We Have Stumbled Thru'

We have stumbled thru'
life - aided by the Spirit



June 12 - Pentecost Sunday


The Holy spirit used to be called "the forgotten God," but that changed significantly around the middle of the last century and there was a tremendous outpouring of divine power and love on millions of Catholics as the great Charismatic Movement healed and energized lives in ways that no one could have expected.


The First Reading today will, therefore, ring with an authenticity which most other Readings do not have: "Come, Holy Spirit! You are not an abstraction I hear about in church and just barely believe or understand. You are a stupendous Reality, if not for me personally then certainly for my friends and relatives whom I have seen transformed before my eyes!"


That happened to the Apostles and their followers. These cowardly and ignorant men ran out into the streets (forgetting that the Romans might pick them up) and amazed themselves and all who heard them!


The Responsorial Psalm is perhaps best understood as a series of gasps of love and admiration as the mind of the Psalmist of centuries ago is flooded with light and he struggles to put into limited human words the surge of emotion and understanding in his spirit.


St. Paul knew all about the Spirit - it drove him over hill and dale for about thirty years, in spite of endless challenges and quite a few failures to tell everyone he met about "the great things God has prepared for those who love Him." In the Second Reading he explains to his perhaps puzzled Corinthian converts that if they believe in his teaching that faith comes not from their own intelligence but is the result of the Spirit's action which is also a unifying one ("Jews or Greeks, slaves or free"). This is true also of us today. Reading the Scriptures or perhaps some other spiritual writing suddenly we see something new or we see something old in a different light. The Spirit is never far away!


The Gospel brings us back to the first Easter Sunday when the Master appears suddenly in the Upper Room (doubtless to the surprised and perhaps even scared gasps of his disciples - after all, they had run out on him!). This is a magnificent moment:the Lord "showed them his hands and his side," - he remains the Savior though changed externally. Then he appoints them - these unworthy men - to represent him (!), to tell his story to the world and - incredibly - to possess his power to forgive the sins of others in his name! Who could be worthy of such a commission? Certainly not the disciples who were of painful ordinariness. And certainly not the rest of us who have in the Church the privilege of succeeding them. So we end the Sunday on a note of high rejoicing: in spite of everything we have stumbled through life aided by the Spirit and some day we hope through His mercy to stumble over the threshold of Paradise!