(Go to readings for Pentecost Sunday)

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It is said that humanity is a question. And God is the answer. Throughout Christianity from the first centuries to now, there have always been people who have suggested that we should just jettison the Old Testament, because Jesus is all we need. But the Old Testament is a question. And the New Testament is the answer.

In the opening pages of salvation history, humanity is given all that we need to flourish. But we accepted the lie that we have to distrust and bypass God and his word to get what we really want. And because of that, we found out that God had really provided what we really want, and we lost it by trying to avoid him. Our encounter with him then filled us with shame at our disgrace. As Deacon Michael often says, the effect of the original sin was not so much the addition of sin to our nature, but the subtraction of the original holiness we were given and told to protect.

A few chapters later, humanity conspires to try to seize through violence what we had lost. The Tower of Babel is symbolic and symptomatic of humanity’s willful and prideful desire to reclaim paradise by bypassing the only true way to get it: we have to receive it, as a gift, from God. As a result of attempting to raise our might against the might of God, the result was the chaos (in Hebrew, “bavel”) that divided the nations into groups unintelligible and foreign to each other—not as a punishment from God, but as a natural consequence of the disordered intent of our disordered human nature.

Of course, we can see this as a spiritualized explanation of why the nations of the world speak different languages. And we know from linguistic studies and philology how different languages developed. But the bible is not telling a false story, but rather a true story from the point of view of an ancient religious society, Israel, who saw God as the prime mover of the human story, for the one and the many. And from that perspective, the genesis of the world as we know it, full of sin, division, violence, and suffering, is because humanity, created in and for original goodness, rebelled against the good Creator.

Where does that leave us then? What is the answer to the human question? One Sunday morning, a pastor of a church was invited into the Sunday school class to share a lesson. When all of the children were seated and quiet, for sake of an illustration, the pastor began describing a squirrel. He started out by saying, “I am going to describe something and I want you to raise your hand when you know what it is.” The children nodded eagerly. The pastor continued, “This thing lives in trees… and it eats nuts… and it has a long bushy tail…” No hands went up. The pastor was shocked. Finally, one little boy tentatively raised his hand. The pastor breathed a sigh of relief and called on him. The boy said, “Well, it sounds an awful lot like a squirrel to me… but I know the answer must be Jesus!”

Correct! Our answer is Jesus. The promised the long-awaited divine messiah, who would be the good creator, God, who would come into our humanity and restore the world from the mess we’ve made of it, including ourselves. Jesus in his Easter (or Paschal) mystery—his suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension—accomplishes our rescue, our salvation. And through the gift of the Holy Spirit into the Church, what Jesus accomplished ripples out into all humanity. Father Mike Schmitz, in his “Catechism in a Year,” repeated the phrase, “What Jesus made possible, the Holy Spirit made actual.” And this is how Jesus answers our question.

Just as the Easter (or Paschal) mystery begins the Easter season, Pentecost is the end and fulfillment of the Easter season. Passover was a pilgrim festival, one of the feasts of the Jewish calendar in which God’s people were called to make a pilgrimage to celebrate the feast at the Jerusalem temple. So also, fifty days later was the pilgrim feast of Shavuot, a harvest festival, the Feast of Weeks. Seven weeks of seven days (49), plus one, after Passover, called in Greek, “Pentecost” meaning the “fiftieth” day. As Passover was the ritual memorial of Israel’s rescue from captivity in Egypt, Pentecost was celebrated as the day at Mount Sinai that Israel entered into the covenant with God to be his holy people, and received the divine gift of the mosaic law, which, if followed, would allow them to be a uniquely blessed society flourishing with justice and peace.

And so it no coincidence that the descent of the Holy Spirit, the revelation of the third person of the Holy Trinity, presented himself as a rushing wind, the divine breath, and as tongues of fire (reminiscent of the fire that surrounded the top of Mount Sinai as the presence of God) which lighted upon the disciples of Jesus, transforming their hearts, not with the law of Moses written on stone tablets, but writing the law of Christ on the flesh of their hearts. They were now Apostles, those “sent” by Jesus, as Jesus had been sent by the Father, to set the world afire by the divine presence within them. This is the birthday of the Church. Pentecost is the big bang of the new creation.

