PENTECOST SUNDAY - MAY 19, 2024

PENTECOST SUNDAY

At the core of Christianity, the fullest expression of the Truth of existence, is the doctrine of the Trinity, that relation is essential to God, and within Him are Three Persons: Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit between them. Through Christ, we received the fullness of the Son. Through His Church, we have come to know the Father. But Christ also spoke often about the Spirit, especially in the context of the Spirit being sent to guide those who led his Church on earth. Today marks the 50th day since we celebrated the Resurrection of Christ, when we received the full glory of the Son. Today, we receive the full glory of the Holy Spirit, and share in the Divine Love that permeates the deepest knowledge of the Trinity.

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READ THIS SUNDAY'S MESSAGE

Although we celebrate the Trinity in the summer, Pentecost Sunday allows us to discover more about the Holy Spirit, who He is, and how He works within the world around us. To understand the Trinity well enough as Christians, we must know the Holy Spirit. We can read about the Father through Scripture, study the Son Incarnate through the Gospels, but all the details in the world cannot adequately express the relationship between Father and Son without addressing the Holy Spirit. One of the best known descriptions of the Spirit is the love that exists between Father and Son, so strong that it is its own Divine Person. This is true, but why then do we call it the Holy Spirit? Why do we understand it as the mighty wind that spread over the abyss at creation? Why are we told that it is the strong driving wind that fills the upper room on the evening of Pentecost? Why is the Hebrew word for this Divine Person the same word for “breath”? Love is incarnational; we are reminded in the most famous passage of all of Scripture that God so loved the world that He sent His Son, incarnated in the body of Christ, in order that His love for us can be made physical and knowable. Human love is the same. Anyone who loves can hardly keep themselves from sharing a kiss with those they love; a kiss is a sharing of one’s breath, an extraction of the essence of one’s innermost being shared with someone outside of themselves. This is precisely why Christ breathed on his Apostles in this Sunday’s Gospel reading. This is precisely why a priest breathes on the waters of baptism. This is precisely why the Sign of Peace was historically a kiss. This is why we share our own breath with those we love - we want to give our entire selves, expressed in something from within us, by pushing it outward so that we might be able to share ourselves with those we love. The Holy Spirit is the breath of God; Pentecost is the Feast of God kissing the Church He loved so much, sharing His entire self with us, not just through the body of Christ, but through the whole Trinity.

On the Feast of Pentecost, we hear a sequence sung before the Gospel known as the Veni, Sancte Spiritus. We are asking that God send forth His Spirit upon us just as He did on the night of Pentecost when the Church was made Incarnate. We are asking God to kiss us with His Divine Breath. Through this Heavenly kiss, the divine light shines upon us, we find sweet refreshment, we find solace in the midst of woe, our wounds are healed, our strengths renewed, guilt is wiped away, and the love that God has for His creation is made tangible. Like a parent who showers their beloved child with kisses, we are showered with the kisses of God, and we feel the Divine Breath breathe life into His Church just as He did at the beginning of Creation.