As I mentioned last week, this month I’ve been asked to contribute Sunday homilies to the Homiletic and Pastoral Review. Be sure to pay them a visit. Here’s this week’s contribution:
Homily for Pentecost (C)
Today’s feast of Pentecost is a great reminder to give credit where credit is due. For us Christians, both as individuals and as a Church, credit is due to the Holy Spirit.
This is something that is easy to forget because the Holy Spirit, being spirit, is unseen. The Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity, becomes visible to us in the Incarnation. And in the Gospel, Jesus explains that when we see him, we see the Father. He makes God accessible to us in a visible, human way. Not everyone who sees Jesus, of course, recognizes him as God. Recognizing Jesus for who he is requires a certain openness from us, and, for some people—probably for most—it requires being opened up by the Holy Spirit. It requires the Holy Spirit to break through our blindness.
The necessity of the Holy Spirit’s intervention is made especially clear in the events we celebrate today. Jesus promises to send the Holy Spirit to his disciples after the Ascension. They certainly need it. We remember, of course, the behavior of the apostles at the time of the crucifixion—Peter denying Christ and the rest of the group scattering. Even after the Resurrection, the disciples seem uncertain. Out of fear, they lock themselves indoors. After the Ascension, they seem dumfounded by the event and require two angels to appear and shake them from their paralysis. I can’t blame them, actually; the events that they had witnessed were beyond any human experience. Knowing how to respond to them was beyond any normal human capacity. They needed the Spirit that Christ would send.
Even though we don’t see the Spirit himself, when he comes, we recognize him in the transformation that he works. The signs of his presence—fire and wind—alert us that change is afoot. It is a deep change, not a superficial paint job. The Holy Spirit does not leave us as we are.
In fact, immediately after the reading from today’s Gospel, Peter—who had proven himself so unreliable on Good Friday—stands up and gives voice to his faith in Jesus with a boldness and wisdom that drives his listeners to conversion. He has been transformed from within. The gift of tongues and of understanding that we see in the disciples gathered from every nation is also beyond explanation on purely human terms. It is the Spirit’s work.
We sometimes speak of Pentecost as the celebration of the birthday of the Church. It’s an occasion to remember that it is the Holy Spirit that has sustained the Church through the centuries—through persecutions, wars, schisms, and too many self-inflicted wounds. Today’s Gospel reminds us that when our human weakness and sinfulness get the better of us, the Holy Spirit will sustain us. Jesus links the forgiveness of sins to the presence of the Spirit—with the Spirit’s authority—in the Church. “Receive the Holy Spirit,” he tells his apostles. “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”
The Holy Spirit is patient, kind, and powerful. He is the source of our life, our zeal, and the bottomless font of mercy on which the life of the Church—and of every Christian—depends. His work is most often hidden, but Pentecost is a day to give thanks for that silent work within us.
Readings: Acts 2:1-11; 1 Cor 12:3b-7, 12-13; John 20:19-23
June 8, 2025
Tony Lusvardi, S.J. 