By By Shiju Joseph csc
Readings: Acts 2:1-11; 1 Cor 12: 3b-7, 12-13; Jn 20: 19-23
The Pentecost: today may be called the birthday of the Church. The fearful disciples have a powerful experience of the Spirit and a taste of what Holy Spirit can do. It empowers them to stand in front of the multitudes and speak to them in a way that only Holy Spirit can enable them. The Pentecost is the launching pad for the Church, the starting point of proclamation of redemption for the whole humanity. The Spirit will soon become the distinguishing mark of the true faith.
The disciples had experienced Jesus during his lifetime, seen him, touched him and ate with him after his resurrection. They knew, not just believed, that he was God. But it was not enough. It is the Spirit that puts this knowledge and faith into action. It is the Spirit that gives the disciples’ faith a community focus. It drove them out of their hiding into the public, empowering them to speak about what they had experienced, and how it had transformed their own life.
The Church had been doing this for centuries, albeit with varying levels of credibility. During the last weeks, the virus drove everyone to their homes, to their own people, to their own private lives. Those who have experienced an outpouring of the Spirit can not be confined to their own worries, their own lives and their own privacy. Spirit will drive them out to a suffering people, to a world of uncertainties, and to new ways of announcing the Good News. The power of the Church and of a community is not in numbers. It is in the restlessness provided by the Spirit. May this Pentecost unsettle us from our comfort zones and secure rooms and throw us into the middle of the suffering people. It is there we belong in the first place.