Scripture Reflections for Pentecost Sunday
Year B, Lectionary 63
God continues to breathe life into us now in the Holy Spirit. Where we tend to close ourselves away from God we need to open ourselves to the Spirit, open ourselves to forgiveness, and then let that forgiveness and Spirit flow outwards into the world.
Hate feeling lost on Sundays at church? Searching for a better explanation of the Bible than what you hear from your pastor's sermon? Check out the following collection of audio, video, and text commentaries from various Christian experts for a better understanding of today's scripture that deal with: • Abide • Adapt • Ascension • Baptism • Breath • Breathe • Change • Church • Communicate • Communication • Community • Confidence • Creation • Division • Faith • Fear • Fire • Flesh • Forgive • Forgiveness • Gather • Gift • Grace • Grateful • Harvest • Hatred • Healing • Heaven • History • Holy Orders • Holy Spirit • Home • Idolatry • Immorality • Impurity • Jealous • Kingdom • Love • Lust • Mary • Meeting • Mission • Moses • Passover • Peace • Pentecost • Power • Prayer • Recognize • Reconciliation • Rivalry • Selfishness • Sin • Sorcery • Spirit • Suffering • Thirst • Tongues • Tower of Babel • Trinity • Understand • Unity • Urgency • Wind • Wisdom • Women •
“Pentecost is like a new Mount Sinai but secondly also that the Holy Spirit is divine. It shows the divinity of the Holy Spirit because in the Old Testament it was the Lord...who descended upon Mount Sinai in fire. And so now it's the Spirit who descend upon the apostles in fire at the feast of Pentecost.”
“just as in the Old Testament the Lord came down from heaven and descended upon Israel in fire to give them the old law, so now too, in the New Testament on Pentecost the Holy Spirit descends upon the Apostles in tongues as of fire...to give them the new law which is written on the tablets of their hearts”
“is a kind of undoing of the Tower of Babel in which humanity was divided through the multiplication of languages. So now the Holy Spirit is going to reunify humanity through the church.”
“the same Holy Spirit that the disciples experienced, the same Holy Spirit that Jesus experienced, the same Holy Spirit that has inspired so many of our leaders those who have worked for good in our world is also present to you”
“Today is Pentecost. As a community we gather in sure and certain expectation of being bathed in that same wind and fire as those first Christians. That is truly amazing.”
“none of these gifts are given without a mission attached to them”
“Paul here emphasizes that it's the Spirit who both enables the church to be one in Christ and yet at the same time consist of many different kinds of people”
“There are really two parts to the reading for today. The first part focuses on specific gifts of the Holy Spirit...that are meant for building up the body of Christ, building up the Church, the Church's mission in the world as we see which begins on Pentecost”
“a love that can't be diminished or played favorites. A love that is free and accessible. And we are reminded of that love today because today is Pentecost. So come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, breathe into us your love”
“I want to be a part of a community of a body of Christ that does not restrain the Spirit but rather embraces its restless and wild nature”
“That's what the Holy Spirit does, it gives you and I a push even through those parts of ourselves that resist change. And that's why what our role is is to keep saying ‘come Holy Spirit’ every day of our life.”
“So it turns out this is what allows us to communicate: the intention of love”
“after his Ascension, God came back to us as the Holy Spirit no longer to live with us but to be in us. So we are now carriers of God in the Holy Spirit.”
“How much attention are you paying to the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in your own life and the signs of the times? What are your God-given gifts? Can you recognize the Holy Spirit's influence in the lives of others particularly those different from you?”
“if we have the Holy Spirit in us love will be communicated this day too”
“As people of faith we must be open to trusting the Holy Spirit to shape us, fill us and use us”
“By breathing on his disciples Jesus entrusts them with the power of the Holy Spirit to carry on his mission of taking away the sin of the world, to carry on his ministry of reconciliation”
“do we speak God? Or are there those things that keep us from communicating, that causes that frustration, that keeps that Word from going from soul to soul, from spirit to spirit?”
“sometimes God uses a host of crazy situations and things to get our attention because you and I can find ourselves often locked in the upper room”
“Come on, Church, when are we gonna let go and let God? When are we gonna allow the Holy Spirit to change our way of thought? Where there is confusion there is not the Holy Spirit. Where there is clarity there the Holy Spirit dwells.”
“every member of the Church is gifted, is talented. Not to use the talent, not to use the gifts to oppress other members of the Church but rather to build one another and eventually the one body of the Church.”
“so oftentimes so much of violence whether it's physical violence, emotional violence is the cause of what? Fear. Fear. Fear of difference, fear of change. Yet today's feast is all about what? Change.”
“Look in your spiritual Facebook page and you'll find that you have a thousand requests every day by the Holy Spirit to friend you and we often never answer...how often do we friend the Holy Spirit, do we pray to the Holy Spirit, do we invoke the Holy Spirit? Do we even know that there is a Holy Spirit?”
“God is breathing upon us. Are we allowing that breath of life to touch us, to permeate our existence today, to restore what was in the beginning which was love? Love manifests life. Love manifests goodness.”
“the Holy Spirit comes to bring transformation in our lives”
“For while there is not one way to be Catholic, one spirit fills and embraces the world”
“if we are alienated from God we will be alienated from one another. So with the new creation inaugurated at Pentecost the curse of Babel is reversed...The outpouring of the Spirit and the preaching of the Gospel to all nations begins the reuniting of the human race and the gathering of all people into the reign of God.”
“they don't know what to do anymore. And it's because of that emptiness, out of that emptiness that the Holy Spirit is able to fill them and they're able maybe for the first time to act out of the Holy Spirit...a communication of the love of God to all peoples, even in languages they can't even speak”
“Pentecost is a chance for all of us to do more, to go out, to listen but also to act in the name of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit to do our little part that disrupts systems of oppression to keep people down”
“so in order to help human beings the Holy Spirit was given that grace may make up for human deficiencies...that Christians may move beyond the letters of the Law to the spirit of the Law”
“The spirit of the Living God, church, helps us to know that sometimes we're closer than it may appear. Sometimes, perhaps, if we just look at things, look at others, differently we might see the very image of God. The Spirit is a spirit of unity”
