Readings (Year C):
Acts 2:1 – 11
Psalm 104:1, 24, 29 – 30, 31, 34
1 Corinthians 12:3b – 7, 12 – 13
John 20:19 – 23
Reflection: The Holy Spirit unites us without canceling our differences
Every year on Pentecost we commemorate the arrival of the Spirit whose empowering presence emboldened the apostles to publicly and fearlessly proclaim the good news, thus giving birth to the church.
In today’s second reading Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, tells us: “There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit; There are different forms of service, but the same Lord; there are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone.” Paul stresses two things here which seem mutually exclusive: diversity and unity. In fact, some people think that unity can only be achieved when diversity is suppressed—when we all think the same thing, look the same, act the same, or speak the same language.
But that is not the way the church was born, nor is it the reality of the church today. From the beginning, diversity and inclusion have been the hallmarks of the church. From the beginning, the church has been made up of people of every ethnicity, race, socio-economic status, with diverse ideas rooted in diverse experiences, yet all amazingly unified through the gift of the one, same Spirit. It is the “same Spirit,” not the sameness of people, or uniformity of thought, that is the source of unity.
This is clear from the first reading from Acts of the Apostles, where the Holy Spirit is the force that forges unity without abolishing diversity. The Spirit did not transform the first apostles into carbon copies of an ideal Christian. Some were poor fisherman from the countryside, one was a tax collector. They were from different backgrounds and social contexts. Peter was impulsive, a few were ambitious, others more reserved. Undoubtedly, each had different ideas about what to do next—hide, go home, stay the course? They were all different and remained different. What united them and emboldened them to go out and evangelize was the unifying power of the Spirit.
The Spirit’s unifying power was also at work among those to whom the apostles preached. As we heard in the first reading, the people who were present, though they came from every corner of the world, spoke in different languages, and had different cultures, with different ideas, were able to hear the same gospel message of God’s love and come together as one people: the people of God, unified in their diversity by the same Spirit.
In his first homily, on the day of his installation as the Roman pontiff, Pope Leo XIV said that his “great first desire is for a united church, to act as a leaven of unity and reconciliation in our world which is filled with too much discord, too many wounds caused by hatred, violence, prejudice, the fear of difference, and an economic paradigm that exploits the Earth’s resources and marginalizes the poorest.” Pope Leo’s desire for unity reveals the reality of the church today, where intolerance of legitimate differences, and an overemphasis on uniformity, can lead to division.
So how can we be a leaven of unity and reconciliation in a world that desperately needs our witness, if the world sees us as divided between right and left, red and blue, progressives and traditionalists, some attached to one ideology, some to another? Today, we must stop and ask further: What exactly unites us? For believers there should be only one answer: the gospel, which calls us, like Jesus, to offer God’s love to all without distinction, notwithstanding differences.
This is no easy task. That is why Jesus, knowing that we would need help, left his Spirit. That same Spirit, which was with the church from the beginning, is with us now to assist and strengthen us to achieve that unity which does not cancel out differences. Only when we ourselves are a church united in love for one another, can we be the leaven of unity and reconciliation the world needs to move beyond war and hatred to live in peace and harmony. From the beginning, this is the way of life willed by God for all of creation.
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