Gospel Reflection
Pentecost Sunday
8 June 2025, Church Year C

The Ernstfall
By Fr. Joseph M. Rampino


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In celebrating the great solemnity of Pentecost today, the church turns her mind to consider perhaps the most mysterious, and certainly most overlooked person of the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Spirit.

So often, Christians associate the Holy Spirit and his action with religious enthusiasm, with exotic spiritual gifts, with mystical experiences, with the unexpected, the unforeseen, the unpredictable, with that which rules and rigid thoughts cannot contain. This perception does certainly touch on some truth; the Holy Spirit does sometimes move souls in ways that are outwardly incredible, or defy easy understanding, and has led the church through trials of this world along routes that human wisdom could not have found. Nevertheless, if we focus too much on these exotic effects, we might miss the most profound and pervasive ways in which he acts. Thankfully, the Gospel passage for today draws our attention directly to that which the Holy Spirit accomplishes among us on a daily basis.

Christ today returns to his Apostles after his Resurrection, the first time most have seen him since they abandoned him in the garden of Gethsemane, and where they might have expected reproach for their failure in friendship and fidelity, he tells them: “Peace be with you.” Where there was not peace, where there was the unrest and interior chaos of sin, the risen Jesus brings renewal, calm and release.

It is only in this context that he mentions the Holy Spirit, and in so doing, enables the Apostles to offer the mercy they themselves so needed to others. The effect of the Apostles’ reception of the Holy Spirt is the forgiveness of sins, the extension of mercy, the possibility of new life.

The ancient hymn, “Veni Sancte Spirtus,” we sing before today’s Gospel, called in liturgical language a “sequence,” calls out to the Spirit asking for this mercy with deep pleading. It cries: “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.”

To go further, we know the place in which the Trinity fulfills this promise to the Apostles and this prayer to the Holy Spirit. It is in the sacraments that God provides that mercy and refreshment, first in baptism, then in confession and the anointing of the sick. He completes that refreshment and reordering of our frail and wounded human nature in the gift of himself in the holy Eucharist, accomplished by the Holy Spirit through priests, themselves made capable of celebrating the sacraments by the same Holy Spirit. And around and through these sacramental gifts, the Spirit pours out new draughts of faith, hope, charity, along with his sevenfold gifts of wisdom, understanding, counsel, knowledge, fortitude, piety, and fear of the Lord, as well as all the supernatural virtues to point our whole renewed selves to the Father in heaven.

While it might seem like we only rarely see the more exotic actions of the Holy Spirit, wonders that obviously defy human capacity, miracles that go beyond what nature can do, the fact is that he acts continually in the life of the church, right before our eyes. While special moments of inspiration, enthusiasm, and fervor catch our attention more easily, it is in the daily celebration of the sacraments, in the healing of sin, the feeding of souls, the daily re-ordering of our lives to the love of God that the Spirit brings about masterworks of holiness and glory.

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