Homily for Pentecost Sunday, A

The Spirit is given for this benefit: whenever you or I forgive a brother or sister from the heart, we are participating in Christ’s ministry of forgiveness, exercising the priestly ministry of every baptized Christian.

I have Mass on Sunday, May 24th at St. Isidore @ 7:30/9:30 am

The 7:30 am Mass will be live-streamed https://stisidore.church/worship-online/

frjoedailey@gmail.com

Transcript

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John. 

On the evening of the first day of the week, when the doors were locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst, and he said to them, Peace be with you. When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit, whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained. 

The Gospel of the Lord 

On the evening of the first day of the week, the doors were locked where the disciples were. I usually imagine the twelve apostles in this locked room, but John doesn't say apostles or the twelve, only, "where the disciples were." Mary Magdalene, a disciple who was present earlier in this chapter, was probably there. Maybe the whole church was there. In the Acts of the Apostles on the day of Pentecost, Luke writes, they were all in one place together. A few verses earlier, Luke told us exactly who they are. Mary, the mother of Jesus, was there along with about 120 persons. Before the day was over, the church had grown from 120 to more than 3,000. 

St. Paul uses a familiar image for this communion, the Body of Christ. There are varieties of gifts, Paul says, and the same Spirit who produces all of them in everyone. Paul is doing more than helping the church identify spiritual gifts. He is speaking to a divided community that has started turning gifts into status. The Spirit gives gifts for the whole body. It's a shared life. 

I was a bit surprised then by the way our lectionary translated verse 7 in the second reading from 1 Corinthians chapter 12. "To each individual, the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit." "Some benefit" seems to miss the dimension of a shared gift. In the old translation, the Spirit is given for the "common good. "I looked it up and learned that the word "common" is not in the Greek. I texted a priest scripture scholar at the seminary. He agreed that while "some benefit" is not wrong, the Greek word is more dynamic. It has a sense of "bringing together," like "bearing fruit together." The gifts of the Spirit are given for the mutual harvesting of gifts. 

Pentecost was originally a celebration of the spring wheat harvest, but in the Acts of the Apostles, Luke describes a different kind of harvest. Devout Jews from every nation under heaven are gathered together in the same Spirit. We hear them speaking in our own tongues of the mighty acts of God. 

In the Gospel, Jesus has come looking for us. According to John's text, he walks right through the locked door to find us. He shows us his wounds from the cross, which are the marks of our forgiveness. “Peace be with you.” And then Jesus breaths God’s life giving spirit into us “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

When I celebrated first reconciliation with the grade school children and their families, I always made this point that we are all sent to continue Jesus' forgiving ministry. Of the seven sacraments, four of them have to do with forgiveness of sins. 1. Baptism, 2. The sacrament of reconciliation, of course, 3. The anointing of the sick, and 4. The Eucharist, the ordinary sacrament of forgiveness. The sacrament of marriage, of course, isn't primarily concerned with reconciliation, but I've never known a marriage to survive if the couple doesn't know how to say, "I'm sorry." And of course, in the Sacrament of Holy Orders, the priest is the primary minister of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Now that leaves confirmation, which doesn't seem to have a forgiveness dimension, except this. Jesus said to them, "receive the Holy Spirit," and in the next breath, "forgive sins." 

When we hear these words, we think  "Priests," and the sacrament of confession or reconciliation. But the Second Vatican Council gave us a broader understanding of the priesthood. In Lumen Gentium, the document on the Church, instead of starting with the clergy, the document  begins by describing the church as the people of God.

Here's how Pope Francis put it, "Looking at the people of God is remembering that we all entered the Church as laypeople. The first sacrament which seals our identity forever, and of which we should always be proud, is baptism. Through baptism, and by the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the faithful are consecrated as a spiritual house and a holy priesthood, so that everyone forms the faithful, holy people of God. 

The Spirit is given for this benefit: whenever you or I forgive a brother or sister from the heart, we are participating in Christ's ministry of forgiveness, exercising the priestly ministry of every baptized Christian. 

Whenever you play the victim, holding on to hurt is like holding on to a disease. It doesn't matter what you do or how hard you try. You are never going to have a better past. 

In the words of Lewis Smedes, when you forgive, you set a prisoner free. And then you discover that the prisoner was you. So you can be either a priest or a victim. But we are not on our own for this. Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit before he called us to forgive. The work of the Spirit is to bind us into the work of Jesus so that we can freely share the forgiveness we have already received. 

Richard Rohr says, Jesus identifies forgiveness with breathing. The one thing that we have done constantly since we were born and will do until we die. God's forgiveness is like breathing. Forgiveness is not apparently something God does. It's who God is. God can do no other.