At Pentecost we celebrate the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Of utmost significance is the contrast between the start of the passage from the Gospel of John, 20, 19-23 and the disciples' immediate joy upon seeing Christ.
The passage starts with the disciples being locked in the room out of fear. Their fear really cordons them off from the rest of the world. Though a human trait, fear is negative. Fear exposes our weakness and it can only inhibit us from unleashing our full potential. The people to whom Christ entrusted his Church are locked up in fear.
The Risen Christ, bearing the indelible marks of love in his hands and side, greets them with peace and reminds them of this mission. After mentioning the mission entrusted to him by the Father, he breathes on them the Holy Spirit. So, we can see that the mission of the Holy Trinity, as the communion par excellence of the three persons united in supreme love, has come full circle, and it continues through the disciples. The Holy Spirit, the breath of God given through Christ, is the lifeforce which vivifies the disciples in all respects. As we see in the first reading from Acts, the Spirit enables them to overcome their fear and they start proclaiming the Good News. The Spirit breathes new life in the disciples without annihilating their identity. This gift of the Holy Spirit is a transformation of the self into new people in Christ.
In this short but poignant passage, the bestowing of the Holy Spirit is the ultimate gift in a series of gifts. God has bestowed life upon the human being, has entered time and space to redeem humanity, ultimately sacrificing his life to annihilate the bondage of sin, and here we have the ultimate gift which is the living breath of God. Apart from speaking of the three Persons of the Trinity and their unity in their diversity, Jesus attests to that love by making the disciples as partakers of that divine love shared by the Persons of the Trinity. It is shown in the act of breathing his very breath upon them, endowing them with the transformative Spirit.
I cannot cease to wonder at the humility shown by God in not only creating the human being, the supreme love outweighing all the risks, but also in enabling humanity to participate in the mission of redemption. I am especially reminded of the phrase in the same Gospel: "Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father." (Jn 14, 12)
The feast of Pentecost, the birth of the Church, is the feast of the collaboration between the human and the divine. Yet, Pentecost is ongoing, insofar as each believing Christian is ready to receive the Spirit and collaborate in the mission of proclaiming the Good News to the world. And the contemporary world is in dire need of the Good News more than ever.
We have been diminished by the effects of sin. This has had bearings on various aspects of the human person. Yet, for those who believe and are ready to receive the gift of the Spirit, they are also ready to receive the gift of transformation. At a time when we might also be wondering how the Church can effectively respond and dialogue with the contemporary world, we have to remind ourselves that if we are receptive to the Spirit, then we know that the Holy Spirit enables to pursue the path of creativity in faithfulness to Tradition. That is, each and everyone of us can leave an impact of the Church in various ways, if we only let the Spirit work within us, rather than remaining locked off and inaccessible to the transformative grace. For, that is the dignity bestowed upon us by Christ!
