PENTECOST 2023
Acts 2:1-11; 1Cor 12:3-7, 12-13; John 20:19-23
How did you receive the Spirit? How DO you receive the Spirit? Please don’t say, rather like those believers whom St. Paul encountered at Ephesus, that you didn’t even know that you had received the Holy Spirit. You have been baptised, haven’t you? And confirmed? Right then, you have received the Holy Spirit. (Whether the celebration of Confirmation as a separate sacrament is justified is another matter which we can’t go into here. Suffice it to say that some of the Church’s attitudes to, and practice of, Confirmation appear to veer dangerously close to the Pelagian heresy, but that is another story for another day.)
You have, then, received the Holy Spirit. Of course you have, or you wouldn’t be here. As St. Paul points out, you wouldn’t even be able to say that Jesus is Lord, to worship Him, to form part of His body which is the Church, to receive His body in the Eucharist, unless you were “in” the Holy Spirit.
We agree that you received the Holy Spirit in Baptism and Confirmation, but that wasn’t a “one-off”, or even a “two-off”, which is why I asked “How DO you receive the Spirit?” The giving of the Holy Spirit, the descent of the Holy Spirit, the entry into us of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit’s indwelling within us is an ongoing process. How then does the Spirit come to you?
In today’s readings, we hear of two very different ways in which the Spirit enters into us. The Acts of the Apostles describes the Pentecost event, all bells and whistles: wind and flame, hearing and seeing, and spectacular gifts. The Gospel, however, takes us back to Easter Sunday evening, when the disciples earlier received the Holy Spirit in a different way, for a different purpose, as the risen Christ gently breathed the Holy Spirit into them, empowering them to forgive sins.
And so I ask again “How do YOU receive the Holy Spirit?” For some people, the Holy Spirit may come spectacularly. Personally, I have to confess that I have never been attracted to, or influenced by, the Charismatic Renewal Movement, or Catholic Pentecostalism as it is also known, but it appears to work for some people.
Perhaps it is a matter of temperament. I am not naturally inclined to exuberance, unless I am watching football or cricket, though I am slightly less averse to it than the English priest who travelled to New York in the early days of Catholic Pentecostalism. He survived through most of the prayer meeting—it may even have been Mass, for all I know—but his nerve broke at the moment that a large lady bore down on him, arms extended in preparation for enfolding him in a bear hug. “Oh no! Please don’t! I’m British!” was his anguished response.
Be that as it may, we need to keep in mind St. Paul’s explanation that “the particular way the Holy Spirit is given to each person is for a good purpose”. I don’t know about you, but I have never been enthralled by the list of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Can you remember them all? I can’t, but that doesn’t bother me, as a list seems to be a limitation, and you cannot limit the Holy Spirit. Those abstract nouns, “wisdom”, fortitude” and so on, also sound very dry and dull.
Yet the Spirit is far from dry and dull. The Spirit is alive and life-giving; the Spirit is inspiring, in the literal sense of “breathing into”. And the Spirit is constantly breathing into—inspiring—you.
“I didn’t know that” you may say. Yet you are here today: that is the work of the Holy Spirit. When you pray, the Holy Spirit prays in you. When you carry out a good or generous action, that comes as an inspiration, a breathing in, of the Holy Spirit.
That is why I find that Easter Sunday evening breathing of the Holy Spirit so encouraging. A spectacular, overpowering Pentecost event may come upon you from time to time: the gentle inbreathing is a constant reality. Today let us ask the Holy Spirit to make us more aware of, and more responsive to, that constant presence.
