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Pentecost (C)

June 08, 2025

Fr. John Colacino C.PP.S.

Introit

Kyrie

Gloria

Collect

O God, who by the mystery of today’s great feast
sanctify your whole Church in every people and nation,
pour out, we pray, the gifts of the Holy Spirit
across the face of the earth
and, with the divine grace that was at work
when the Gospel was first proclaimed,
fill now once more the hearts of believers.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.

First Reading Acts 2:1-11

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. 5 Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6 And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because all heard them speaking in their own languages. 7 Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own language? 9 Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts, 11 Cretans and Arabs— in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”

Responsorial Psalm 104:1,24,29-30,31,34

R/. Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.

Second Reading Rom 8:8-17

Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9 But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you. 12 So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— 13 for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. 15 For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16 it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ— if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

Sequence Veni, Sancte Spiritus

Come, Holy Spirit, come!
And from your celestial home

Shed a ray of light divine!
Come, Father of the poor!
Come, source of all our store!
Come, within our bosoms shine.

You, of comforters the best;
You, the soul's most welcome guest;
Sweet refreshment here below;
In our labor, rest most sweet;
Grateful coolness in the heat;
Solace in the midst of woe.

O most blessed Light divine,
Shine within these hearts of yours,
And our inmost being fill!
Where you are not, we have naught,
Nothing good in deed or thought,
Nothing free from taint of ill.

Heal our wounds, our strength renew;
On our dryness pour your dew;
Wash the stains of guilt away:
Bend the stubborn heart and will;
Melt the frozen, warm the chill;
Guide the steps that go astray.

On the faithful, who adore
And confess you, evermore
In your sevenfold gift descend;
Give them virtue's sure reward;
Give them your salvation, Lord;
Give them joys that never end. Amen.

Alleluia

Gospel Jn 20:19-23

Jesus spoke to the disciples: 15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. 23 “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. 24 Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me. 25 “I have said these things to you while I am still with you. 26 But the Advocate, 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.”

Catena Nova

Every Catholic knows that today’s solemnity ranks as one of the principal feasts of the Church. The reverence due to it is beyond all question, because this day is consecrated by the most sublime and wonderful gift of the Holy Spirit. Ten days after the Lord ascended high above the heavens to sit at the right hand of God the Father, and fifty days after his resurrection, on the very same day of the week as this joyful season began, the day of Pentecost has dawned upon us. In itself the feast of Pentecost contains great mysteries relating to the old dispensation as well as to the new, signs which clearly show that grace was heralded by the law and the law fulfilled by grace. O how swift is the word of wisdom, and where God is master how quickly the lesson is learnt! Fifty days after the sacrifice of the lamb marking the deliverance of the Hebrews from the Egyptians, the law was given on Mount Sinai; and fifty days from the raising up of Christ after his passion and immolation as the true lamb of God, the Holy Spirit came down upon the apostles and assembled believers....And so, ever since that day, the clarion call of the gospel has rung out; since the day of Pentecost a rain of charisms, a river of blessings, has watered every desert and dry land, for the Spirit of God has swept over the waters to renew the face of the earth, and a blaze of new light has shone out to dispel our former darkness. In the light of those flaming tongues the word of the Lord has shone out clearly, and a fiery eloquence has been enkindled which is charged with the energy to enlighten, the ability to create understanding, and the power to bum away sin and destroy it. (Pope St. Leo the Great)

I am the fiery life of the Divine essence: I flame above the beauty of the fields; I shine in the waters; I burn in the sun, the moon, and the stars. And, with the airy wind, I quicken all things vitally by an unseen, all-sustaining life. (St. Hildegard of Bingen)

Love flows from God into man,
Like a bird
Who rivers the air
Without moving her wings.
Thus we move in His world,
One in body and soul,
Though outwardly separate in form.
As the Source strikes the note,
Humanity sings--
The Holy Spirit is our harpist,
And all strings
Which are touched in Love
Must sound.(St. Mechtild of Magdeburg)

   The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
    Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
    To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
    We only live, only suspire
    Consumed by either fire or fire. (T.S. Eliot)

O Holy Spirit, we should be thankful to you so many times, and yet we thank you so rarely. Though we are consoled to know that you are one with Jesus and the Father, this does not justify us. We want to be near you….Greatest consoler, sweet guest of our soul, you refresh our lives. You are Light, Joy, Beauty. You attract us, inflame our hearts, and inspire our thoughts. You help us to live lives committed to holiness. You accomplish in us what many sermons would not have taught. You sanctify us. Holy Spirit, you are so gentle and at the same time strong and overwhelming. You blow like a light breeze which few know how to listen to. Look at our lack of finesse and make us receptive to your grace. May no day pass in which we don’t invoke you and thank you, adore you and love you, listen to your voice. This grace we ask from you. And wrap us in the great light of your love, especially in our darkest hour, when the vision of this life will come to a close and dissolve itself into the next. (Chiara Lubich)

There are multiple names for God the Holy Spirit. I think the most beautiful is “comforter” and then comes “source of life”. When we pray for the coming of the Spirit, we open ourselves to God’s expectations of us and we let the energy that is the Spirit flow into us so we can fulfill them. Even if you can as yet only groan for salvation and then be silent, already the Spirit is groaning with and interceding for you. One of the first signs of new life is this praying and groaning for the Spirit to open up our lives of imprisonment in a devastated world to which the Spirit can and will bring a new kind of living. The response to this prayer is the Spirit’s coming and abiding. The Spirit is poured out and dwells in us. If you pray for the Spirit to come into your heart, into your community, and upon our earth you aren’t seeking to flee into heaven or
to be removed to whatever is beyond.... This sort of praying is a magnificent affirmation of life. Human beings are fragile, and so is all earthly being, and the Divine Spirit comes to lift all up and make new all that is good, starting with each of us. Then our coming to one another can be a coming of the Holy Spirit. (Jurgen Moltmann)

The Spirit is like wind, fire, water. The Spirit is none of the above in reality, yet all of these metaphors set up an impression. Each one points to the nearness of God to each one of us and the whole creation. They symbolize in a poetic way that God is intimately involved with the world, so intimate that, as Augustine wrote, God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves....The Spirit is simply God’s self-communication in grace, present and active everywhere, pervading the world. This basic but profound reality bears repeating today, because so many do not experience God’s nearness but think of God as distant or even unreal. This is most unfortunate. Through the Spirit, the risen Christ is universally present in the world everywhere and in every moment, as pervasive as the air we breathe, as the sun or the rain that comes down on us, as the wind that blows around us, as the life that flows with our every breath. (Elizabeth Johnson)

Homily

Like his weekly audiences on Wednesday, normally a series of catecheses on some theme, the pope also gives a brief homily on Sundays from his apartment window based on the day's readings. Neither of these more informal teachings get much attention even though they are often well worth hearing. For example, on the last Sunday of May Pope Leo offered the following reflection suitable for Pentecost:

[I]f we remain in [Jesus'] love, he comes to dwell in us and our life will become a temple of God. His love enlightens us, influences the way we think and act, spreads outwards to others and embraces every situation in our lives. This dwelling of God within us, brothers and sisters, is precisely the gift of the Holy Spirit, who takes us by the hand and enables us to experience God’s presence and closeness amid our daily lives, for he makes us his home. It is wonderful to think that, when we consider our individual calling, the situations we encounter and the people entrusted to our care, our commitments and responsibilities, and our service in the Church, each of us can say with confidence: “Despite my weakness, the Lord is not ashamed of my humanity. Instead, he comes to dwell within me. He accompanies me with his Spirit; he enlightens me and makes me an instrument of his love for others, for society and for the world." ….on the basis of that promise, let us walk in the joy born of faith, in order to become a holy temple of the Lord. Let us resolve to bring his love everywhere, never forgetting that each of our sisters and brothers is a dwelling place of God and that his presence is manifested above all in the little ones, in the poor and the suffering, who ask us to be thoughtful and compassionate Christians. (Regina caeli; May 25, 2025)

Now if we were able, even for the space of a day, to see everyone we meet as carrying within themselves the very Godhead whom we adore with greater ease here in the liturgy, then the transformation of humanity that began on Pentecost would advance considerably, no? Of course, that's easier said than done and I would be the first to fail the challenge, probably within minutes, much less a whole day — especially if I have to drive someplace!

And in this way, I would prove I am still in the flesh. That's Paul's way of speaking of those tendencies still at work in us, despite the gift of the Spirit, which bind us to a spirit of slavery rather than the spirit of adoption as God's children which is our re-birthright (cf. II). Or in John's words, a failure to keep Jesus' words (G) and, especially, his commandment to love one another.

Yet, while recognizing other people as temples of the Holy Spirit is a laudable discipline, and a good barometer of our spiritual state, it's not enough. For one thing, the Spirit of Pentecost was poured out on the whole human race — and not just people in our vicinity — as seen in that crowd form every corner of the known world.

And if that crowd were gathered today, we might say they were from Venezuela, Haiti, Nicaragua, Yemen, Gaza, Ukraine, Cuba, China, Mexico, Afghanastan, and Cameroon. Which is why we sometimes call Pentecost the birthday of the catholic, or universal, Church — we're everywhere, as they say. And all these people — children of God, joint heirs with Christ, and temples of the Holy Spirit —have an equal claim on our "thoughtfulness and compassion," no less than the people I might meet in the course of a day or who belong to my tribe.

