Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for Pentecost Sunday
May 18, 2024
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.18.24_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3
The following text guided the homily:
* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us on Pentecost Sunday. In the Gospel we will hear, Jesus will tell the first apostles in the Upper Room, and, through them, all of us, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” These are words that I hope to interpret in a particularly Eucharistic key, because I am now in New Haven, Connecticut, where on the vigil of Pentecost, with various other pilgrims, I will begin a 65-day Eucharistic Pilgrimage walking with the Eucharistic Jesus to Indianapolis. There are three other teams starting on Pentecost, one from near the Canadian border in northern Minnesota, another from the Mexican border in Brownsville and a third from the west coast in San Francisco, all bound for the National Eucharistic Congress that will take place starting July 17 in Indiana.
* As we approach Pentecost during this pivotal time of the Eucharist Revival, it’s fitting to deepen our awareness and appreciation for the role of the Holy Spirit in the Eucharistic knowledge, faith, gratitude, amazement, love and life.
* It’s not a coincidence that Pentecost took place in the same Upper Room where Jesus, 53 days earlier, had celebrated the first Eucharist. During the Last Supper, Jesus had already spent much of his time speaking about the Holy Spirit, instructing us that the Holy Spirit would testify to him, remind us of all that he told us, teach us everything, guide us to all truth, give us what belongs to Jesus, convict the world with regard to sin, righteousness and condemnation, and declare to us the things that are coming (Jn 14:26, 15:26, 16:8, 16:13-14). Jesus even made the astonishing assertion that it was “better” for him to “go” — to die, rise and ascend — so that he could send us the Holy Spirit, as if the Holy Spirit were, somehow, a superior Gift (16:7).
* In his beautiful 1986 encyclical on the Holy Spirit, St. John Paul II dedicated five rich paragraphs to the connection between the Holy Spirit and the Eucharist. The same Holy Spirit who overshadowed Mary at the Incarnation making it possible for the Word to become flesh and dwell among us within her womb overshadows the priest and the altar to transform bread and wine into the continuation of that Incarnation. To bring about the Eucharistic sacrifice and communion, the sacramental realization of Christ’s salvific presence, the pope asserted, is part of the Holy Spirit’s mission.
* We see this in the earliest days of the Church, when Christians, right after Pentecost, were led by the Spirit to devote themselves to the “Breaking of the Bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42), which, John Paul II stated, “expressed and confirmed” the Church’s identity as the Bride and Body of Christ formed through the Eucharist and helped her become an efficacious sign of Christ’s presence in the world.
* When we look at the principal works of the Holy Spirit, they can all be understood with reference to Christ in the Eucharist.
* First, the Holy Spirit teaches us how to pray, since we don’t know how to pray as we ought (Rom 8:26), which helps us to pray the Mass, to adore Jesus on the altar, in the tabernacle and monstrance, and within us in Holy Communion, and with Jesus to praise, thank, beg for mercy, intercede and petition God the Father with the confidence of beloved sons and daughters.
