Good morning!  Happy birthday! Pentecost Sunday celebrates the beginning of the Church and marks the end of the Easter season with the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise of the gift of the Holy Spirit: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever…. the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.” (Gospel)

A recent book entitled, A Brief History of Humankind: Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari, describes how 150,000 thousand years ago our species Homo sapiens inhabited a small corner of Africa. Sapiens coexisted with other species of Homo such as the Neanderthals. The Neanderthals coexisted with Sapiens for thousands of years and eventually died out although all present day humans have a small percentage of their genome derived from this species of man.  The author speculates that Sapiens survived because of language: they had developed a very rich language for social communication.  This enabled them to form communities.  Although most experts agree that animals, to varying degrees, have some sort of language, it is a language rooted in the here and now and is mainly concerned with survival.  Human language on the other hand enables us to build communities, to develop the arts and the sciences, to dream and imagine, to think of the past and its history and dream of the future which has not yet occurred.  Our language enables us to communicate our relationship with a creator God and with each other.  Jesus used human language to speak of his Father and his Father’s kingdom of justice and peace.  Jesus used language to tell simple stories (parables) and to bless.  We are meant for relationship and live within a web of meaning enshrined in our language.

Luke in the Second part of his writings, the Acts of the Apostles tells us of the early Church evangelizing and spreading the Good News, first to fellow Jews and then the gentiles. In Acts, we hear the incredible stories of Paul, Peter, Barnabas, Silas, Timothy, Lydia, Priscilla—all individuals who evangelized their communities, who spread the Good News far and wide.  Despite many obstacles, Paul, for example, travelled throughout the Roman empire walking thousands of miles to communicate the Lord’s message of love and forgiveness. The Holy Spirit described in our First Reading made this incredible evangelization possible.  It was a powerful experience: “And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind…divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them and a tongue rested on each of them.”  I was struck in reading this passage that Luke does not say a flame of fire appeared on each of the apostles’ heads but rather a “tongue”. The Holy Spirit gives to them and to us a fiery tongue to speak with, the ability to communicate the wonderful news of Jesus’ resurrection-- the confirmation that Jesus spoke in the Father’s name.  Our reading tells us that this new gift of communication was to speak about “God’s deeds of power”.  This communication is meant for all people of all times and cultures: “Amazed and astonished, how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own language…in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”(First Reading).  Through the spreading of the Good News, through the evangelization we are called to, the world will be changed. “Send forth your Spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of the earth.”

There is an interesting contrast between this first Pentecost and the story of the Tower of Babel in the book of Genesis (Chapter 11).  ‘Babel’ in Hebrew means confusion, the cacophony of many voices speaking in different languages. Because there were many languages not understood by all, there was no communication. ‘Babel’ in Babylonian meant the ‘gate of heaven’.  This story speaks of a constant temptation for all of us-the temptation to think we are self-sufficient. We have no need of God because we will be our own god. We will build a tower and storm God’s Kingdom ourselves—no need for God to bring us into his kingdom.   This is an ancient temptation –recall the serpent’s words in the garden:, “God knows well that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods…”(Genesis 2). When our ego takes over and considers its desires only, then communication breaks down and community, care for the other, collapses.  “The Lord said: If now, while they are one people and all have the same language, they have started to do this, nothing they presume to do will be out of their reach. Come, let us go down and confuse their language, so no one will understand the speech of another.”  This confusion, miscommunication, is now reversed at Pentecost by the Holy Spirit who creates harmony.  This is what Paul teaches us in the Second Reading from Corinthians.  “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord.” –in other words, community.  The Holy Spirit creates the community which as one commentator puts it is not an “ ‘intentional community’ in the sense that we decided to create it, but is the web of relationships into which God has called us—for our own good and the good of the world.” (Preaching Resources, Pentecost 2016)

Our journey through life is the movement from being enclosed in my own ego to being concerned with community, with the other.  No one is better than another in God’s eyes.  Everyone is given a gift to communicate.  “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” The tongue of fire rests on each of us so that through the holy Spirit received in our baptism we can use our unique gift for the other.  St. Paul reminds us in Corinthians that no matter what gift we have been given, it is meaningless unless it is driven by love.

If I speak in human and angelic tongues, if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge, if I have faith to move mountains, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” Paul then gives us the template for exercising our gifts in the communities we live in: his famous discourse—Love is patient, is kind, is not jealous, is not rude, does not judge.   It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Pope Francis in The Joy of the Gospel speaks of the many ways in which we can evangelize our communities, especially speaking for and defending the most vulnerable in our society.  He speaks of the many different groups of the poor in our world: those who live in poverty without the means to live a life of dignity, those who are trafficked in various ways, migrants and refugees, single mothers and women exposed to violence. But I want to draw to your attention of one category of the poor in our own country who are ignored.  I speak of those who are dying and the unborn both of whom are threatened in Canada by laws legalizing euthanasia and the very widespread practice of abortion.  Here is an area that requires evangelization:

Among the vulnerable for whom the Church wishes to care with particular love and concern are unborn children, the most defenseless and innocent among us.  Nowadays efforts are made to deny them their human dignity and to do with them whatever one pleases, taking their lives and passing laws preventing anyone from standing in the way.  Frequently, as a way of ridiculing the Church’s effort to defend their lives, attempts are made to present her position as ideological, obscurantist and conservative.  Yet this defense of unborn life is closely linked to the defense of each and every other human right.  It involves the conviction that a human being is always sacred and inviolable, in any situation and at every stage of development. (#213). 

The same words could apply to euthanasia. (Write to your MP opposing Bill C-14)

On this Pentecost Sunday in the year 2016, let us welcome the Spirit into our lives and pray that we be transformed into fearless preachers of the Good News always remembering that ‘preaching’ is not done with words but with our lives and how we live them.  Let us be truly grateful for the great gift Jesus gave us: his very own Spirit.  The darkness will never overcome the tongues of fire on each of our heads : “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love you, and we will come to you and make our home with you.” One commentator says this:” Love of Christ implies keeping his word. Keeping Christ’s word brings us into the domain of God’s love to such a degree that God actually dwells in us and frees us. God’s indwelling and our freedom will never be a fait accompli but a continual process of growth.” (Preaching Resources May 15 2016)

I conclude with a poem from the Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, which speaks of the Holy Spirit, entitled, God’s Grandeur: