{"id":1093,"date":"2013-05-23T06:33:59","date_gmt":"2013-05-23T10:33:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/?p=1093"},"modified":"2013-05-23T06:33:59","modified_gmt":"2013-05-23T10:33:59","slug":"pentecost-the-holy-spirit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/pentecost-the-holy-spirit\/","title":{"rendered":"Pentecost & the Holy Spirit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pentecost, Year C<\/a>
\nActs 2:1-11
\n1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13
\nJohn 20:19-23
\nMay 19, 2013<\/p>\n

Today we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit.\u00a0 It is a gift because of what it means for us.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a gift in part because of the gifts we receive from the Holy Spirit, gifts of knowledge, understanding, wisdom, courage, good judgment, piety, and fear of the Lord as found in Isaiah 11.\u00a0 There are the fruits of the Holy Spirit that Paul speaks of in his Letter to the Galatians.\u00a0 There is also unity that we receive with God and each other by our sharing in the Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n

It is the unity that we speak of at the end of the Opening Prayer almost everyone time at Mass when I say, Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit<\/b>, one God for ever and ever.<\/i>\u00a0 Or in the doxology at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer, Through him, and in him, and with him, O God, almighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit<\/b>, all glory and honor is yours, for\u00a0ever and ever.<\/i><\/p>\n

We can see the unity that the Holy Spirit creates coming in our first reading that tells of Pentecost.\u00a0 The Holy Spirit arrives as a \u201cstrong driving wind\u201d and appears as \u201ctongues of fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the Holy Spirit comes down on the disciples, they begin to speak in tongues.\u00a0 The people gathered there each hear them in their own tongue.<\/p>\n

Remember the story of the Tower of Babel?<\/p>\n

The people were trying to build a tower to heaven to raise their own status.\u00a0 God destroys the tower and scatters them in different languages.<\/p>\n

Now, the Holy Spirit restores that unity that was broken by the people\u2019s sin of pride.\u00a0 The Holy Spirit makes it possible for the disciples to reach across language barriers to speak to people of every tongue bringing unity<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Jesus\u2019 first disciples received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.\u00a0 We receive it in Baptism and sealed with the Holy Spirit at Confirmation but the Holy Spirit is at work in all the sacraments.<\/p>\n

The Mass we celebrate is no exception.\u00a0 The Holy Spirit is what makes the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus possible.<\/p>\n

Think of the words in the Third Eucharistic Prayer:<\/p>\n

Therefore, O Lord, we humbly implore you: by the same Spirit graciously make holy these gifts we have brought to you for consecration, that they may become the Body and Blood of your Son our Lord Jesus Christ at whose command we celebrate these mysteries.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i>But it is not just the bread and wine that are transformed by the Holy Spirit, further along in the Third Eucharistic Prayer we hear:<\/p>\n

grant that we, who are nourished by the Body and Blood of your Son and filled with his Holy Spirit, may become one body, one spirit in Christ.<\/i><\/p>\n

We too are to be transformed into, as Paul writes, \u2018one body in Christ\u2019 united in \u2018one spirit\u2019 to follow Jesus.<\/p>\n

What is the one thing that can keep us from becoming the Body of Christ?<\/p>\n

Us.<\/p>\n

We need to be open to the Holy Spirit.\u00a0 We need to share the credit for the good that we do with God.\u00a0 If we think we do it all ourselves we are mistaken and live with a hardened heart that keeps us from seeing the Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n

The Holy Spirit can be working in our lives in the ways we don\u2019t even realize or appreciate.\u00a0 Last Tuesday, when I was giving a presentation on the Holy Spirit, one man spoke of how the \u2018Spirit gave him his wife.\u2019<\/p>\n

Would you see the spirit as active in drawing you to your spouse or did you find them on your own?\u00a0 (Of course, this doesn\u2019t mean if you don\u2019t like your spouse that God gave you a bad one.\u00a0 A bad spouse might mean someone wasn\u2019t listening to the Holy Spirit.)<\/p>\n

Where do you see the Spirit at work in your life?<\/p>\n

If you can\u2019t, here is what I suggest for you to begin with.\u00a0 At the end of each day, take a few minutes, either simply in your thoughts or in a journal, think about how the day went.\u00a0 What went bad, what went well, what went better than expected?\u00a0 Where was God in the good?\u00a0 How was God present in the bad?\u00a0 That\u2019s the Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pentecost, Year C Acts 2:1-11 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13 John 20:19-23 May 19, 2013 Today we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit.\u00a0 It is a gift because of what it means for us. It\u2019s a gift in part because of the gifts we receive from the Holy Spirit, gifts of knowledge, understanding, wisdom, courage, …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Pentecost & the Holy Spirit’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pMTPk-hD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1093"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1098,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093\/revisions\/1098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}