Pentecost Sunday 2021

Most Reverend José H. Gomez
Archbishop of Los Angeles

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels
May 23, 2021

My brothers and sisters in Christ,¹

Happy Pentecost Day to all of you!

As we know, Pentecost is the great “birthday of the Church.” So today, we are celebrating the day when our Catholic Church was born, when she received the promise of the Holy Spirit!

So, we ask our heavenly Father today to renew this gift of his Spirit within us and within our Church. We ask Jesus Christ to renew us with the fire of his divine love.

As we hear in our first reading today, the Spirit came down upon the Blessed Virgin Mary and the apostles in “tongues of fire.” And immediately they began proclaiming — in every language of the earth — the mighty works of God.

So, we see revealed today the beautiful reality and identity of the Church. Pentecost reveals that the Church has a “universal” character and mission. That’s what “Catholic” means. It means universal, global, worldwide.

The Catholic Church is the sign and instrument of what God wants to do in history, what he wants for every human heart.

St. Paul tells us today in the second reading, “For in one Spirit we are all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons, and we were all give to drink of one Spirit.”

In Christ, we are all one. There are no divisions among peoples. We are all brothers and sisters, children of God, and we have one Father in heaven.

Sadly, as we all know, in our society now we see so many divisions. But what Pentecost tells us, is that these divisions contradict the unity that God wants for his people.  

I especially think that what has happened is that our society has lost the sense of the presence of God among us.

As Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI said some years ago: “Often people believe in God in a superficial way, but they live as if God did not exist.”

And without the presence of God, there is “no glue,” no common bond that holds us together as one people.

But in the deepest mystery, the human race is a unity. And God is one. As God is one, the human family is one. As we find in the one God, a Trinity of three divine persons, so in the one human family, we find a wonderful diversity of races and languages, and peoples.

Jesus loved and gave his life for every person, and by his cross and resurrection he wants to restore and reunite all things in him — to gather all the peoples scattered throughout the earth into one communion, one body, one family.

And my brothers and sisters, as we know, Christ’s work is not over! It continues in his Church. And that’s the meaning of Pentecost. The Church is “born” on Pentecost to proclaim a new creation, to proclaim the “rebirth” of a new humanity.

And as we hear in the first reading today, the Spirit was given to the apostles in that upper room and they were empowered to proclaim the “mighty acts of God”— in the languages of “every nation under heaven.”

And that’s the mission that Jesus gave to his Church — to proclaim God’s mighty love to the ends of the earth!

And my dear brothers and sisters, that’s your mission and my mission.

The words that Jesus speaks in our Gospel today, he is speaking those words personally to me and to you, to everyone in the Church. As we heard: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

And as we also heard: “Jesus breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.”

So, Jesus has breathed his Spirit into each one of us when we receive baptism. We are baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire. And our baptism becomes a call to share in the beautiful adventure of Our Lord Jesus Christ. To hear a beautiful a call.

We need to bring to our society a new Pentecost, a new awakening to the reality of God, to the unity of the human family.  

I really believe that, at this moment, Christ is calling his Church to be at the front line, to be the cutting edge of a new humanity. He is calling each one of us to be examples, to be the sign for our neighbors that in Jesus Christ we are one, that we have one human nature, one common origin and destiny.

It is a beautiful call. And it is especially clear to all of us that that’s what is needed in the Church — I will say in our families, in our society, everywhere.

So, on this Pentecost Day, let us ask the Holy Spirit to come again and to fill our hearts so that we can be missionaries to our society — just like the first apostles, just like St. Junípero Serra and the heroic founders of our missions.

Let’s ask the Holy Spirit today to give us a new awareness of the mission of our baptism, a new sense of our responsibility. Joyfully, every one of us has to be a missionary disciple, participating actively in the mission of the Church.

And let us ask our Mary — she’s the Mother of the Church — who was there at that first Pentecost — to help us to proclaim her Son to the people of our time. It is a beautiful call, I insist. It is a beautiful mission. So, let’s ask for that grace that today we renew our desire to be missionary disciples.

And through her intercession, may we help our neighbors to see — that in the heart of Christ, and in his Church, everyone in the whole human race can find a home.

1. Readings:  Acts. 2:1-11; Ps. 104: 1, 24, 29-31, 34; 1 Cor. 12:3b-7, 12-13; John 20:19-23.