Celebrating the Lord’s Ascension last Sunday, we saw that Christ, seated at the Father’s right hand, is the head of His mystical body, the Church. This taught us that the Church is not another charitable organization or social club, and no human person is Her “head.” Rather, the Lord established the office of Bishop as successor to the Apostles as the means through which He Himself leads His body, the Church, especially through St. Peter and his successors as Bishop of Rome.

            Today we celebrate the great Solemnity of Pentecost, often referred to as the birthday of the Church. Following the Lord’s Ascension, the Apostles gathered in the upper room (the same place where they celebrated the Last Supper and where the Lord appeared to them on Easter Sunday), together with Mary, to await the fulfillment of the promise the Lord made to them at the Last Supper: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth.” Pentecost is often called the birthday of the Church because the Apostles are transformed by receiving the Holy Spirit, and go out to preach the Gospel to all the corners of the earth.

            We can see, then, that the Holy Spirit has a particular relationship to the Church. He is given to the Apostles not as individuals, but as part of the Church. We tend to think of a relationship with the Holy Spirit in an individualistic key. It is even common to juxtapose the “hierarchical element” of the Church with the “charismatic element,” assuming there is a contradiction between what the “institutional Church” does through the Bishops, and what the Holy Spirit does in the hearts of individual believers.

            But this is a very un-Biblical view of the Holy Spirit! St. Paul tells us today that “in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, … and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.” We encounter the Holy Spirit precisely as members of the Body of Christ – members not in the modern sense of a card-carrying member of an organization you can join or leave at will, but members in the original sense of a limb of the body. Further, he explains that “To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit,” and emphasizes that the benefit is not primarily for that individual person, but for the good of the whole body of which that Christian is a member.

            The reason for this is simple: the one on whom the Holy Spirit is not you or me or even St. Peter and the other Apostles. The Holy Spirit descends, even at Pentecost, on Christ. It is Christ who is anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power. The Holy Spirit descends upon the Apostles at Pentecost, and upon Christian believers at their baptism and confirmation, precisely as members of Christ.

            If Christ is the head of the mystical body that is the Church, that body’s soul, then, is the Holy Spirit. Just as the soul is the spiritual principle of the human person, animating or giving life to the body, the Holy Spirit gives life to the Body of Christ, the Church. In the Creed, we confess Him as dominum et vivificantem, the Lord, the giver of life. He gives life to human persons in the sense that all life is a gift from God, but even more importantly, He gives life to the Church.

            A body without a soul is not actually a body at all. It is a corpse. It is a body only analogously, by what it used to be (the physical principle of a living human being). So likewise, a Church without the Holy Spirit is not a Church at all, but a corpse of a church!

            The Holy Spirit gives life to the Church through the Sacraments. He is at work invisibly every time the Sacraments are celebrated. As water is poured over the head of a child, He is at work in her soul, freeing her from original sin, and re-fashioning her in Christ’s image and likeness. It was the Holy Spirit who was poured out upon the Apostles who conformed them to Christ the Head, making them priests, and giving them the power to forgive sins, as our Lord told them on Easter Sunday: “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” And the Holy Spirit makes the Church’s offerings of bread and wine acceptable to the Father, transforming them into the Body and Blood of Christ.

            At Pentecost, the Apostles were moved to proclaim the Gospel, and this is the most fundamental task of the Church, what Her soul, the Holy Spirit, moves the Body to do. “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” By “proclaim the Gospel” we don’t just mean the liturgical proclamation of the Gospel text by the deacon or priest at Mass. We mean the right and duty of every baptized Christian to proclaim the Good News of the saving life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ: That God exists, that humanity is created by Him and fell through sin, that He took flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, who died for our sins but rose from the dead to bring new life to those who were lost. The world is starving for this truth, for the Gospel! This is most fundamentally what the Church exists to do, and what Her soul, the Holy Spirit, enables Her to proclaim.

            The sacraments the Church celebrates are the fuel, the blood pumping through the body of Christ that her soul, the Spirit, uses to give us life. They are as well a means by which the Church proclaims the Gospel. But if we are a closed community that celebrates the sacraments with beauty and reverence but does not proclaim the saving truths that we hear and receive, then we are on our way to becoming a body without a soul, without life.

            It often happens that our new Catholics are back in our Being Catholic course (RCIA) the next year, sponsoring someone else who is exploring the Catholic faith. My first year as a parish priest, the course director was telling me about the different people who would participate that year. Three were described as “Bob’s people.” Bob, it turns out, had (or, hopefully, still has!) two or three of “his people” in that class becoming Catholic every year. Imagine if every Catholic were like that! We wouldn’t be renovating the parish hall to have more room for our Being Catholic course; we’d be building an auditorium or renting the Colosseum!

            Now maybe you’re thinking, “yeah, but I’m not Bob, and we just heard that ‘There are different kinds of spiritual gifts’ and ‘there are different forms of service.’” This is true, but even though there are different gifts and different forms of service, the mission that each of us has is the same, because it is Christ within you who has been anointed by the Holy Spirit. You have received the gifts necessary to build up the Body of Christ. You have the same soul of the Church within you, the Holy Spirit, the soul of the Church and the soul of your soul. He is the one who will truly do the work if you will let Him.

            Today, the Holy Spirit descends upon the Body of Christ, the Church, giving Her the mission to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth, and living within Her as the soul of the Body of Christ, giving Her the life and power to bring that mission about. As a member of Christ, that mission is yours, and the Holy Spirit who brings it about dwells in you as well.

The Rev. Royce V. Gregerson

Parish Church of Our Lady of Good Hope, Fort Wayne

Pentecost Sunday, A.D. MMXXVI