This is the Feast of the Holy Spirit.  On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended with power upon the Apostles; and thus began the mission of the Church in the world.  Pentecost is a central Feast in the Church’s year…for many centuries regarded as second only to Easter.  Jesus had been preparing the Eleven for their mission, appearing to them on many occasions after his Resurrection.  Prior to his Ascension into Heaven, he ordered them “not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father.”  He wanted them to stay together to prepare themselves to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.  And they gathered in prayer with Mary in the Upper Room, awaiting this promised event, the arrival of the Spirit of God, proceeding from the Father and the Son to animate the Church and to fill the hearts of the faithful until the end of time.  

The Holy Spirit had been active from the very beginning, but in a more hidden way.  Genesis says first of all that the Spirit of God was moving over the chaos, over the waters of the abyss.  The world in which we live is the work of the Creator Spirit.  Pentecost is not only the origin of the Church and thus in a special way the feast of the Church; Pentecost is also a feast of creation.  The world does not exist by itself; it is brought into being by the creative Spirit of God.  And the world is also re-made, our hearts are re-made, by the coming of the Spirit into our lives.  Sin brought division into the world.  This is seen and represented in the experience of Babel, when people’s differences become division.  Human sin takes legitimate diversity and turns it into separation.  But the Spirit repairs all that.  The Spirit unites legitimate differences, like race, and people, and tongue, and brings all together in the Truth of Christ.  All of a sudden, on Pentecost, everyone can understand each other again: a powerful image of the unity that the truth of Christ brings.  

From time to time, the Holy Spirit acts in very dramatic and visible ways like this. Like that great day of Pentecost, when the Spirit descended upon Mary and the Apostles like tongues of fire. Sometimes certain people in our own day have very dramatic experiences of the Spirit.  And that’s fine; it’s a blessing offered to some.  But we can never forget: it’s all right if we don’t have dramatic charismatic experiences.  That’s not the way the Spirit usually works, in fact, in the lives of most people.  99% of the time, the Holy Spirit is subtle, quiet, hidden, and mysterious.  It’s why we have to pay attention.  The Holy Spirit is working constantly, in our lives, right now even.  And he prefers to work in the silence, in the sublime.  In the beginning the Holy Spirit breathed over the unorganized chaos to bring creation into being: no one was there to see it: it was a quiet moment.  Or think of our own creation.  The Holy Spirit was present at the moment of our conception in our mother’s womb, that precious hidden moment when new life sprang forth for us, when the Spirit infused our human soul into our newly formed body, giving us life.  The Spirit was present and active when we received new and eternal life in Baptism. And certainly the Spirit was powerfully present again in his own special sacrament: confirmation.  The Spirit is present right here, right now.  And he will be present in full glory in just a few minutes, when he uses my unworthy hands, to come down upon bread and wine, transforming them into the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of the Lord, Jesus Christ.  

Love the Holy Spirit.  Pray to him. Honor and worship him, especially in the Holy Mass.  And in our noisy world, carve out times of silence for yourself, every day, put your phone away, and just listen…listen for the quiet voice of Holy Spirit speaking softly in the depths of your heart.