“Receive the Holy Spirit”

Today, the great journey that started on Ash Wednesday, took us through the forty days of Lent, culminated in Holy Week in the remembrance of the Last Supper and Jesus’ death on Good Friday to his Resurrection on Easter Sunday, then led to his Ascension another forty days later comes to an end with the celebration of Pentecost, when the disciples who had gathered and waited in a room in Jerusalem received the gift of the Holy Spirit and the Church was born.

What should the gift of the Holy Spirit mean for us?  I suggest that there is an inward and an outward dimension.  First of all, when we are anointed again in the Holy Spirit, as we conform our lives to the Lord’s, there are certain fruits that show themselves in our way of being: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.  Or, put more simply, the Holy Spirit makes us holy as well.

However, the Holy Spirit are not for private consumption.  In the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we heard again about the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles.  The Holy Spirit appeared as fire and it seems that it ignited the group and sent them immediately on their mission.  They were given the gift of speaking other languages so that they could proclaim the Gospel to foreigners.

And in the reading from the First Letter of St Paul to the Corinthians, Paul explains that there are a variety of gifts of the Holy Spirit and that each person is gifted according to his or her part in the whole body.  It is clear that the Holy Spirit is given for outreach and service and for “the common good.”

On the Solemnity of Pentecost, it is good to pray for a new anointing in the Holy Spirit, to ask the Lord to give us the gifts and graces we need to help us with the mission we have been given, and also to help us in the process of inner transformation so that we become the people he wants us to be.  God bless, Fr Kevin.