God calls each of us to a unique, important mission: when we delay to respond, our community suffers for longer
Pentecost Sunday – June 8, 2025
Today, as we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit after the Ascension of Jesus Christ, we also celebrate the birthday of the Church: the universal Church of Jesus Christ.
This is not a passing event but a constant reality in our daily lives: Pentecost each year reminds us that we have been empowered: that our efforts to help others (=love) will never be wasted or forgotten, because they help create Heaven on earth in which we all wish to live.
One of the important symbols in our Reading is how something like a tongue of fire rested upon each and every Apostle. To understand this better, lets reflect on these words of St John Henry Newman, a Cardinal: “God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me, which He has not committed to another. I have my mission.”
The disciples were told to stay together to receive the Holy Spirit: ie. not an individual experience. Now, these Apostles were not a harmonious group: the Gospels tell us the wide variety of men: zealots, fishermen, tax man, etc. who probably annoyed each other at times.
So, we are reminded to be patient and tolerant of our family members and Church community: that is where we best discern what the Holy Spirit is trying to invite us to, and what language to use when we go on the Mission to be a witness to God’s love.
As the Second Reading reminds us, we are all members of one body, and each member of the body has an essential capability that benefits, and is needed by, the whole body. Someone might ask, will God’s plan fail if I refuse to do it? Someone asked a spiritual master a similar question: what happens if someone destroys most of humanity by way of a nuclear bomb?
The answer was simple: we just delay God’s plan by a thousand years. And that helps us realise that when I don’t respond to God’s invitation to be a witness of God’s love, I make life more difficult, often painful for others, and for myself, for a longer period of time.
The challenge of this Feast of Pentecost is this: have I responded to the opportunities that have come into my life, to serve my local community? Or, am I avoiding them? When we respond to these opportunities, we may struggle, but we also find deep meaning in our lives.
If you have not seen the movie, Evan Almighty, I encourage you to do so. It shows the difficulty of responding to God in our daily lives, but it also has a telling scene where the wife and children leave Evan thinking he’s crazy; and she stops for a coffee along the way and meets “God” (the waiter), played by Morgan Freeman.
Waiter(God): Excuse me, are you alright?
Wife: Yea… No!… Long Story
Waiter(God): But I like stories, I’m a bit of a story-teller myself.
Wife: My Husband… did you hear of the New York Noah?
Waiter(God): Hah… The guy building the ark.
Wife: That’s him.
Waiter(God): I love that story. Noah and the Ark. You know many people miss the point of the story, they think it’s about God’s wrath and anger.
Wife: So what is the story about then… the ark?
Waiter(God): Well… I think it’s a Love Story about believing each other. You know the animals showed up in pairs. They stood by each other, side by side. Just like Noah and his family. Everybody entered the ark side by side.
Wife: But my husband told me God told him to do it. What do you do with that?
Waiter(God): Sounds Like An Opportunity… Let me ask you something: When you pray for patience, does God just give you patience? Or does He give you opportunities to be patient?
And, when you pray for courage, does He give you courage or opportunity to be courageous?
And, when you pray for your family to become closer, does God just zap you with warm, fuzzy feelings or does he give them opportunities to love each other?
After Jesus gave the Apostles a sign of peace, He gave them a Mission; and Jesus gives us that same Mission today: to be instruments of God’s forgiveness, including the opportunity to ‘retain’ sin. Given previous Gospel revelations about God’s forgiveness of all sin, we should see ‘retained’ to mean an alternative method to bring about repentance and forgiveness.
With this sacrament, Christ provides an objective element that cannot be present when we ask forgiveness privately. For our own good, our sincerity sometimes needs to be challenged.
Cardinal Newman emphasised that, even in times of uncertainty or difficulty, we are never abandoned: our lives have purpose and meaning in God’s plan. So let us embrace this Feast of Pentecost as an opportunity to reflect on what God is inviting me to do today; trusting that the Holy Spirit will help us make our community more like Heaven.
By Gerard Conlan, OMI
