It has become fashionable in American ecclesiastical circles to refer to Pentecost as “the birthday of the Church.” That statement is certainly not incorrect, but Pentecost is about so much more than just the embryonic beginnings of the Church. Jesus promised that he would send the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the Comforter in order that all of those who follow him would never be without him. In John 14:15-17, Jesus tells of the coming of this Comforter.
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Comforter, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you.”
Jesus not only that the Father will send this “Spirit of Truth,” but he says that “the world,” those who choose the ways of this passing world rather than the ways of Christ can’t keep this Spirit, but that for those who receive the Spirit, the Spirit would dwell in them. It is because of the Holy Spirit that we can know the presence of Christ in our lives and it is through the Holy Spirit that we are given the means to proclaim the Good News of Christ to the whole world.
Our Lord himself had no desire that the Gospel should be kept quiet. He himself said in Acts 1:8:
“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.”
What we celebrate on Pentecost is the beginning of the spread of the Gospel. In a homily that he preached yesterday, Pope Francis reminded all of us that in order to fully reflect the Gospel, we need to pray for the Holy Spirit to give us the same zeal that the apostles had. “There are those who are well mannered, who do everything well, but are unable to bring people to the Church through proclamation and apostolic zeal,” the Holy Father said. He also said that in this proclaiming of the faith, “if we annoy people, blessed be the Lord.”
The Pope held up St. Paul as a prime example of someone who was willing to proclaim the Gospel even at the risk of irritating people.
“He is a man who, with his preaching, his work, his attitude irritates others, because testifying to Jesus Christ and the proclamation of Jesus Christ makes us uncomfortable.”
The Holy Father went on to remind the congregation that the Gospel just might get under their comfort zones. Pope Francis is calling on us to proclaim the Gospel with zeal just like the apostles did. What are we to make of this? Does this mean that Catholics are to become like Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons and make proselytes door-to-door? The Scriptures and the Church’s history don’t indicate that this was the apostolic method of spreading the faith, but we do know that the apostles were not afraid to preach to unbelievers, and they would go into towns and preach openly in synagogues and public forums. Stephen did, and it ultimately got him stoned. Paul did, and that is what got him sent to Rome in the first place. One of the things that we know about early believers is that they weren’t ashamed to share their faith with others. People often saw the different way that Christians lived, and started asking questions, and people were not ashamed to say “I am a Christian.” That word, it would seem, began as a pejorative term.
It is common to hear people who have a problem with open and explicit forms of evangelization cite St. Francis of Assisi, the Holy Father’s namesake in the faith, when he said “preach the Gospel always, when necessary use words” to somehow mean that words should never be used in giving testimony to Jesus Christ, when in fact that isn’t what the saint meant at all. In reality, St. Francis was pointing out that holiness of life and humility of heart are the first and most important testimony that someone who is a believer can give, and that a person’s life is the most potent evidence of devotion to the Good News that can be presented. It is silly to think that the Deacon of Assisi spent no time preaching the Good News with very powerful words indeed. We ought to have the same attitude that Paul tells us that he had in the Letter to the Romans 1:16:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
If you’ve been reading Life at 25 recently, you might recall that I wrote last week of the reality that we seem to be entering a “post-Christian” era, and that the best way to evangelize the culture in this time would be to speak the truth in charity and love. If we give charity and love to our neighbors, but do not also give truth, we have neither love nor charity. If we give truth without love, we are, Paul tells us, “nothing.” (cf. 1 Corinthians 13:1-3)
Each Pentecost is special to me because I was baptized on Pentecost Sunday, 1998 (the actual date that year was May 31st). On that first Pentecost, after the people began to hear the apostles preach in their own tongue, the writer of the Acts of the Apostles tells us that Peter rose to speak, his sermon is recorded in Acts 2:14-40. Following Peter’s very mighty words, the Sacred Scripture records in the very next verse, 41, that 3,000 souls were baptized.
Let us pray for the discernment and zeal to proclaim the Gospel as Peter did on that first Pentecost, and that the Holy Spirit will lead us to the right ways to engage in that witness.
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