So this includes the estimated 300,000 people — mostly children — who have died as a result of foreign aid cuts by our government such as people with HIV in Kenya who no longer have access to antiviral medication; refugees in Kenya and South Sudan who no longer have food aid causing severe malnutrition and deaths; and victims of crime, sexual violence and human trafficking in Malawi owing to funding cuts. These are just a few sectors of humanity, endowed with the Spirit, who suffer because we as a country are still in the flesh.

Then there's the scandal of a reputed member of the Orthodox Church, with the backing of the Patriarch of Moscow, who has killed tens of thousands of other Orthodox Christians in Ukraine — each one a desecrated temple of the Holy Spirit.

And then tens of thousands of people descended from the "Arabs" present in Jerusalem on the first Pentecost are facing starvation at the hands of a government intent on ethnic cleansing, if not genocide. Their ancestors were in Jerusalem celebrating the Jewish festival of Shavuot when God gave the Torah to Moses on Mt. Sinai. And in the Law of Moses one finds repeated injunctions not to oppress foreigners dwelling in the land promised to the Jews.

As a contemporary scholar of Torah, David Marcus writes: "Because of our bitter experience in other lands, we must ensure that all present-day strangers in the modern State of Israel will not be subject to discrimination or coercion, and that the religious sensibilities of all minorities will be respected. For the Torah tells us never to forget that once we too “were strangers in the land of Egypt." The same might be said, by the way, about so-called Christians in the United States, Catholics included, who claim to be the spiritual heirs of the Elder Covenant with their support of draconian policies affecting immigrants to this country, many from the countries I mentioned earlier.

So on this Pentecost, as we pray the gifts of the Spirit be poured out across the face of the earth (Collect) and as we celebrate the sacrament of unity making us, the church, a sign to the world of the unity of the whole human race, let the only flesh we find ourselves "in" be the flesh of Christ which we consume, imbuing us with the Spirit of the One who raised him from the dead, and now dwelling in us his members. Who lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen.

Intercessions (Cf. The Sunday Web Site; Joe Milner)

For the Church: that we may always be attentive to the creative work of the Spirit so that many may encounter Christ without unnecessary burdens.

For the peace of Christ in our hearts: that we may abide in the Spirit’s peace which surpasses all understanding and find strength to face the many challenges that arise in daily life.

For discernment: that the Holy Spirit will remind us of all the Jesus taught and help us apply it in our lives and to the challenges of our society.

For the growth of Christian community: that we may appreciate the gift of community, find support and encouragement within it, and work to enhance it.

For all who are burdened by fear or anxiety: that the Spirit will free them so that they may live life fully and offer their gifts in the service of their brothers and sisters.

For all who await the fulfillment of God’s promises: that God will lead refugees to places of safety, protect those facing persecution, and give peace to those with terminal illnesses.

For all who are ill or recovering from injuries: that God will heal the sick, provide quick recovery for those who have been wounded, and heal hearts from painful experiences.

For world leaders: that God will guide those working for peace, open new ways to resolve disputes, and help them remember that all life is sacred.

For peace: that God will turn hearts from violence in our cities, open new resources to address painful issues, and help everyone’s voice to be respected.

Send down, O God, upon your people the flame of your Holy Spirit, and fill with the abundance of your sevenfold gift the Church you brought forth from your Son’s pierced side. May your life-giving Spirit lend fire to our words and strength to our witness. Send us forth to the nations of the world to proclaim with boldness your wondrous work
of raising Christ to your right hand. We make our prayer through Christ our Lord. Amen. (ICEL; 1998)

Offertory Antiphon

Offertory Hymn (Richard Proulx)

Draw us in the Spirit’s tether; For when humbly, in thy name,
Two or three are met together, Thou art in the midst of them:
Alleluya! Alleluya! Touch we now thy garment’s hem.

As the brethren used to gather In the name of Christ to sup,
Then with thanks to God the Father Break the bread and bless the cup,
Alleluya! Alleluya! So knit thou our friendship up.

All our meals and all our living Make us sacraments of thee,
That be caring, helping, giving, We may true disciples be.
Alleluya! Alleluya! We will serve thee faithfully.

Communion Antiphon

Closing Hymn

Holy Spirit, ever dwelling in the holiest realms of light,
Holy Spirit, ever brooding o'er a world of gloom and night,
Holy Spirit, ever raising those of earth to thrones on high,
living, life-imparting Spirit, you we praise and magnify.

Holy Spirit, ever living as the Church's very life,
Holy Spirit, ever striving through us in a ceaseless strife,
Holy Spirit, ever forming in the Church the mind of Christ,
you we praise with endless worship for your gracious gifts unpriced.

Holy Spirit, ever working through the Church's ministry,
teaching, strength'ning, and absolving, setting captive sinners free,
Holy Spirit, ever binding age to age and soul to soul
in communion never ending, you we worship and extol.

Gospel Jn 20:19-23

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