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The Catholic Telegraph
June 1, 2001The public coming of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles is recounted in Acts 2.1-11. This selection constitutes the first reading for Pentecost Sunday in all three years of the cycle. The gospel reading for year A (John 20.19-23) is the account of Jesus’ private meeting with the apostles after His resurrection, during which He bestows the Holy Spirit on them and gives them the power to forgive sin. This reading may be read in years B and C, too, or it can be replaced by readings from John’s last supper discourse in which Jesus promises to send the Holy Spirit to His disciples. For the second reading the Church has provided, in year A, a reading from First Corinthians (12.3b-7, 12-13) in which the Spirit is described as the source of unity in the Church. This reading, too, can be repeated in the second and third years of the liturgical cycle or it can be replaced (in year B) by Galatians 5.16-25 which speaks of the relationship between the Holy Spirit and Christian behavior. For year C there is an optional second reading from Romans 8.8-17. It’s as if the Church, aware of how much there is to say about the Holy Spirit, gives its ministers the choice of offering to the faithful the basics each year or of giving them a richer fare by means of the optional readings.
Our reflection deals with the optional year C reading from Romans. This part of Paul’s letter deals with the relationship between justification (i.e. salvation) and Christian life.
Our reading has three parts. First, Paul speaks of the distinction between flesh and spirit, a favorite subject of his. In a context like this, flesh does not mean physical skin and muscles ("a pound of flesh"), nor sexual misbehavior ("sins of the flesh"). Paul uses the term "flesh" to signify our whole moral and spiritual attitude toward God when we were/are in a state of separation from God. It involves isolation, self-interest, hostility in our relationship with God. Its opposite is "spirit," which Paul now describes.
He says that those who are detached from God ("in the flesh") cannot please Him. But Christian believers are "in the spirit," i.e., God’s own Spirit, God’s own life lives in them. We belong to God because Christ’s Spirit is alive in us. Because of this, we are righteous and alive even when our body (tainted with hereditary sinfulness) dies.
Having proclaimed the basic reality of our relationship with God (i.e., that God’s Spirit dwells in us), Paul speaks of two results of that indwelling.
First of all, the Spirit gives us a new life. The same Spirit that caused Jesus to rise from the dead is also in us. It gives its own life to our bodies. This means that we have to live, not as if we were still detached from God (i.e., "in the flesh") but in accord with the Spirit of God in us. Sinfulness and selfishness ("the deeds of the body") will lead us to spiritual death unless we destroy them through our adherence to the Spirit.
In the third part of our reading, Paul gives us the second result of the Spirit’s life in us: we enter into a whole new relationship with God. We are no longer servants, motivated by fear of punishment, but sons and daughters. We can speak to God with the same term that Jesus used: Abba. We become intimates in God’s household. We belong there because we are not servants or guests, but members of the family. If we imitate the faithfulness of Christ, the glory which that faithfulness brought to Him will also be ours.
Pentecost is the feast of the beginning of the public and universal proclamation of the good news of Christ’s salvation. It is called "the birthday of the Church" and the Holy Spirit is called "the soul of the Church." However, the Holy Spirit is not merely the driving force of the Church at large. The Spirit is also the determinant element of the life of each and every Christian believer. Because of the Spirit that is in us, we live the life of the risen Christ and we share Christ’s relationship with Father and Holy Spirit.
The Spirit in us, who brings us the life and glory that are shared by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is what makes us members of the Church. It’s not because we have kept the rules of Christian behavior that we belong, nor because we believe all the doctrines that the Church calls us to believe. Those are not unimportant matters. But the basic reality is the gift of the Holy Spirit that comes to us with Baptism, the gift that gives us a whole new level of life and a whole new kind of relationship with the Father.
Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the followers of Jesus, is not just something nice that happened a long time ago. The coming of the Holy Spirit is something that still happens today every time a new member is initiated into the Church. Moreover, it’s something that persists throughout our earthly life in Jesus and that prepares us for life in heaven with the Lord in an eternal family reunion.
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Conversation Questions
In what ways do I see myself as a daughter or son of God?
What difference does the Holy Spirit make in my life?
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