When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.   And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them.  And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.  Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven.   And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in his own language.
        And they were amazed and wondered, saying, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?  And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?  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, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God."

Today's Song of Praise is taken from Psalm 104:

        Bless the LORD, O my soul! O LORD my God, thou art very great!
        O LORD, how manifold are thy works! The earth is full of thy creatures.
        When thou takest away their breath, they die and return to their dust.
        When thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created; and thou renewest the face of the ground.
        May the glory of the LORD endure for ever, may the LORD rejoice in his works,
        May my meditation be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the LORD.

Today's Epistle is from the 1st Letter of Paul to the Corinthians, beginning at the 12th Chapter, and the 3rd Verse:

        Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says "Jesus be cursed!" and no one can say "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit.
        Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit;  and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord;  and there are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in every one.  To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.
        For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.  For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body -- Jews or Greeks, slaves or free -- and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

+ A Reading from the Gospel of John, beginning at the 20th Chapter, and the 19th Verse:

        On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and  stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you."  When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.  Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you."  And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

        Pentecost!    The birthday of the Church!    Come, Holy Spirit, and inspire us as you did the Apostles!

        Today's first Reading tells the story of that first Pentecost, when the  Spirit came to the Apostles "like the rush of a mighty wind", and inspired them to preach -- and preach in the languages of all nations.  Here, some 1970 years later, the Gospel is, indeed, being preached in all human languages -- so powerful is that Holy Spirit.

        "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?  And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?  We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God."  The words of Christ in the New Testament, and the words of his immediate followers, have a power of their own, even two millennia later, and in completely different languages.

        Part of this, of course, is the care with which we have preserved the original words, and the care we have taken with most translations -- by careful scholarship and by careful comparison with the earliest manuscripts, we can be certain that every phrase  we have in our English Bible is precisely what the original author meant.  Quite a trick, after two millennia.

        You will hear arguments from the biblically uneducated that "The Bible has been translated so many times..."  Well, sorry -- our modern English translations are from the original Hebrew and Greek -- which have had 500 years of increasingly critical scholarly examination, and more and more ancient examples to compare.

        No piece of literature is better known and more surely researched than the Bible, and we can be sure, on solid rational and epistemological grounds, that what we are reading is the words and meaning of the original authors.  Aside from obvious forgeries, like the Jehovah's Witnesses "New World" version, the translations available differ very little.  The Protestant NIV works very hard to slant things their way, but, for the most part, is very good;  the modernist Roman NAB works similarly hard to slant things its way, but a comparison of both with the solid and scholarly New Jerusalem Bible shows that their "interpretations" are mostly minor.

        So -- the message which the Holy Spirit "inspired" -- "breathed into" the Apostles two millennia less thirty years ago is still very much alive, and very much a leaven to all the nations.  The mighty works of God are still being proclaimed in all tongues, around the world.
 

        In today's Song of Praise, we are invited to bless the Lord -- the original Hebrew word is one whose root means to kneel in homage, to fall to the ground in adoration, and is extended to praising and adoring in any bodily position.  "Let us fall on our faces before the Lord, and praise Him for his wondrous works" -- of which one of the chiefest is His written word, the Bible -- along with His living Word, Jesus Christ -- on which our Faith is founded.

        The earth is full of our Lord's creatures -- ourselves included -- and we all depend on his Word for our existence, else we return to dust, and less than dust.  When the Lord sends out his Spirit -- as He did on that first Pentecost day -- and indeed, does in every day and second -- all things are continuously created and renewed.

        We can now look some few billions of years into the past, to the vicinity of the Big Bang, when our physical universe seems to have started, and wonder at the tremendous scale and intricacy that has come from so minuscule and simple a beginning.  We also pray that the world and we go on developing and proceeding into the indefinite future, ever renewed in the mind and heart of God.

        May our meditations and efforts be pleasing unto Him, as His Glory and Presence give joy and zeal unto us.
 

        In Today's Epistle, Paul reminds us that there are more Gifts of the Spirit than just tongues.  He calls out to us to remember that there are various gifts, various services, various styles of worship, but they are all breathed into us by the same Lord, the same Spirit.

        Within the Church -- that great vine, twined around so many centuries and peoples, whose root is in Palestine of two millennia ago, and whose life-giving sap is the Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ -- whose branches, twigs, and leaves we all are -- there have always been a diversity of voices, a diversity of styles, which have expressed the praise and worship we are drawn to in the voices and manners of the different cultures in which we find ourselves.  As different as the Eastern Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and the Western Mass are, one who knows one can walk into the other and see the unity which underlies both.

        The Western church is a tad more "catholic" than the east, in recognizing different styles -- the Ruthenian Uniates use the Chrysostom Liturgy, the Maronites that of St. James, and the Chaldeans the Holy Qurbana of Mar Addai, whereas the Byzantine Orthodox seem indissolubly wedded to their own ethnic styles, and have had difficulty dealing with "Western Rite" communities over time -- they usually wind up being absorbed into the overarching ethnicity after about 10 years.

        Paul's image of the Church as the Body of Christ has carried on in all Christian traditions to the present day -- we still speak of the Church as the Body, of which Christ is the head.  "For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body -- Jews or Greeks, slaves or free -- and all were made to drink of one Spirit."

        However divided -- by language, culture, administrative differences -- we are all one Church, and no single church (not even Rome) can claim to be all of Christendom, nor all of Catholicism.  We have all drunk of that one Spirit -- and can hope that we are full of the holy intoxication of the Word -- and must work together to bring all creation to the FAther as a gift, as He has given it to us -- as a gift -- to cultivate.
 

        In today's reading from John's Gospel, Jesus breathes on (in-spires, from the Latin "spirare" to breathe) the Apostles, and gives them the power to forgive sins.  Pretty plain and pretty graphic language -- hard to misinterpret, one would think.

        As well as the Gifts of the Spirit, Jesus gave His Church the power and authority to do and determine and decide.  He tells Peter and the Apostles:  "Whatsoever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven...".  Again -- plain, graphic language, seemingly hard to misinterpret.

        Here, too, He says:  "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you." -- sending the Apostles out into the world to preach, teach, and baptize all nations.  At Pentecost, almost two millennia ago, He sent the Spirit (Latin "Spiritus", Greek "Pneuma" -- from the word for "breath") to guide and direct the Church -- which is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, as the Creed says.

        Jesus founded a church -- and earthly organization.  It has visible and tangible structure, and real people, present in time and space as its officers and executives.  It is real, it is continuous from the Apostles, it is still alive and vibrant.   It is an assembly (Greek "ekklesia", the word that the Greek New Testament uses to refer to the Jewish Synagogue) -- an assembly of the Royal and Priestly People of God, as well as a hierarchy with sacerdotal functions.

        Without the hierarchy, the assembly soon wanders off into bizarre imaginative territory, and away from the Faith of the Apostles;  without the assembly, the hierarchy wanders off into self referential omphaloscopy and concern with trivia.  The laity -- the very people of God -- kept the church on an even keel of orthodoxy when the Patriarch of Constantinople and the majority of bishops went haring off after the Imperial cult of Arianism in the late 4th Century.

        Let us then, as a people united with our bishops, go into this Jubilee Year and this new Millennium, together praising the Lord, and praying . . .

        In the Name of
        The Father     +
        And of the Son
        And of the Holy Spirit
Amen.