Call on the Holy Spirit

St. Dominic preaching

Pentecost Sunday
Today’s Readings: Acts 2:1-11; Ps. 104; 1 Cor. 12:3-7, 12-13; Jn. 20:19-23 [Link to Readings]

If you’re like me, you’ve probably been in situations where you wish you could speak a foreign language. For instance, I once had to give last rites to someone whose family only spoke Spanish. I felt so helpless in not being able to comfort them better.

St. Dominic, the great founder of the Dominican religious order, once found himself in the same boat. The story is told that he and several of his brother friars were traveling on foot through Europe when they met up with a group of friendly Germans. Dominic wanted to reward them for their kindness by sharing the true faith with them—but unfortunately, no one in his group spoke their language. So he said to his companions, “Brothers, let us pray to God to let us speak German so we can proclaim Jesus Christ to these worthy people.” They all knelt down and prayed earnestly… and when they stood back up, they were filled with the gift they asked God for! For four days, those Dominicans spoke in German to the kindly German travelers.

You may be surprised that a number of saints had this gift of tongues. St. Vincent Ferrer, another Dominican, could preach only in Spanish or Latin… but thanks to the gift of tongues, he could be understood by French, Greeks, Germans, English and Hungarians. St. Anthony of Padua and St. Francis Xavier, the apostle to India and Japan, also had this gift, so they could preach in languages they didn’t know or be understood by people whose language they didn’t speak themselves.

And all of this is just a tiny morsel of the amazing gifts that came down on the apostles on the first Pentecost Sunday when they received the Holy Spirit.

Of the three persons in the Blessed Trinity, there is no doubt that the Holy Spirit—also known as the Holy Ghost or the Paraclete or the Comforter or the Advocate—is the least understood and the least known… yet he is awesome in the supernatural gifts he gives and the powerful effects he works in the lives of the people who ask. Today’s feast of Pentecost is above all a celebration of the Holy Spirit.

Last week, on Ascension Day, we talked about Christ’s command that the disciples—and all of us baptized—are to go out to the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature. Jesus promised that God would send the Holy Spirit to help in this work.

So if you are willing to put yourself in the Lord’s service to spread the good news of the kingdom, then the Holy Spirit will be right there to help you. All you have to do is ask… and quite frankly, the transformation you can experience may be quite remarkable.

Think for a moment about today’s gospel. After Jesus had ascended to the Father, the apostles had locked themselves in the upper room of a building in Jerusalem. Obviously, they were scared of the Jewish leaders who had just put Christ to death.

Then, mysteriously, Jesus materializes in their midst. He smiled at them and tried to put them at ease. “Peace be with you”—he said to them twice. Then he breathed on them and told them to receive the Holy Spirit. In the reading from Acts, we hear how they experienced the Spirit’s coming in full force.

And then, these frightened, cowering, pusillanimous disciples burst out of that locked room into the streets below, where they fearlessly and openly proclaimed Jesus Christ… and converted thousands and thousands of people. It all started right there, and today—two thousand years and literally billions of converts later—it’s still going on… as it will, Jesus promised, until the end of the world.

The fear of the Jews kept the disciples locked up. The Holy Spirit released them and empowered them.

Ironically, fear keeps us locked up, too. In these parts, it’s not fear of the Jews… but it’s fear nonetheless. Maybe we’re afraid of being ridiculed for our religious zeal. Maybe we’re afraid we’ll be embarrassed if someone puts us on the spot by asking a question that we don’t know the answer to. Maybe we’re afraid that we’ll offend a friend or relative who belongs to another church or is uncomfortable around public expressions of religion. Maybe we’re afraid because we think that our faith should just be a private matter between God and me and we’d feel really nervous about giving a voice to our beliefs.

Well, my friends, just exactly the way that the apostles were freed and overcame their fear by being zapped by the Holy Spirit, so can we! In fact, we’re actually a step ahead of those first Christians because we know to ask for the gifts of the Spirit; they didn’t!

Don’t be afraid to ask for the heavenly gifts you need: courage, stamina, fearlessness, deeper faith, convincing words, contagious joy, a more loving heart—all the special attributes that can draw people to Christ through you. You probably know yourself well enough to identify your weaknesses and ask the Holy Spirit to fix them… but if not, that’s OK, too. Just pray for whatever graces you need.

But the important thing is to pray, to ask. God insists on this. Why? Because he gave us real free will, and the Lord is not going to push himself on us. It’s always up to us to respond to his invitation by asking, seeking and knocking. We do that 1%, and God does the other 99%. It’s a pretty good deal!

So on this Feast of Pentecost, don’t be afraid to stop being afraid. Instead, pray: Come, Holy Spirit. Fill the hearts of your faithful and enkindle in us the fire of your love. Amen. Alleluia!