Pentecost Sunday, Year C
Happy Birthday to you all! Today, our liturgical cycle which presents God‘s love, mercy and kindness to us ends with the Solemnity of Pentecost. During the Advent season, we prepared for the coming of Jesus Christ the Son of God among us. On Christmas Day, we celebrated His birthday as we recall God‘s divine love in our world. In Lent, we prepared for His suffering and death on the cross. On Easter Sunday, we celebrated His triumph over death and our salvation and redemption. During the Easter season, also known as Eastertide or the Paschal season which started on Easter Sunday and lasted for 50 days, we were shown and taught how to witness to our resurrected Christ as exemplified by the apostles and disciples of Christ in Acts of the Apostles. For these 50 days of the paschal season, we were taught that witnessing to Christ or witnessing for Christ is that act of sharing our personal experiences, testimonies and faith in Him with the world; and living out His life and gospel in the world. During the Easter season, we were also taught the characteristics of true discipleship which includes obedience to God, repentance for our sins or repentance from our sins, praising God, following Christ, strengthening the spirits of our brothers and sisters in Christ, urging each other to persevere in the faith, undergoing hardships for the sake of the kingdom of God, praying constantly, fasting regularly, living out and preaching the word of God; and lastly, loving one another as Christ has loved us and continues to love us. Then today, Pentecost Sunday, which is the public descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles as we heard in the first reading, the Easter season ends and crowns Christ’s work among us with the Holy Spirit bestowing His gifts upon us and abiding with us, His church and directing us to effectively proclaim, explain, preserve, and spread the gospel of Christ in the world.
Today’s Solemnity of Pentecost is the birthday of the Catholic Church, as with the story of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles, they were strengthened in their mission to witness to Christ in the world, and to announce the good news to all peoples. Pentecost Sunday shows us how the Paraclete sanctifies us to go out and live out the gospel of Christ. It also clearly demonstrates how the characteristics of true discipleship are lived out in the world as shown us in the Acts of the Apostles by the apostles and disciples of Christ.
Hence, today’s Solemnity of Pentecost shows us some fundamental aspects of our spiritual lives necessary to effectively, efficiently and successfully witness to Christ in the world, that is, the things we need to do in order to better serve God in the world. These qualities are love, docility in the faith -which is the quality of being willing to be taught and guided by God, the Holy Spirit, and the wisdom of others, prayerfulness, forgiveness, understanding, suffering, unity in Christ and collaboration or cooperation, as emphasized by Saint Paul, in today’s second reading where he reminds the divided community at Corinth, that though they have diverse gifts, that those gifts are for the good of the community and that the Holy Spirit is the source of all those gifts.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, as we celebrate the birthday of the Catholic Church today, on Pentecost Sunday, let us put into action the gifts of the Holy Spirit we received on our Confirmation day that made us soldiers of Christ by loving God and our neighbor better, by being docile in our faith, by being more prayerful, by being more forgiving, by being willing to suffer for Christ and for the sake of the gospel, and lastly, by being united in Christ and dedicated to Him.
