Pentecost Sunday

Pentecost ranks with Christmas and Easter as one of the most important festivals of our church. Because the Second Vatican Council directed its attention primarily to the mystery of the church I look forward to a day when Pentecost will be celebrated with far more pomp and circumstance than it enjoys today. During the first centuries the church “defined” – or at least attempted to put into words – the mysteries of Jesus and God. The second millennium took up the doctrines of the Eucharist and sacraments. So now, with the millennium of the laity upon us, we ponder the mystery of Church.

And we begin this new enterprise when many Christians prefer there be no church at all! They would direct all their attention and devotion to Jesus, without the trappings and bother of “organized religion.”

This impulse to drop out of church and focus exclusively on Jesus – a temptation that has its own ancient history and tradition – is a sign of the great success of the church. It demonstrates how effectively we have practiced the Baptist’s words:

He must increase; I must decrease.

People believe they can meet Jesus directly without the distorting influence of the Church. Many insist they have found the true Jesus despite the omnipresence of the Church. After all these centuries they have met the Lord who was sorely misunderstood by his own immediate disciples but now, at last, is seen clearly twenty centuries later.

Their enthusiasm reminds  me of my mother's remark about my brother-in-law's excitement when my sister had her first baby. She said, “You would think they just invented babies!” These new Christians are so ecstatic about Jesus they fail to notice the Church which has faithfully practiced his mission all these centuries.

But adult Christians must finally take up their own responsibilities to be Church. It was the communities of disciples in ancient cities of the Roman Empire that first commissioned scholars to produce the gospels. They were sufficiently well-organized to sponsor the project, allowing the specialists the leisure to discuss and argue, write, edit and publish what should and should not be transmitted to the ages.

That same church treasured the work of those committees – known today as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – and distributed copies throughout the known world by way of the missionaries whom they also sponsored. They placed these gospels within our sacred liturgies; reading, pondering and interpreting them for the Sunday congregations. When the time came the Church reselected those four gospels and dismissed later documents – the so-called Gnostic gospels. 

As the original gospel manuscripts moldered, the Church scrupulously copied them again and again until we have only copies of copies of copies; and yet we’re sure these gospels are faithful renditions of the originals.

This well-organized Church, throughout the centuries, has continued to sponsor scholars who study and translate the scriptures, helping us to announce them to everyone on earth. Saint Luke described this miracle with his story of Jesus’ disciples speaking to Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia,

Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene, as well as travelers from Rome….

The idealist supposes that Jesus would and should be known without the Church. Like the game of baseball in the movie, “Field of Dreams” they suppose, “If you build it, they will come.” It will just happen mystically.

But Jesus knew there can be no Gospel without a Church to announce it. This hoary old “institution” has received his presence – spiritual and physical -- from each passing generation and faithfully passed it to the next. The man himself would have been long forgotten – risen or not – without the men and women who loved him enough to tell their loved ones about him.
On the feast of Pentecost we thank God for the privilege of such a beautiful, adult responsibility.