What we remember, we keep alive
June 8, 2025 – Pentecost Sunday
Readings: Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 104, R. Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13; Gospel – John 20: 19-23
With the Feast of the Pentecost, we complete the four events that make up the Paschal Mystery: the Cross, the Resurrection, the Ascension of Our Lord, and the sending of the Holy Spirit.
It will be good to go back to some of the points we reflected on in the final discourse that referred to the promised Spirit or Advocate the Lord will send to teach and remind us of everything the Lord had told his disciples. This is our first point for reflection.
The second point is the peace the Risen Lord gives. The third and final point is the missioning.
The two narratives that are considered the birth of the church are when blood and water came out of the pierced side of Jesus on the Cross, and the Pentecost.
The sending of the Spirit ushers in the missionary activity of the church. As the Lord instructed last Sunday in the Ascension, his disciples were to wait in Jerusalem for this moment.
This is why it is important to go back to the promise of the Spirit to teach us and to remind us of everything about Jesus—what he preached and what he did.
This is the mission we are to continue. Thus, a growing understanding of his word and work is an important grace that comes to us through the Spirit.
Coupled with this grace of a growing understanding is the grace of remembering, and being reminded of everything about Jesus.
Recall the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, how Jesus reminded the two disciples of everything written about him, and the prophecies of his Cross and Resurrection.
This reminding, the act of remembering, made the hearts of the two disciples once more burn within them. As our tradition tells us, what we remember, we keep alive.
This is how important the teaching and reminding functions of the Spirit are. It is the interior engine that gives life and impetus to the mission of the church, as well as our own sense of mission.
Silence and solitude
The second gift of the Lord is his peace, a peace that only the Risen Lord can give. The Lord gives this through the Spirit.
As we have reflected on time and again, we live in the era of the Spirit of the Risen Lord. Everything comes to us through the Spirit.
The Spirit of Peace is what anchors us as we go through the daily grind of life. This gift is vividly described in the prayer, “Desiderata.”
“Go placidly amidst the noise and haste, and remember what peace there is in silence.”
It is the silence and solitude in and of the Spirit that is the source of the peace of the Risen Lord.
Finally, the gift of mission, the mission from the Lord and the Father. It is a mission that is a sharing in the mission of the Lord. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” (cf. John 20: 19-23)
In this missioning we become the new creation in and with the Lord as “he breathed on [us] . . . ‘receive the Holy Spirit.’”
It is this Spirit that becomes the source and animating power of our mission, the power to forgive sins and to reconcile humanity and the whole of creation to God.
This mission is very much lived out in two sacraments, the Holy Mass and confession. While all ministries are potentially channels of this mission to reconcile and forgive, there is a special grace in these two sacraments.
At Holy Mass, in our remembering the saving mystery of our faith, the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus, we keep alive and present the grace of our redemption in our midst.
At confession, the formula of absolution powerfully summarizes this mission and its grace: “God, the Father of mercies, through the death and Resurrection of his Son has reconciled the world to himself and poured out the Holy Spirit for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God grant you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
After weeks of seasons of grace during Lent and Easter, we now are sent into the world, and powered by the Holy Spirit to “tell the world of his love.”
