Pentecost Sunday - Mass during the Day

Lectionary: 63

"I have told you this while I am with you.
The Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name,
will teach you everything
and remind you of all that I told you."

Everyone knows the name of Jesus. We have been charged with filling the world with that name so that everyone who believes in the name of Jesus might be saved. The angel Gabriel insisted on the name Jesus on two separate occasions to his mother and her betrothed husband. The name has been translated to every language on Earth and used by Christians in prayer and preaching freely, readily throughout the world. 

The name of God the Father is somewhat more mysterious. Although it appears in every book of the Hebrew Scriptures, no devout Jew ever pronounces the name of God. That name was given to Moses on Mount Horeb more than a thousand years before Jesus. Early Jews might have sung the word; perhaps it was a battle cry, similar to “For God and King!” But by the first century of the Christian Era, when Jews spoke many languages and Hebrew was used only for religious rituals, the name of God was known only in silence. Jesus and his disciples never uttered the word, nor does it appear in the New Testament nor in Christian apocrypha.

We hear God referred to many times among Jesus's teachings and in the Epistles but the Evangelists and New Testament authors never write the name of God. If we speak of it, we call it the Tetragrammaton. Such is the reverence we have for that most holy Word.

Finally, the church has long recognized a third person in the Trinity. But the name of this divine person is even more mysterious than the name of God and the name Jesus. English speakers usually refer to this person as "the Holy Spirit." Or, until recently, "the Holy Ghost." We might use the pronoun him or her but there is no clear assignment of gender to this third person of the Trinity; and neither him, her, or they serve very well.

The Scriptures, liturgy, and traditions give us many wonderful words to describe the Holy Spirit, and they might be the names of the Holy Spirit. Jesus spoke of the Advocate or Paraclete, which is a juridical word. We also have many images like fire, wind, smoke, and water. We have words like love, courage, energy, and creativity. I have seen pages filled with names of the Holy Spirit. 

This multiplicity adds to the sense of mystery which appears around this third person of the Holy Trinity, but it does not penetrate it. Given our knowledge of the Tetragrammaton and our usage of the Holy Name of Jesus, perhaps we should be satisfied that this third name has never been revealed to us. And will never be. If the first two are beyond our comprehension, why would we even ask for the third? Rather, we revere God’s silence with a silent nod of consent and a whispered Amen.

However, we can be silent only for so long before we ask the Father and the Son to fulfill the promise they have made. We love the Lord and keep his commandments, and so he asks the Father to give us the Unnamed One to be with us always.

While Jesus was with us in the flesh, we hung on his every word. We followed wherever he went; we associated with everyone he spoke to; we might have tried to defend him had he asked us to. But he wasn’t even cold in his grave before his school of disciples began to scatter. When that Pascal Sabbath was finished and Sunday morning arrived, some of us headed out of town. Without him, what could we do?

The New Testament bears witness to the Holy Spirit who has kept us together in the apparent absence of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles describes a Presence that was just as powerful and palpable as Jesus in the flesh, but more so. As he had said,

• Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.
• And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
• If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it. (John 14:12-14)
• And, “Everything is possible to one who has faith.” (Mark 9:23.”)

Despite everything that has been said in criticism of the Catholic Church, and some of it quite valid, the Holy Spirit has never departed from this temple. We have sinned, God knows! We and our ancestors have sinned, but we have never entirely betrayed the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit. If our leaders have sometimes failed, and our congregations have sometimes failed, the Holy Spirit has remained always with the Church.

The Spirit has sometimes punished our infidelity by leaving us awash in hypocritical self-righteousness. We have suffocated in worldly pleasures, while our marriages collapsed in divorce, adults have wallowed in self-indulgence, and our children abandoned the faith to find solace in disgusting entertainment.

But the Spirit of God, has also rewarded our fidelity with the courage and triumph of our martyrs. And since the twenty-first century arrived, many devout persons have been put to death for believing as you and I do.

  

The Spirit of God, whose Name is manifold but finally unknown, always calls us back, and millions return to daily and Sunday masses, pilgrimages, penance, and sacrifice. The world still looks to us for spiritual truth and meaning, and we still know where God is found. Because God is faithful, because Jesus keeps his promise, because the Holy Spirit comes to us and makes a dwelling within us we are here in his Real Presence.

As God is our witness, we still speak the truth like the prophets of old, whether invited, ignored, or silenced, in season and out of season. Amen.