The predominant character of the Coming of the Holy Ghost on the Day Pentecost is one of explosive spiritual energy coming upon the 120 disciples in the Upper Room in Jerusalem through their abiding in the words of Jesus in their hearts as He revealed Himself to them through the opening of Scripture and the breaking of bread. This is the birth of the life of the Church, celebrated last Sunday and in terms of Liturgy completed today on Trinity Sunday, the Octave Day (that is, eighth day) of Pentecost. The womb of the Upper Room went boom, and the boom of the explosive spiritual energy of the Coming of the Holy Ghost is so strong that nearly two thousand years later in an area of the world over ten thousand miles away from Jerusalem the religious life in our parish is lit by the same explosive energy as the Upper Room.
We, as the 120 disciples were two thousand years ago, seek a personal relationship with Jesus in our hearts, recognize His presence in Scripture proclaimed, receive Him in Holy Communion, and seek to order our lives around the Mystery of Christ—ordering our lives personally and domestically, and also ordering around Him our interpretation of the world, our relations with the world and the people and creatures in it. There is no fundamental difference between what we do in our parish and what the Upper Room church did in Jerusalem. They are our contemporaries in the Christian life, as we all live as one Body in Christ on the Day of the Lord. The life of Christians is a continually initiation into the experience of Pentecost.
The Coming of the Holy Ghost lit a fire in the hearts of men and women, and the fire in their hearts is the fire in our hearts. And this fire is love for God, a burning heat for Jesus Christ. The Coming of the Holy Ghost causes the hearts of people to seek God, to look for Him, to yearn for Him. And all of this amounts to living life in such a way so as, in the words of Saint Paul the Apostle, to be led by the Spirit of God. In all things, Christians seek to be led by the Spirit of God, because His very nature is to lead into Truth, Who is Christ. Human beings are by our nature drawn toward what is good, what is true, and what is beautiful; and all that is good, all that is true, and all that is beautiful is of God.
Where we go wrong, and where humans have always gone wrong, is we often have the habit of defining what constitutes the good, the true, and the beautiful in selfish and self-centered ways, because of concupiscence. This is what Saint Paul refers to in his epistle to the Romans by the technical and scriptural phrase “living according to the flesh.” To live selfishly, to live self-centeredly, to live pridefully is to live according to the flesh. This way of living leads to spiritual decay, spiritual death—and many of us know firsthand what living according to the flesh means, and the dead-ends, depression, and confusion that ensues. It very much feels like slavery, to use Saint Paul’s term: bondage, to our own frailties, our own temptations, our own stupidity.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is a message of hope; the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a promise of freedom whereby the chains of self-centered concupiscence are unshackled from our heart, and because of being freed from what enslaves us, our hearts learn to beat with the heart of Christ in His Church. This is very much an experience of being born anew, and reborn in the Holy Spirit of God the Father through Jesus Christ, by Whom we reinterpret our lives, reinterpret our priorities, reinterpret the situations in which we make choices.
And the practical aspect of it all can be found in two questions: What does it mean to be led by the Spirit of God? And, in light of that, what shall we do?—meaning, what practical bearing on our life should that have? How do we arrange our life so that our life can be a life that is led by the Spirit of God? These two questions about being led by the Spirit of God—what does it mean? and what shall we do?—are the only two questions necessary to Christian discipleship. They not only speak to the importance of Pentecost and Trinity Sunday which completes it, but all the Sundays and weeks from now until the beginning of Advent in several months’ time, and the whole of Christian living hinges on these two questions, asked in faith.
After all, in the words of Our Lord Jesus, God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. Being led by the Spirit of God is how we come to believe in Christ—believing in Him not in superficial ways, but believing in Him that our heart is transformed, illumined, and on fire for Him that the fire that warms us, we can share with others in the world, that they might share in the transforming heat of Jesus Christ, who is the Light of the world, and Who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Ghost, the blessed and most glorious Trinity, unto the ages of ages. Amen.