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Letters Pentecost
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The Catholic Telegraph
May 17, 2002The fundamental reading for Pentecost is Acts 2.1-11. In that reading, which is mandatory for each year of the three year cycle, we hear how the Holy Spirit came upon the apostles and sent them out to preach the gospel of Christ to every people throughout the world. There are many peoples and many languages, but only one Christ, one gospel, one Spirit. This feast has to do with the unity and the diversity of the Church.
Our live letter for this day shows us unity and diversity in practice. The Corinthians were a difficult group of new Christians. The Holy Spirit (the same Spirit that had come upon the apostles at Pentecost) had given them spectacular gifts. Some of them were charismatic preachers. Some were healers. Some were prophets. The trouble was that these gifts became a source of competitiveness in the young church. The community was in danger of splitting up as its members vied with one another in asserting the particular value of their individual gifts. In our passage, Paul finds it necessary to remind them that the Church is not a conglomeration of individuals, but rather the one body of Christ under the direction of the one Holy Spirit. The gifts of individuals were to be appreciated in the context of the unity of the Church. (Note the recurrence of the word same in the first part of the reading, and of the word one in the second.)
Our passage begins by situating the gifts of the Spirit in the context of faith. If you don’t confess the lordship of Jesus, whatever gifts you may have are not from the Spirit of Jesus.
Next Paul comments on the variety of the Spirit’s gifts, directed toward various kinds of service for the community, bringing about various effects. None of us deserves any of them. They are all freely given gifts of the Spirit, of the one Spirit of Jesus. And although the manifestation of the Spirit my vary from individual to individual, the purpose of the gifts is one: the development of the common good of the community.
The following verses of our reading describe the community. It is one body, the body of Christ. It has many parts (and, by implication, the many parts have many functions), but these many parts constitute only one body which is animated by one Spirit.
Ethnic and social differences in the community (Jews and Greeks, slaves and free persons) are irrelevant in the context of the one body and one Spirit.
Pentecost is a good day to reflect a bit on the unity of the Church. We are members of the one Church because we have opened ourselves to the full holiness of Christ which He offers us in baptism and the other sacraments. We are members of the one Church because we have all accepted the full teaching of Jesus expressed in the community of those who believe in Him. We are members of the one Church because we have each accepted our specific part in the one visible community of faith that includes our fellow parishioners, but also the Pope and the bishops and all believers throughout the world. Holiness, teaching, community: these are the elements that make the Church one because they are all various aspects of the one ministry of Christ and are therefore manifestations of the one Spirit of Jesus. Each of us has his or her own assortment of gifts. Each of us expresses his or her own personal emphasis in our response to our gifts. We are all different. But we all constitute one body enlivened by one Spirit.
There are two important teachings here. The first is that we are not free to pick and choose among the elements that make up the basic realities of the Church. We can’t, for example, take baptism and reject the Eucharist, or accept the parish and write off the diocese. The Church is not ours. The Church is Christ’s and we can no more remake the Church to suit ourselves than we can remake Christ and the Sprit into a pattern we find more appealing.
The second lesson is that, if unity in holiness and belief and community is going to mean anything to us, we have to keep it high in our consciousness. It’s easy to get annoyed with the Church. There are so many imperfect people in it, people whose priorities and emphases are different from our own. It’s easy to get discouraged with the Church, whether it be the Church universal or our local parish. Its leaders seem to move so slowly - or so fast. If we lost sight of the basics, we run the risk of seeing only the surface of the Church. And then it’s easy to walk away from the real unity of the real Church into a foreign land of our own making. We have to base our faith on an awareness of the elementary unity of the Church - one body of Christ enlivened by one Spirit - and not on the Church’s secondary features, be they ornaments or flaws.
There is an ongoing tension in the Church between unity and diversity. The abundance and variety of the Spirit’s gifts makes for diversity. The oneness of the Spirit makes for unity. Overemphasis on either weakens the body of Christ and frustrates the work of the Spirit.
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Conversation Questions.
What do I appreciate most about the diversity in the Church?
What do I appreciate most about the Church’s unity?
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