’t find any one of them to be satisfactorily Christian and so
decided that they needed to form their own community in order to live their
Christian faith authentically”. In other
words, I thought, “here is another ‘splinter’ in Christianity in a time when
Christianity most needs to be more unified”.
Thus, I believe that one of our first steps towards becoming truly
missionary once again is to work towards unity among all who profess the name
of Jesus as Lord and Savior of the human race.
An
important place to begin this is work is to recognize that, while the
expression of Christianity can take many different forms, Christianity must be
founded on a principle of unity. Our
remembrance of the first Christian Pentecost can help us to see this
truth. In the reading from the Acts of
the Apostles, we see that the Holy Spirit didn’t wipe away the differences
between the peoples, but rather empowered the one proclamation to be heard in
the diversity of languages and cultures of the world. The same is still true today. I do not believe that the Holy Spirit wishes
to wipe away the various expressions of Christianity that exist today. I am also certain, however, that the Holy
Spirit does not wish these various expressions be in competition with each
other. Rather, I am certain that he
desires that we acknowledge each other in our various expressions and that we
seek always to stand together to proclaim Christ to the world.
Truly,
however, this is step two in our effort to become more missionary once
again. The first step, of course, is our
own renewal in the faith and our embracing of Christ’s missionary mandate. To do this, we must study the Bible and the
Catechism, we must pray and worship together, and we must talk about how we
share this message with others and begin to practice it. In other words, we have to immerse ourselves
continually in the spiritual life so that everything that we do stems from and
points to the faith that we profess.
Having
done this, we will naturally begin to interact more openly with those who
profess Christ, but who don’t share our creed.
I believe that this will happen naturally because we will be so
comfortable with our faith that it will invite conversations with others and
lead to interaction between different Christian communities. In these discussions, however, the goal is
never to make one side conform to the other, but rather to acknowledge that our
Lord Jesus desires that his disciples share communion with one another and so
strive to achieve it in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Working
together, then, to bring souls to know and to believe in Christ, I believe that
we will begin to resolve our differences and, outwardly, we will become more
united. This unity will increase our
credibility as witnesses of the gospel, thus empowering us to fulfill more
completely the mission Christ has given to us.
If, as Saint Paul reminds us, “we were all baptized into one body”, then
we must present ourselves as one body, united in our diversity, if we hope that
others will unite with us, through baptism into this Body of Christ. Trusting in the power of the Holy Spirit, this
can become a reality.
And
so, as we celebrate this great feast of the Holy Spirit, let us remember that
what we celebrate is not just the end of a liturgical season, but rather the
renewed beginning of our missionary impulse to proclaim Christ to the
nations. Let us, therefore, be courageous
in faith: renewing daily our work to become saints and trusting in the Holy
Spirit to guide our missionary work; so that, uniting in the heart of Jesus, we
might see a greater flourishing of God’s kingdom among us.
Given at St. Joan of Arc Parish: Kokomo, IN – May 23rd,
2021
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