Sunday the 24th of May 2026 - Pentecost

Acts 2:1-11/ Ps 104(103)/1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13/ John 20:19-23

Some years ago, I was privileged to accompany a group of young people who travelled to Poland for World Youth Day with Pope Benedict XVI. One of the tours arranged for the groups attending was a visit to the Auschwitz extermination camp. Here we learned the story of Father Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan priest who was a detainee there. A prisoner had escaped and the camp commandant had ordered the deaths of ten men in retaliation. They were to be starved to death in an underground chamber. One of those selected was a Polish man who cried out in despair over never seeing his wife and children again. Father Kolbe offered himself in place of this man and he was accepted saving the man's life. Father Kolbe led the other nine men in prayer and hymn singing as they were starved in the darkness of their dungeon. Instead of screams of anguish and despair the guards heard only prayers and singing. All nine of the prisoners died leaving only Father Kolbe alive, he was then killed by lethal injection, a death that witnesses reported he accepted in apparent peace. How can peace like this be found in an environment of such suffering and aguish? The world cannot give us that kind of peace, that peace can only come from one place, the place our readings take us today, the upper room where a frightened group of people were transformed by the breath of God.

Today we celebrate one of the great mysteries of our faith, the day the Church was born, not in a grand cathedral, or proclaimed by an emperor, not through the power of armies or the wealth of kings, but in a small upper room, behind locked doors, among a handful of frightened, ordinary people. Whatever cynicism anyone may carry about the Church today, whatever doubts the world may throw at the Gospel message, there remains one historic fact that cannot be explained away. Something happened in that upper room. Something happened on that Pentecost day that took a group of ordinary uneducated working men, fishermen, tax collectors, tradesmen, who were hiding in fear after the death of their leader, and transformed them into bold preachers who walked out into the streets of Jerusalem and changed the course of human history.

These men were not philosophers; they were not great speakers trained in the schools of Athens or Rome. They had no political influence, no army, no wealth. They had every reason to slip quietly back to their old lives in Galilee, to mend their nets, to forget the dream that seemed to die on the Cross. And yet, all but one of them would eventually be put to death for refusing to stop telling the world about Jesus. People do not die for what they know to be a lie. Something real, something powerful, something undeniable happened to them. That something was the Holy Spirit. As we heard in the Acts of the Apostles, there came from heaven a noise like a strong wind, and tongues of fire came to rest on each of them. They began to speak in such a way that Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, all heard the mighty acts of God in their own tongues. I repeat the long list of nations because Saint Luke is giving us an important message here. From the very first moment of her existence, the Church was universal. She began among the Jewish people, the chosen people through whom salvation came, but the message was never meant to stay locked in one language or one culture. The Holy Spirit gathers all peoples into one understanding through the language of love. Love that binds us together across every barrier of race, language, class, and nation.

The Gospel today tells us what the message is that the Holy Spirit empowers us to carry to the world.  When the risen Jesus appeared to His disciples in the upper room, He did not rebuke them for their cowardice. He did not lecture them for abandoning Him. He said simply, "Peace be with you." And then He said it again. " Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you." And He breathed on them and gives them the Holy Spirit, with the power to forgive sins. That message, the greeting, "Peace be with you" is the universal greeting of the Christian. We hear it many times at Mass. It was the song of the angels at Bethlehem when Jesus was born. Saint Paul opens nearly every one of his letters with a greeting of grace and peace. At the end of every Mass, we are sent out in peace. What is this peace we proclaim so often? It is not merely the absence of conflict. It is not the temporary calm the world offers when things happen to be going well. This is a peace that can be found amid unspeakable trauma. It is a peace that the martyrs carried with them to their deaths. It is a peace that sustained Saint Maximilian Kolbe in the starvation bunker of Auschwitz. It is a peace that promises resurrection even as we share in the suffering of the Cross.

This is a peace the world cannot give. Only God can give it, and only those who know and love Him can truly receive it. This is the peace we offer one another at Mass when we turn and say, "Peace be with you." It is not a casual social greeting. It is the very peace of the risen Christ that we are extending to our brothers and sisters. Jesus connects this peace directly to forgiveness. The final words of today's Gospel include these: "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them." Peace comes through forgiveness, the forgiveness God pours out upon us, and the forgiveness we in turn extend to others. The Church teaches that there is no offense, however serious, that God will not forgive. It also reminds us that we cannot receive God's mercy if we refuse to forgive our neighbour. Without unconditional forgiveness, there can be no unconditional love. And without unconditional love, the true peace we seek from God remains out of reach.

The Spirit who descended upon the Apostles at Pentecost has descended upon each of us at Baptism and Confirmation. The same fire burns in us. The same breath fills our lungs. At Mass we approach the altar to receive the Body and Blood of Jesus. The same Holy Spirit who transformed those frightened Apostles into fearless witnesses is invoked over the bread and wine. The same Spirit who unites the Church across every nation unites us as one Body in the Eucharist. Having been filled with Christ Himself, we are be sent out, just as the Apostles were sent out, to carry His peace and His forgiveness into a world that so desperately needs it.

Today let us make our prayer, ‘Send forth your Spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of the earth’, Let us walk out of the church doors as the Apostles walked out of that upper room, with courage, joy, and peace.

God Bless Brendan