May 23rd 2021, 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 will send you from the Father,

the Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father,

he will testify to me.

And you also testify,

because you have been with me from the beginning.

"I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.

But when he comes, the Spirit of truth,

he will guide you to all truth.

He will not speak on his own,

but he will speak what he hears,

and will declare to you the things that are coming.

He will glorify me,

because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.

Everything that the Father has is mine;

for this reason I told you that he will take from what is mine

and declare it to you."

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

SHORTER HOMILY . . . The first reading for Pentecost describes the actual events of the coming of the Spirit on the apostles and Mary. The Gospel is from Chapter 15 of John’s Gospel and contains the promises made by Jesus regarding the Spirit. It is essential for the Church to remember that the Holy Spirit is a person, not a thing. The Spirit comes from the Father and bears witness to Christ. Thus, the Spirit introduces us into the life of joy and communion of God. It is actually challenging to describe the Holy Spirit because he does not speak of himself: he speaks to us of the Father and the Son. Like a spouse who cannot stop speaking of the one he loves, the Spirit fills us with the joy of the Father and the Son. Like the child who cries out “Daddy!” to his Father, so the Spirit makes us trusting and self-abandoning children of God in Jesus. If we have a decision to make, the Holy Spirit does not tell us directly what or what not to do; instead, he speaks to us of the Father, and, in this way, we are assisted in discernment. We get bogged down in the details of things, but when we cease looking at things as if they were absolutes in themselves and instead see them in the light of the Father, then we can discern how to proceed. Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirt will “lead us to all truth”. This is because he enables us to see things in the context of love, which, ultimately, gives sense and meaning to everything. We are asked to live our lives in relationship with the Father. When the Holy Spirit enters our lives, he does not change the things of our lives, but enables us to meet the Father in these things. He does not eliminate our problems, but teaches us to abandon ourselves in trust to the Father in these very problems. In addition, Jesus tells us, the Spirit will speak to us of the things that are to come. This is a very important element of this passage because humanity is very conditioned by the future. The anxieties we have about the future derive from a distorted perspective in which we try to rely on our own feeble strengths. We will remain anguished by the things that about to happen until we learn to leave them in the hands of God. The Father who created all things, the Son who is his perfect substance and who is pure gratitude, the Holy Spirit who is joy and love – this is the future that we have in front of us! This Pentecost, it is important for our hearts that we contemplate the nature of our God. We have a tendency to carry on as if we were alone and as if our response to things depended only on us. In the account of Pentecost from Acts, the disciples go out and speak to everyone in language they can understand - the language of love – and what they speak about is not themselves but the works of God. It is the merciful works of God that brings hope and consolation to humanity. The Holy Spirit gives to us this knowledge of the Father, illuminating our hearts with confidence in his providential love.

LONGER HOMILY FOLLOWS

The Holy Spirit is the one who is utterly oriented to the other, not to himself

On this Sunday of Pentecost we hear passages from St John’s Gospel which announce the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the Advocate, the one who comes close to us and speaks to our hearts, the “Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father”. When he comes he will guide us to the fullness of truth, Jesus tells us, because he does not speak about himself. Rather he will relate what he himself has heard and will tell us of things to come in the future. This might sound a little strange. Surely he will guide us to the truth because he knows the truth, and not because he refuses to speak about himself? We tend to think of the truth as being a precise thing, a matter of content. But the truth is not simply a matter of content. The Holy Spirit is the one who does not speak about himself, but speaks what he has heard, what he has received from Jesus, and everything that is possessed by the Father is also possessed by Jesus. In other words, the Holy Spirit is love. Love does not talk about itself. It is not centred on one’s ego. Love speaks of the one who is loved. It speaks of God. The Holy Spirit speaks of the Father and of the son and of their relationship. It is hard to express this mystery because love is not something that can be put in a certain category. Rather it is communion. Love is much more than just a sentiment. It is not simply some sort of perfectionistic act. If someone approaches us and speaks to us with love, their words can sometimes be hard and challenging, yet we recognize that they are speaking for us, for our good.

It is frightening for us to lose control over everything. The Holy Spirit leads us down that path

The Holy Spirit says little about himself. He is not self-affirmative because he is love. This attitude can be a little bit scary for us. To be obedient to the Holy Spirit signifies to loosen one’s control over everything. The things that are ours only attain their meaning as a function of love. The things that Jesus has to relate to us of the Spirit are things that we can receive only gradually. For the moment, Jesus tells us, these things are too heavy for us to bear. We are incapable of living them and they would appear to us as a moralistic burden. It is only the Holy Spirit that can teach us to lose ourselves and no longer be at the centre of our own lives. We have a dark terror of no longer being at the centre of reality. In the first reading, the disciples attain the capacity to go out and lose themselves, speaking to and for others. This is an art that is not learned in one day, but the result of a long process of self-emptying.

We only mimic a truly Christian society if we do not build it on the Holy Spirit and the art of emptying oneself

Matrimony is a continuous adventure of progressive growth. Sometimes marriages that begin well go more and more wrong afterwards, often because the Holy Spirit has not been allowed to do his work. These are people who are as good and decent as anyone else, but they have sought the wrong kind of fuel for their marriage: they have tried to rely on their own strength. It is only when we lose ourselves that we make space for the love of God. Marriage is a process of ever greater emptying of oneself, a process of falling deeper and deeper in love. Such marriages are not just a theory or an ideal: they exist in the Church. They occur when two people recognize matrimony as a vocation, as a call that only the Lord can bring to completion. When we cease to be the centre of everything, then everything we do becomes a place where we lose ourselves and enter into the greatness of communion, the greatness of collaboration, of being together with others, of taking care of others. This is authentic family, authentic friendship, true society. A Christian society can only be constructed upon people who have been emptied of themselves. We can only mimic such a civil society if communion and the Holy Spirit are not placed at the centre.

Let us abandon ourselves to God and allow him to control our lives

This Pentecost let us have courage! To receive the Holy Spirit means to lose oneself and to place others at the centre of everything. Only God can do this. We are too fearful and lack the strength to bear this burden of completely losing our self-referential control over things. I wish everyone, and myself first of all, the grace to permit ourselves to lose this “battle” with God, to allow him to win within our souls.