Pentecost, Year A (2026) - Fr Joseph Vnuk, OP

You may have seen a movie in which a woman is in childbirth.  Not much is shown, but we hear things: the mother groaning and gasping in labour, midwives offering encouragement, sounds of bystanders anxious, worried, apprehensive.  And then there is one sound that resolves all the tension and brings it to a happy ending: the cry of the newborn baby.  If the baby is crying, then the baby is breathing, and has thus made the absolutely essential first step to adjusting to life outside the womb.  Our birthday is not the day we being to live, for we have already been alive for nine months since our conception.  Our birthday is the day we begin to breathe.

This observation can help us to understand why we celebrate Pentecost as the birthday of the Church, and not as the anniversary day of it founding.  The Church was in existence long before Pentecost, right from the days when Peter and Andrew left their nets to follow Jesus, but it was in an embryonic state.  Throughout his public ministry, Jesus enables this Church to develop and achieve a more recognisable form: he chooses the twelve, he sends the disciples out to preach and to heal, he gives the keys to Peter, he instructs them about correction, forgiveness and leadership, he institutes the sacraments of Eucharist and baptism.  But the Church as a whole is not yet received the Holy Spirit.  As the child in the womb is totally dependent upon the breathing of the mother, so the disciples were reliant upon the Holy Spirit as it rested not on them, but on Jesus.  It is Jesus, filled with the Spirit, alive in the Spirit, who is the source of their life and power.  And like the child, who does not begin to breathe until physically separated from the mother, so also the Church does not breathe the Holy Spirit until Christ has separated himself from her by his ascension.

As Luke describes it, the Spirit fills the house, symbolizing the Church as the home that shelters and cares for all the believers, and each of the believers is filled, as symbolized by the tongues of fire resting on the head of each of them.  Like human beings, fires need to breathe.  The fire of love that warms our hearts and brightens our faces with joy is only kept alive through the breath of the Spirit.

We can understand the relationship between the house being filled and all the disciples being filled if we reflect upon the role of Mary.  Mary is mentioned in the previous chapter of Acts as present with the other disciples as they prayed in the house.  Mary is also present in the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel, in which the Holy Spirit is at work in her so that she can give birth to the one who is pre-eminently filled with the Holy Spirit.  In a parallel way, the Church, symbolized by the house, is filled with the Holy Spirit so that she can give birth to Christian, other christs, filled with the Spirit, as at the end of this episode the Church, through the ministry of the apostles, baptizes three thousand new disciples, and the Holy Spirit comes upon each of them.

What does it mean to breathe the Holy Spirit?  In today’s Gospel Jesus breathes on his disciples, inviting them to breathe as he breathes.  It is the breath of the risen One, of the One who lives for ever, and at the same time it is the breath of forgiveness, the breath that brings peace and reconciliation.  For us to breathe the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit that raised him to eternal life and which raise us to, is to breathe forgiveness.  To harbour resentment, to hold grudges, to refuse to forgive, is to breathe something that is not of Jesus, to inhale poisonous fumes and noxious gases and acrid smoke; it chokes our life and causes peace to wither.  It is only in this peace and forgiveness that the disciples of Jesus can live in one house or, as Paul tells the Corinthians in the second reading, live together as members of the one body of Christ, not envious of the gifts of others, but rejoicing in the way that the Holy Spirit enriches the whole body through gifts given to each member.

For the Spirit that Jesus breathes over his disciples on Easter Sunday evening is the same Spirit that Jesus “handed over” on the Cross on Good Friday.  It is the Spirit that glorifies the Son in the glory of the Father through the act of perfect love.  For greater love has no one than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  It is the same Spirit that at each Mass we invoke on the bread and the wine, so that they may become the living and life-giving body and blood of Christ, bringing all the disciples together into one body, one Church.  As we drink from the chalice may we be intoxicated by the Spirit that it breathes forth.  For the disciples, too, were intoxicated by the Holy Spirit that Pentecost Sunday as they spoke the wonders of God.  And just as the cry of the innocent baby transcends all languages to touch the hearts of all who hear, so may the Holy Spirit inspire in us words and deeds of love that all people can understand, to unite our divided world in the praise of the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.

Fr Joseph Vnuk, OP is the Catholic Chaplain of Monash University and a theology lecturer in Catholic Theological College, Melbourne.