Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for Pentecost Sunday

May 27, 2023

 

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.27.23_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.

* I’ve just returned from leading a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. On Ascension Thursday, with Catholic students from Columbia University and Focus Missionaries, I was in a very crowded Upper Room where we pondered how Jesus there gave us four Sacraments: the Eucharist and Holy Orders on Holy Thursday, Confession on Easter Sunday and Confirmation on Pentecost. We spoke about what Jesus said in his valedictory right before ascending to the Father’s right side. He enjoined the apostles not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the “promise of the Father” about which they had heard him speak, for “in a few days,” he said, “you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” The apostles and the other followers of Jesus returned to the Upper Room where they huddled around Mary and “devoted themselves with one accord to prayer.” She taught them how to get ready to receive the Holy Spirit, for it was she who was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit at Jesus’ virginal conception and who continually lived as a Spouse of the Holy Spirit, receiving and responding to his inspirations in an exemplary way. United with her they prayed and they waited, day after day, until on the tenth day, the Holy Spirit burst through the windows of the upper room like the noise of a strong driving wind and came down upon each of them as tongues of fire. As we were in the Upper Room, we sang together the Veni Creator Spiritus, the Church’s most famous and traditional prayer beseeching the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, as others stopped to listen. And we pondered the scene from this Sunday’s Gospel, a prelude to Pentecost, when Jesus on the night he rose from the dead, entered the closed doors of the Upper Room, breathed on the apostles and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

* This Pentecost, we will all be in the Upper Room of our parish Churches and Jesus will say to us, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” What does it mean to receive the Holy Spirit?

* We can ponder several things from Sacred Scripture. For example, on Holy Thursday, during the Last Supper, Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would teach us everything and remind us of all that Jesus had told us, that he would testify to Jesus and help us testify, and that he would convict the world with regard to sin, and righteousness and condemnation. To receive the Holy Spirit, therefore, means that we cooperate with the Holy Spirit’s assistance to get to know Jesus and his teaching much better, to remember it, to share it, to live it, to thank God incessantly for it. To receive the Holy Spirit means to cooperate with him in testifying to Jesus, that he is with us always until the end of time, calling us to joy, to life, to love. To receive the Holy Spirit means to fight against sin, to seek righteousness and holiness, and to rejoice in the condemnation of the ruler of this world.

* Many have not received the Holy Spirit. There’s a famous scene in the Acts of the Apostles when St. Paul came to Ephesus and met some disciples. He asked, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” They responded, “We have never even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” Our recently deceased Pope Benedict XVI, at World Youth Day in Australia in 2008, said,