Pentecost

Dominica Pentecostes
23 & 24 May 2026

 The Easter Season concludes today with one of the greatest solemnities of our faith, the Solemnity of Pentecost. As a term, “Pentecost” refers to the “fiftieth day”. There is a Jewish feast of Pentecost, more commonly called Shavuot (or the Feast of Weeks), that falls fifty days after the Jewish Passover.  Our Christian observance of Pentecost does not celebrate the same thing as the Jewish Pentecost, but it falls roughly around the same time in the calendar since our Pentecost is the fiftieth day after Easter. Pentecost celebrates the descent of the promised Holy Spirit filling the Church and disciples, both in ancient times and now, with God’s gifts for mission. The practical implication for us is that Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit to dwell within us in order to make us alive as disciples and to give us a responsibility for the mission of sharing the Good News of salvation and a shared responsibility for the Church, especially as lived here at our parish.

Grasping the presence of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, and grasping how one describes the Holy Spirit is rather elusive. When it comes to God the Father, we at least have some personal images that come to mind, even though we would have to admit those are not entirely accurate since the Father is not an old man with a white beard. When it comes to God the Son, we know that by the Son’s incarnation, Jesus is the visible image of God. For this reason, Jesus is referred to as the sacrament of God the Father. That is, Jesus makes God visible just like a sacrament makes God’s grace present and visible or, more properly speaking, perceptible to our senses. But the Holy Spirit? That’s more challenging. The Scriptures and the Church’s Tradition use various symbols to attempt to describe the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is described as water or living water as is employed in the Gospel of the Vigil Mass. He is symbolized by anointing in the Scriptures, most especially with oil. Fire is a symbol that points to the presence of God’s Spirit as when the covenant was formed with Israel on Mt. Sinai or the fire that rested over the apostles and disciples on that first Pentecost. Cloud and light are images that accompany the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures. Breath accompanies the presence of the Holy Spirit as in today’s Gospel whereby Jesus imparts the Holy Spirit to the apostles by breathing on them when he appeared after his Resurrection. A dove is a symbol. Even the symbol of a finger, as in the finger of the Father’s right hand, is invoked in the beautiful hymn the Veni, Creator Spiritus. Yes, elusive is one way to describe the dilemma of how we might grasp the idea of this Third Person of the Blessed Trinity.

I want to focus only on the symbol of water as an image of the Holy Spirit. To do that, I want to point you to Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well from St. John’s Gospel chapter 4, which is a particularly poignant passage. In that passage the image of thirsting for a drink is prominent. The obvious and first meaning of that thirst is the physical water from the well. But as the passage unfolds we can see that the Lord is really thirsting for the woman’s faith. It becomes clear that the Lord is not referring to the water in the well. He says to the woman, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water” (Jn. 4:10). Jesus goes on to say that those who drink physical water will thirst again, “but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (Jn. 4:14). This living water within a person and welling up is considered in the Church’s Tradition to be an image of God’s Spirit dwelling within a person. God’s Spirit and the life and gifts He imparts is not a stagnant reality but a water that is fresh and vibrant and stirred up, active. In other words, the Holy Spirit within us is not simply something we receive or take in a passive way. Filled with the Holy Spirit we are to share in the Church’s mission and to take responsibility for the life, the care and the progress of the Church as a place of encounter with the Risen Lord.

Next, still focusing on the symbol of water, consider the Gospel of St. John chapter 7 (used at the Vigil Mass last evening). Jesus makes explicit reference to water and the Holy Spirit, connecting the two. He says, “Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink. As Scripture says; Rivers of living water will flow from within him who believes in me”. St. John goes on to write that Jesus “said this in reference to the Spirit that those who came to believe in him were to receive” (Jn. 7:38-39). Considering this image and symbol for the Holy Spirit, and considering how we are born into salvation by water consecrated by the power of the Holy Spirit and how this same water is sprinkled upon us at various moments of faith, especially in the Easter Season, we should understand that we are called to be alive and vibrant, active in sharing the mission of the Church, and sturdy and strong as disciples if we quench not merely our physical thirst but that deeper thirst for communion with God. By committing to serious prayer, by the sacramental life, separating ourselves from sin and worthily partaking of Holy Communion, by serving and caring for the mission of the Church, especially at our parish, we are seeking that living water that wells up within us by God’s generosity.

I’ll leave you with a final image that I hope captures some of the idea of a mysterious water. A few years ago, while at a conference in San Francisco I took some time to tour the California Redwood Forests. You know that redwood trees are incredibly tall and large. Walking in the redwood forests feels like you are inside a naturally made cathedral with soaring ceilings. Of all the interesting facts and statistics about those large trees, one fact surprised me most. Redwood trees take a surprising percentage of the water they need from the moisture of the very atmosphere itself. During the dry summer months when there is little rain, redwoods take some 30-40% of their water from the coastal fog that washes over their leaves high above. While fog is composed of tiny, microscopic droplets of water, we don’t often think of fog as ‘water’ in the sense of water that we drink. Perhaps that image of a strong and sturdy tree drinking a mysterious water can serve us who are called to be strong and sturdy by drinking the mysterious living water of the Holy Spirit.

We need to be made strong and alive as members of Christ. The Lord tells us to recognize our deeper thirst. He tells us that we would be mistaken to satisfy our physical thirst only, for if we do we will thirst again. Rather, we need to attend to the needs of our soul and to attend to nourishing our spiritual life. The Holy Spirit is given to us like water, like a river of living water within. Don’t be fooled by the water you can see. Don’t be fooled by making your life’s pursuit the satisfaction of only pleasures or bodily goods. Rather, open yourself to what the Lord gives, seek to develop the gifts given to you by the Holy Spirit, and drink deeply of God’s generous love of you.