(Pentecost 2023 (A): This homily was given on May 28, 2023 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani. Read Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 104:1,24,29-30,31,34; 1 Corinthians 12:3-13; John 20:19-23.)
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Pentecost 2023]
I’m
sure that many of you remember the great comedian, Red Skelton. He performed back in the days when most
comics didn’t feel the need to use 4-letter words in their comedy routines.
Ah,
the good old days.
I read
an interesting story about Red a few years ago.
It seems that, one day back in 1951, he was on a plane that was headed
to Europe, where he was scheduled to perform in a show. But on the way, as the plane was flying over
the Swiss Alps, three of its engines failed and the plane began to go down. The situation looked rather bleak (to put it
mildly!), and many of the passengers quite naturally began to pray. As for Red Skelton, he responded to the
situation by doing what he did best: he went into a comedy routine—to try to
distract the passengers from the impending disaster. He was like the orchestra on the Titanic that
played music as the ship slowly sank into the North Atlantic.
Well,
thankfully, at the last moment, the pilot spotted a large field between two of
the mountains there in the Alps, and he was able to land the plane safely in that
field.
When
the ordeal was finally over, Red stood up and—in typical Red Skelton
style—said, “Now, ladies and gentlemen, you may return to all the evil habits
you gave up twenty minutes ago.”
Which
brings us to this morning’s gospel reading from John, chapter 20. Today, as I mentioned at the beginning of
Mass, we celebrate the feast of Pentecost, which was the event we heard about
in our first reading from Acts, chapter 2.
This was the moment when the promise Jesus had made to his Apostles at
the Last Supper was completely fulfilled.
This was the moment of the first Confirmation, when the Holy Spirit
descended on these men and gave them power—new power: the power to live the truth of the Gospel, and speak the truth of the Gospel, and defend the truth of the Gospel. This was the moment when they received
gifts—the spiritual gifts they would need to carry out the mission Jesus had
given them to convert the world: first and foremost, the gifts of faith, hope
and charity; but also the seven gifts mentioned in Isaiah 11 (wisdom,
understanding, knowledge, etc.); as well as the charismatic gifts like tongues,
prophecy and healing.
The
Spirit empowered them through this spectacular event, and they were
transformed. Suddenly they were no
longer afraid of their own shadows.
Suddenly they were not intimidated by the godless culture they were
living in. Instead, they made the
decision to use the gifts the Spirit gave to them that day, and change their
culture in a positive way from within—which is exactly what we’re supposed to
do in our culture today with the anointing we receive at our Confirmation.
But
it’s not magic! Notice, I said that the
Apostles made the decision to use the
gifts of the Spirit to work for positive change. The fact is, you can receive the gifts of the
Spirit at Confirmation (as many of our young people do today) and do absolutely
nothing positive with those graces. In
that case, you most certainly will be
intimidated by the culture we’re currently living in, and eventually overpowered
by it. This, unfortunately, happens more
often than not these days. If you need
some proof, just get hold of some statistics on how many confirmed Catholic young people support things like abortion and
transgenderism and so-called gay marriage.
At this
point, I’ll bet it’s way over 50%.
But as
important as it is to receive—and use—the gifts of the Holy Spirit in our
lives, there is something even more basic that the Spirit brings to us, which
is why Jesus didn’t wait until Pentecost to begin pouring out the Spirit on his
first priests. As we heard in today’s
gospel, Jesus first sent the Spirit to his Apostles way back on Easter Sunday
(a full fifty days before Pentecost).
Why?
So
that they could forgive sins in his name!
The
Spirit was given first so that sins could be forgiven—which should make perfect
sense to us because, if a person is steeped in sin, any spiritual gifts he may
have won’t matter.
They
won’t matter at all.
Forgiveness
is primary—and necessary. This is
something, by the way, that Red Skelton definitely understood. It’s why he said what he said on that plane
back in 1951. Red knew that when the
passengers on that aircraft thought they were about to die, most of them were
not especially interested in how much wisdom and knowledge they possessed, or
whether they could pray in tongues or not.
What they were most concerned with at that decisive (and scary) moment
was where they stood before God! And it
was that concern which led them to want to give up what Red called their “evil
habits”—that is to say, the sins they had committed but had not yet repented
of.
Red
knew.
“[Jesus]
breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and
whose sins you retain are retained.’”
This
is where priests get the power to forgive sins in the sacrament of
Reconciliation.
And
so, if you want to determine how active the Holy Spirit is in your life at any
given time, the first question you should ask yourself is not, “What spiritual
gifts do I have?” No, no, no. The very first question you should ask
yourself is, “How repentant am I—how repentant am I for my sins—and how often
do I express my repentance humbly and sincerely and honestly by bringing those
sins to Jesus in the confessional?
It’s
my simple prayer today that in the future the Holy Spirit will be very, very
active both in your life and in mine.
