May 24^th 2015. PENTECOST SUNDAY

Gospel: John 15:26-27; 16:12-15

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading ...

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Gospel: John 15:26-27; 16:12-15

Jesus said to his disciples

‘When the Advocate comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father,
the Spirit of truth who issues from the Father, he will be my witness.
And you too will be witnesses, because you have been with me from the outset.

I still have many things to say to you but they would be too much for you now.
But when the Spirit of truth comes he will lead you to the complete truth,
since he will not be speaking as from himself but will say only what he has learnt;
and he will tell you of the things to come.
He will glorify me, since all he tells you will be taken from what is mine.
Everything the Father has is mine; that is why I said:
All he tells you will be taken from what is mine’

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . The first reading tells us how each visitor to Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost heard the Apostles’ words in his own native language. This is not a story about amazing linguistic gifts being bestowed on the Apostles! It is a story of how the Spirit of God gives each one of us the gift of being able to communicate heart to heart the story of the great works of God. The Gospel makes this clearer. Jesus tells us that he will send the Paraclete who will lead us into truth by taking from what belongs to Christ and revealing to us the things of the future. What does all of this mean? The Holy Spirit puts us into right relationship with the things of the future. When my future is unclear, then I can become easily anguished. If my marriage is in crisis then I can quickly fall into negativity and despair. The Holy Spirit puts me into a right relationship with the future because he reveals the hand of God in everything in my life. He tells me that God’s providence is working in everything and leading me to a future full of light and life. He encourages me to see the crisis in my marriage as a situation permitted by God so that I can enter into a deeper and more adult relationship with my spouse. In short, when I am illuminated by the Holy Spirit, I become serene, trustful and filled with hope. This capacity to discern the providence of God in everything confers on me the ability to communicate heart to heart with others about the wonderful deeds of the Lord. I become a witness to Jesus. This is the goal of the spirit – to transform us into witnesses. We communicate little with abstract words and concepts. The Holy Spirit makes us communicators par excellence by transforming us into witnesses to the person of Christ.

The Pentecost capacity of the Apostles to speak to people who understand different languages is not a linguistic gift. The gift that the Spirit gives is the gift of communication.

Pentecost is the culminating event of Easter. Let us never forget that God’s goal is not simply Christ’s resurrection but our resurrection, our living a new way of life that is rooted in heaven. Pentecost is not just the end of the Easter Season, it is the goal of the Easter season when we become recipients of the life of God. The event of Pentecost is not described in the Gospels but in the Acts of the Apostles. The first reading each Sunday usually illuminates the Gospel. This Sunday the situation is reversed because the first reading describes the Pentecost event directly and the Gospel provides the Johannine interpretation of the event. The description in Acts from the first reading tells of this extraordinary experience of communication in which the barriers between different linguistic groups disappears. The diversity between peoples is not overcome by making everyone homogeneous; rather it is the capacity to communicate that overcomes the barriers. This group of people described in the passage do not attain the capacity to speak the same language, think the same thoughts and do the same things. What unites them is not bland uniformity but the activity of God. The Holy Spirit, who is ultimately love, gives this ability to make oneself understood.

We attain the gift of being able to communicate with others when we learn to speak of the things of God.

Everyone manages to understand in his own “native language” – what a beautiful expression! Our mother tongue is the one that is closest to our hearts, the language we learned as children and that is closest to our personal identity. The Apostles speak in their language and the hearer understands in the language that is closest to his heart. What is transmitted between the two is the news of the “great works of God”. The Gospel passage speaks of the gift of the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father. This Spirit witnesses to the truth and transforms the disciples into witnesses themselves. The Gospel goes on: “But when the Spirit of truth  comes he will lead you to the complete truth, since he will not be speaking as from himself but will say only what he has learnt; and he will tell you of the things to come”. What are these things to come? First of all it is worth noting that when a person changes his relationship with the things of the future – when his future is illuminated with light so that he goes forward with faith, serenity and trust – this transforms his life completely since a person is his relationship with his future; every act he engages in is directed towards something. All of us are directed towards certain things that are coming our way. If my immediate or long-term future is illuminated by the activity of God, then I become serene. I am not filled with the anguish of someone who feels he is in a blind alley. I have a sense of transformation, beauty, novelty, surprise, discovery. But how do I attain this beautiful relationship with the future? The Gospel goes on: “He will glorify me, since all he tells you will be taken from what is mine. Everything the Father has is mine.” In the first reading we heard how the people in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost heard the great works of God being proclaimed in their native languages. The Gospel talks about the Holy Spirit taking from the things that belong to Jesus. The point is this: the language that communicates par excellence is that which is concerned with the things of God. We achieve illumination, desperate circumstances are transformed into hope, when I manage to see the providence of God in the happenings of my life; when I see the things of God hidden in the events that are going on around me. For example, when there is a crisis in a marriage, we can look on the situation and despair, or we can see the crisis as part of the process of growth, a stage that the Lord is permitting so that the spouses can learn to love each other in a deeper and more adult way. If we do not see the hand of God in that which happens, then situations become blind, empty and worrying. When, by contrast, we see design, wisdom, the love of love of God, the things that belong to Christ, in that which happens to us, then I attain the capacity to accept and welcome these things.

We communicate when we become witnesses to the person of Jesus. We communicate less well when we cease being witnesses and start to speak in abstract terms.

The Holy Spirit changes things from within. He makes me speak with conviction and light, gives me the capacity to show others how God is working in things. When I speak under the influence of the Holy Spirit, my listener begins to understand, begins to apprehend my words close to his heart. It is one thing to try to communicate Christ with concepts, but another thing altogether to take from the things that belong to Christ through the gift of the Holy Spirit and apply them to the events of life. In this way we become witnesses. We can make enormous efforts to communicate norms or abstract thoughts, but to be a witness is to leave all these abstractions behind and bear witness to Jesus as a person. To illuminate someone’s intelligence is no substitute for speaking about the love of God. The Holy Spirit does not reveal the future to us in the sense of telling us the tedious details of events that will happen; rather the Spirit announces to us the wonderful fact that our future will be filled with the providence and activity of God.