Pentecost is the third most important feast in the Church year, the feast that celebrates the completion of Jesus’ saving work with his sending of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is our connection with Christ. It is through the Spirit that we share in Christ’s life. This is one of the basic gifts that the Spirit gives us, a sharing in Christ’s life.
As with any life, our life in Christ is meant to be an active life. When a person is alive but they are inactive, it is either that they spend too much time in front of the TV or they are comatose. When the Spirit makes us alive in Christ, the Spirit also gives us gifts that help this life flourish. According to St Paul, such gifts are goodness, faithfulness, humility and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). The Spirit also gives us gifts to help us live that life in service of others – many of which are named in the letters of St. Paul. Another way the Spirit helps us is mentioned in the Gospel – the Spirit will teach us and remind us of all that Jesus has taught.
The Spirit helps us not only individually, but through the Church. Before Jesus died he established a community of believers and gave that community teachers and leaders. It was on this community, which is the Church, that Jesus sent the Holy Spirit. (This is why Pentecost is considered the birthday of the Church.) The Spirit touches our lives through this community, through its beliefs, its values, its sacraments, its teaching and through our love for one another as members of the same body of Christ that we are a part of, as St Paul tells us.
Sometimes people drop away from their religion. They claim to be spiritual people, but they have little use for organized religion. We should not be surprised that people who are an active part of a religious organization are not perfect. Christ called sinners to follow him. Those who abandon organized religion and claim to be “spiritual” may have forgotten that if they are living by God’s Holy Spirit, the Spirit would be calling them to be one with other believers, to share their gifts with others and to share in the many ways the Spirit works through the Church. Remember: Jesus prayed that we all may be ONE.
Fr. Gabriel Wankar
Priest-in-Residence