Today is Pentecost Sunday, it is the day we celebrate the birthday of the Church when the Holy Spirit came down upon the apostles and empowered them to proclaim the Gospel. However, we make a grave error when we end their in our description of Pentecost, for this event continues to this day and the Holy Spirit empowers people everyday to proclaim the Gospel. Among those people are you!

In today’s second reading we see the words of St. Paul who says that “each individual receives a share of the Spirit.” Notice he does not use the amorphous word ‘you’ which can mean either one person, a bunch of people, the readers of the letter at the time or anyone else that can be described as you. He uses the words: each individual. This means each of us receive a share of the spirit that we may do God’s work to the benefit of all.

We can often define the Spirit’s influence in terms of the gifts we receive at Confirmation or even the Charismatic gifts listed in this same passage but left out in this reading. However, neither list is exhaustive. The Holy Spirit will empower you in any way He sees fit to do the will of God. Now the question is: are you open to what the Holy Spirit will do in your life?

Many times we can define the Holy Spirit’s action in powerful ways, but the Holy Spirit acts in usually less powerful ways with less obvious signs. Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit giving us the right words at the right time to do His will. St. Paul talks about Him encouraging us to be open to deeper conversion.

If I were to use an idea where we can see the action of the Holy Spirit today, it is in being resistant to the thoughts of our time. Some examples.

A while ago I read a blog from a chaplain at a southwest university. He complained that TV shows seem to have messages built into them that promote acceptance of non-traditional morality and mock those who embrace the tradition morality and faith such as our own. I wrote back surprised that he did not know that yes, that is true. There are organizations that have as part of their mission people who work with writers of TV sitcoms and dramas put more politically correct messages in their dramas. It has been going on for many years and you can see the work of these organizations every night on television. One TV producer of crime dramas here in the United States is well known for his anti-Catholic and anti-priest scripts.

So what does that mean for us. Well, if we close ourselves off from the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, we become victims of the ideas of our time that will cause great damage in the future. What is worse is that when we allow others to dismiss the need to go to mass we leave them vulnerable to the worldly ideas and philosophies that will eventually cause great destruction in people’s lives and souls.

The Holy Spirit is calling us to act in ways filled with truth, and in courage to stand up for  those truths that lead people and societies to grow and against those that lead people and societies into destruction.

Remember Paul’s words were written at a time that people did not know but would soon find out that Judah’s days were numbered, and so were the Temple’s and finally the Roman Empire, all were to fall soon enough. Judah in about fifteen years before the fall of Jerusalem. If you lived at that time to whom would you listen.

To whom would you listen in the early days of the Roman Empire? To whom are you listening now. Hear the words of the Holy Spirit in your prayer and bible study and in the community which is the Church that you may stand against those ideas that will bring great change to your world in the hopes that others will listen.

The Holy Spirit guides us to prophetic ways of living. Are you listening to that share of His spirit that falls upon you? or are you listening to that same spirit that spoke to those who rejected Christ before the fall of both Jerusalem and later Rome?

Fr. Carr is an alliance member of the New Song Community (Canção Nova). He is the pastor of Holy Trinity Quincy, MA and is the editor of this blog. He is the author of several books, blogs and hundreds of videos all of which you may find at his website. He also has a regular radio program on WebRadio Canção Nova. Which he podcasts on Mixcloud and here on Catholicismanew.
You can follow him on twitter as @frbobcarr. Thoughts, comments on the homily? Let us know at Facebook