Tìm Kiếm

25 tháng 5, 2015

Homily for The Pentecost Sunday—Year B (May 24, 2015)

“When He Comes, The Spirit of Truth, He Will Guide You 
To All Truth.”
(Jn 16:13)  




Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

This Sunday we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit on the early Christian community fifty days after Christ our Lord rose from the dead.

The coming of the Holy Spirit fulfilled Christ’s promise that He would send Him to guide all believers to all truth.

This is the most strikingly interesting sentence which we read in this Pentecost Sunday’s Gospel.

But what does “he will guide you to all truth” really mean?

Let me try to explain to you its implication.

First, we talk about how we can see people and things around us.

We need three requirements in order to see: eye, object and light. Without the eye we cannot see.  Having the eye we see nothing either, unless there should be something or someone in front of us.  Something or someone does exist right before us, and our eye sight is very good, but because there is no light, we become blind.

Second, we talk about the existence of realities that escape our human senses. Let us take, for example, the mystery of Christ’s real presence in the Blessed Sacrament.  We are taught that bread and wine turn into the Body and Blood of the Lord after the words of consecration.  However, we see no difference, we taste no difference, and we analyze no difference in the bread and wine before and after the consecration.

This simply tells us that our human knowing capacity is limited, imperfect with regard to the truths that do not belong to our world of material things, but that pertain to God’s world of spiritual realities.



Now, in order for us human beings to understand God’s secrets, we need two conditions: God’s self-revelation and the light of faith. 

In fact, we can only know God just because He first wants to introduce Himself to us.  Without divine revelation or God’s leaking of Himself, we remain absolutely ignorant of His existence and working.
In addition, as already mentioned above, because God’s realities surpass our human intelligence, we need His help, which theologians call “grace”, to be able to see with a new eye, to hear with a new ear, to understand with a new mind, and to love with a new heart.

These blessings are the gifts of the Holy Spirit Who was sent upon the early Church on the first Pentecost Sunday.  These blessings are the gifts of the same Holy Spirit to Whom we pray today that He may pour out His light of divine wisdom on each and one of us in order for us to know, in depth and in breadth, the truth of God’s love manifest in the life, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, His Only Son, our Lord and Savior.
Fr. Francis Nguyen, O.P.