A Homily for Pentecost Sunday

​+  There is, perhaps, no more frightening a question than the question: “Do you love me?” For once it is asked, the response will be determinative: where the response is freely and naturally positive a new era of intimacy, trust and fruitful fidelity will begin; where there is hesitation or even negation, what might have been shall probably never come to pass. This question serves as the portal to the most noble and beautiful of human relationships and endeavours. So too it marks the point where many of them tragically fail.  
 
Our Lord knew this reality only too well. Indeed, He who suffered and died for our salvation, the incarnate testimony of the Love of God Himself, is this question. “Do you love me?” He asks each one of us. And, through the Sacred Liturgy of His Church, on this great feast of Pentecost, He instructs us:
 
Si quis díligit me, sermónem meum servábit, et Pater meus díliget eum, et ad eum veniémus et mansiónem apud eum faciémus : qui non díligit me, sermónes meos non servat. “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words…”
 
Our response to His question may well be that of Saint Peter when he first began to realise whom Our Lord was: “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man,” (Lk 5:8) for as any of us know, in so many ways we are utterly unworthy of the gift of love—human or divine. We simply do not have the strength to respond as we ought. The daily faithful keeping of our own word, let alone the Word of God, is so often beyond our capacities. It would (it often seems) to be more honest simply to say, “Even if I want to, I just can’t love you. It’s too difficult.”
 
It is too difficult. It is too difficult to make binding promises to another person in marriage and to persevere for better or for worse for the entire length of one’s life. It is impossible to observe the commandments of Christ in every detail of our lives, or to be faithful to the moral and social teaching of His Church. It is all too much; the standards are simply too high. We are too weak, too frail.
 
However, help is at hand. If today’s feast of Pentecost means anything at all it means that Almighty God has poured out His grace and power in and through the Holy Spirit so that we, weak, frail, inadequate and damaged men and women can love God and can keep His Word—as impossible as that seems and so often is on our own; as impossible as it seemed to the disciples gathered together at the first Pentecost—the sinful Saint Peter included.
 
The sequence of this Mass—a truly beautiful medieval flowering of faith and piety—prays:

O lux beatissima,
reple cordis intima
tuorum fidelium.

Sine tuo numine,
nihil est in homine,
nihil est innoxium.

Lava quod est sordidum,
riga quod est aridum,
sana quod est saucium.

Flecte quod est rigidum,
fove quod est frigidum,
rege quod est devium.

Da tuis fidelibus,
in te confidentibus,
sacrum septenarium.
​

​O most blessed light,
fill the inmost heart
of your faithful.

Without the nod of your head,
there is nothing in man,
nothing that is harmless.

Cleanse what is unclean,
water what is parched,
heal what is wounded.

Bend what is inflexible,
warm what is chilled,
correct what has gone astray.

Give to your faithful,
who trust in you,
the sevenfold gift.

As we celebrate this great feast of God’s power and of His strength today and throughout the Pentecost Octave, let us beg at this altar for an increase in His sevenfold gifts of wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord so that, through the power of God the Holy Spirit given to us, we can and indeed shall love God and keep His word, today and every day, for the Glory of Almighty God and for the salvation of our souls and, through our witness and good works, for the salvation of the souls of others also. +