And so the first thing they did was to go out and preach the good news to all those gathered in Jerusalem from every nation and language, and what they said was miraculously understood by everyone. Why? Because the Church had now received in humility God’s blessing of his holiness in them as a gift. The day of Pentecost is the reversal of the Tower of Babel. Their tongues were united in every language to praise and share the glorious gift of God. Note the change in attitude of the crowd; from confused, to astounded, to amazed. And these pilgrims would of course return to their homes around the world and share their experience of what they saw and heard. This is the initiation of the gospel being brought to all the ends of the earth.

Our psalm, our only reading today from the Old Testament, is a prayer asking for this renewal. “Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.” That is a prayer for God to renew creation through the gift of his Spirit. If you look at the beginning of creation, God’s Spirit hovers over the waters of primordial chaos. And by his word, he creates the world.  So this psalm is a prayer for God’s Spirit to renew creation. The Old Testament is a question. The New Testament is the answer.

In our second reading, Saint Paul is teaching the Church about the gifts (and fruits) of the Holy Spirit and how these gifts are to be used to promote the common good. He points out that the human body needs different parts to perform different functions; all of which benefit the body. Since the Church is the Body of Christ, it too is formed of many different members who are to work together for the benefit of the whole.

In the Catechism, in paragraph 768, we read these words in the section on the Holy Spirit, the article of the Creed “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” It says: So that she can fulfill her mission, the Holy Spirit “bestows upon [the Church] varied hierarchic and charismatic gifts, and in this way directs her.” And related to that, the Catechism describes grace: “Grace is first and foremost the gift of the Spirit who justifies and sanctifies us. But grace also includes the gifts that the Spirit grants us to associate us with his work, to enable us to collaborate in the salvation of others and in the growth of the Body of Christ, the Church. There are sacramental graces, gifts proper to the different sacraments. There are furthermore special graces, also called charisms after the Greek term used by St. Paul and meaning ‘favor,’ ‘gratuitous gift,’ ‘benefit.’ Whatever their character… charisms are oriented toward sanctifying grace and are intended for the common good of the Church. They are at the service of charity which builds up the Church.” Since we just celebrated on Wednesday the Feast of St. Bernardine of Siena, he has a very fitting quote to conclude this section: “When the divine favor chooses someone to receive a special grace, or to accept a lofty vocation, God adorns the person chosen with all the gifts of the Spirit needed to fulfil the task at hand.” So, whether you’re called to be a parent, a pastor, a president, a painter, a paramedic, or a pope, God will give you what you need from him to fulfill, and be fulfilled, in that call.

The Gospel reading of course isn’t about Pentecost, because it doesn’t appear in the gospels; it only appears in our first reading, from the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles. Our gospel reading is from John, of an initial outpouring of the Holy Spirit by Jesus on the first evening of the resurrection, giving the apostles the authority to forgive or bind sins in his name. I want to consider not the Gospel of John, but the Gospel of Luke. Because we know that Saint Luke also wrote a second book: the Acts of the Apostles. They have the same introduction, the same vocabulary, and the same structure. And the point Luke is making in the parallelism of these two books is that the Church is the continuation of Christ in the world. The Gospel book ends, and the Book of Acts begins, with the Ascension. And then immediately after that, well 10 days after that, is Pentecost, with the Blessed Mother, as the church is given birth in its mission to bring the good news and the grace of God won by Christ, and poured out by the Holy Spirit, to all the world. The Holy Spirit is the active principle of the Church, like the soul, uniting the members into the Body of Christ. The Spirit of unity, the spirit of divine love, within and among us.

The Holy Spirit is also what empowers the Sacraments of the Church. Every Sacrament has an epiclesis—a calling down of the Holy Spirit to be the active agent of the celebration of the various seven sacraments: Through Baptism He makes us children of God, temples of the Holy Spirit, and heirs of Heaven. Through Confirmation, He makes us courageous witnesses and defenders of the Faith. Through the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Anointing, He enables us to be reconciled with God by the forgiveness of our sins. Through the Sacrifice and Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, He gives us spiritual nourishment by changing bread and wine into Jesus’ Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. And through the Sacraments of holy orders and matrimony, He makes the community holy with the call to self-giving service in life-giving love to one another.

All of these things were instituted by Christ, and given to us through the Holy Spirit, guiding us as the Church. What Jesus makes possible, the Holy Spirit makes actual, inviting us to participate personally and actively in the new life made available by Christ. Pentecost is our invitation to continue in ourselves the presence, life, and ministry of Jesus. By the Holy Spirit of his love, he gives us the power to deny ourselves, pick up our cross, and follow him. We are a question, and through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, Jesus is the answer.