Sunday, May 28th, 2023 – Pentecost Sunday - Cycle A Readings: Acts 2:1-11, Psalm 104 “Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth”, 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13, John 20:19-23

     We congratulate our thirty one parishioners who will be confirmed this Sunday by Bishop William Wack. Confirmation completes the sacraments of initiation. We are born anew by baptism, strengthened by confirmation, and receive the food of eternal life in the Eucharist. We pray that the Lord , through the power of the Holy Spirit, strengthens the gifts he gave to our brothers and sisters on the day of their baptism and make them his worthy instruments of peace, joy, and renewed hope in the world. Also four of our confirmands will be receiving their first Holy Communion. We are very grateful to all the Catechists and those who have journeyed with them for their love and service in sharing the faith to our dear brothers and sisters. May the almighty God richly bless you.
     My dear brothers and sisters, we celebrate Pentecost Sunday. The birthday of the church, the day the Lord fulfilled his promise that he will not leave us alone. The first reading and the gospel present the descent of the Holy Spirit differently. The stories of Luke and John compliment each other and teach us that the Spirit is the new law, the power that enables humankind to do good. The Spirit is the source of unity (does away with barriers) and whatever the Holy Spirit is, the power and presence of God is felt. The second reading invites us to see the consequences of the presence of the Spirit in a community.
     After Pentecost the Church struggles to live the language of the Spirit. In the second reading we hear Paul reminding the divided community at Corinth that their diverse gifts are for the good of the community. It is the one dynamic Spirit which is the source of the community’s gifts. And the Spirit which fired the apostles and which enthused Paul is the same Spirit which fires and enthuses us. The Spirit does1 that in our own mundane attempts to work at forgiveness and love and understanding. That is the language of the Spirit. Forgiveness, love and understanding form a language which everyone understands and needs to hear. That is the language we are invited to speak and the promise is that when we speak it people will recognize it as their own language. They can truly say that we are speaking their language because it is the language which has no boundaries, and no special dictionaries are needed to understand it. It is the language of the Spirit. It is the language of love: the language that all people understand. As we celebrate this solemnity, may the Lord bless us, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Fr. Paschal Chester, SVD.