My sisters and brother as we celebrate our Sunday Eucharist on this Solemnity of Pentecost let us acknowledge, and give thanks for the presence of God’s Holy Spirit, here and now: in our very midst, within and among us. For what our readings today are conveying to us are not merely three discrete instances of the presence and action of the Spirit of God in the history of the early Church, although they do indeed arise out of specific experiences of the Spirit forming the nascent Church, for its mission of universal incarnation of the Life of God.

Jesus returns: he breathes the Spirit upon and within us.  The Spirit was already given but now it is given through Christ in an incarnate manner where we know he is ‘flesh of our flesh’.  We ‘know’ in our experience that ‘we move and live and have our being’ in, through and with Christ, the complete manifestation of God.  In the book of Ezekiel we hear God say: “I shall give you a new heart, and put a new spirit in you; I shall remove the heart of stone from your bodies and give you a heart of flesh instead.  I shall put my spirit in you, and make you keep my laws and sincerely respect my observances” (36:25-27). 

Readings of the day: RB 4:22-43Sunday Mass: Ac 2:1-11; Resp Ps 104; 1 Co 12:3b-7, 12-13 or Ga 5:16-25; Sequence (Veni, Sancti Spiritus); Jn 20:19-23 Icon by Isaac Fanous, St Peter and S

In the second reading from first Corinthians for this feast of Pentecost we hear: “To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit” (1 Co  12:7).  We each are given a ‘manifestation of the Spirit’ an  “We were all given to drink of one Spirit” (1 Co 12:13b) and we participate in the one, same Spirit.  This