By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami
Archbishop Thomas Wenski preached this homily during a Mass with all the Knights of Columbus in the Archdiocese of Miami. The Mass was celebrated May 14 at St. Mary Cathedral.
This evening we celebrate the vigil of Pentecost — the day on which Jesus as he had promised sent the Holy Spirit upon the disciples who were gathered in prayer in the Upper Room together with Mary, his mother. This evening, Knights of Columbus with their wives and family members from throughout the archdiocese also gather as those first disciples did, to pray. We, too, await a renewed outpouring of the Spirit and his gifts. This year, as you know, is celebrated as a Year of Mercy and, if you have not done so yet, I invite you to pass through the Holy Door as an expression of your desire to receive mercy and also to give mercy.
The one language of the Church, the language that the Holy Spirit teaches her, is the language of charity or love. The first principle of the Knights of Columbus as men of faith and men of action is charity. If charity or love is the Church’s language, the grammar of this language is mercy. We speak a language well when we master its grammar. We will love well when we learn mercy and practice it through the spiritual and corporal works of mercy.
The Knights have always fostered charity, unity and fraternity — and you do so by many works of mercy. For this, and for your constant support of your bishops and your priests, for your promotion of vocations and your defense of the values of marriage — understood correctly as a permanent union between a man and a woman, for your protection of life and your work with our Respect Life ministries, I thank you. The Holy Spirit is truly at work in his Church and in this fraternal organization of Catholic gentlemen that is almost 2 million strong.
Pentecost can rightly be considered as the “birthday” of the Church — for though she was born in the Blood and Water that flowed from the pierced side of Jesus on Good Friday, today on Pentecost she receives her “baptism,” a baptism that confides to the Church a mission, and the power to carry out this mission in the world.
That mission is simply to tell the world the good news about Jesus Christ — and today the Spirit is sent by Jesus so that we might understand him better, so that we might understand his word, his life, the paschal mystery of his passion, death and resurrection and ascension, in their true depths. The Holy Spirit, as we say in the Creed every Sunday, “proceeds from the Father and the Son.” He too is true God of true God. He is the Spirit of Love between the Father and the Son — and it is the Holy Spirit who introduces us into that love, for as St. Paul says, “No one can say Jesus Christ is Lord unless in the Holy Spirit.”
Let us conduct a short experiment: Everyone hold their breath and don’t breathe until I tell you. What would happen if you did not breathe — you would die. Our bodies need oxygen in order to live. If you cut off our air supply we will suffocate and then die. Just as our physical bodies need oxygen to live, so we too, in our lives as Christians, we need that “breath of God” which is the Holy Spirit to make us live in Christ.
Today we could say that the Church draws her first breaths — and comes to life in the Spirit. The Spirit infuses in us the inspiration and power of Jesus so that we might have the courage to follow in his footsteps.
In baptism we are incorporated into the Body of Christ — in other words, we become members of his Body. The Spirit is given to us that we may be “living” members of his Body — for it is only to the degree that we are alive in Christ, it is only to that degree that we can witness to him both in the Church and in the world.
The world has been divided since Babel — and this division is exemplified in the confusion of tongues. In many ways, we still see all around us the confusion of Babel: human pride and selfishness always create divisions; they build walls of indifference, hate and violence. But on Pentecost the world is reconciled again. Babel has been defeated by Pentecost, the confusion of tongues with the new language the Spirit gives Jesus’ Church to speak: the language of love.
Today, as we commemorate that first Pentecost, we pray for a new Pentecost in our world and in our Church today. We pray that the Spirit and his gifts will heal in the world the divisions that still beset us as a human race, divisions that spawn war and strife. We pray especially for our Christian brothers and sisters in the Middle East undergoing genocide, as Supreme Knight Carl Anderson and the Knights have brought to the attention of the world.
We pray also that the Spirit and his gifts will heal the Church, the Body of Christ, whose unity is broken by schism and by sin. Just as the Spirit filled the Apostles on the first Pentecost with fire to boldly proclaim Christ crucified and risen from the dead to the people of their times, so too we ask the Spirit to strengthen us to re-propose in a New Evangelization the good news of Jesus Christ, who is the “same, yesterday, today and forever.”
Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful — and renew the face of the earth.
