May 25, 2026
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on Pentecost Sunday, May 24, 2026, at Old St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Chicago, IL. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 104; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13; and John 20:19-23.
Woohoo! It’s Pentecost! It’s the birthday of the Church! But more importantly, we celebrate that the Holy Spirit has abundantly showered each of us with gifts!
Many of us, when we prepared for confirmation, learned about the seven gifts and the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit. But as we’ll hear in our second reading today, there are many spiritual gifts, many forms of service, and many workings, but the same Holy Spirit producing all of them in everyone.
The Holy Spirit does not just give gifts to each of us individually. The Spirit also gives us gifts as a community. The Spirit is the “glue” that binds us to one another, “bringing to perfection [Christ’s] work in the world and … sanctify[ing] creation to the full[est].”1
As we are drenched once again in the waters of baptism, let us celebrate that we all continue to be bathed in the abundant gifts of the Holy Spirit!
The people of Paul’s time were familiar with the analogy of a group of people being compared to different parts of one body. That’s because a consul of the Roman Republic named Menenius Agrippa had already used the analogy in a famous allegory 500 years earlier. In the allegory, the hands, the mouth, and the teeth of a body are jealous that the belly has the privilege of digesting the food. They decide to go on strike and stop helping the belly procure food. Of course, the hands, the mouth, and the teeth suffer as the belly starves.
The moral of the allegory was a classic principle of Stoic philosophy: accept the hand that is dealt to you. Some people are superior to others. Shut up and do your job. That is the antithesis of how the Holy Spirit operates within the Body of Christ. Everyone has gifts to share from the one same Spirit.
It’s never been clear to me how the miracle on that first Christian Pentecost worked. Was it that each disciple spoke in Aramaic, and that the people from all over the world heard the words as if each disciple were speaking each listener’s own native language, or was it that the Holy Spirit enabled each disciple to speak in a different foreign language, so that everyone could understand what at least one of the disciples was saying?
We usually think of the first Christian Pentecost as a day filled with action and noise. But the most miraculous aspects of that day were probably not the action of the disciples bursting out of the Upper Room, nor the noise of them all speaking at once. The greatest miracles were that everyone was able to listen and everyone was able to understand. There are many gifts from the one same Spirit.
Listening might not be on the Church’s official list of various gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit, but I am convinced that when we truly listen to one another, the Holy Spirit is present among us. Listening is extremely difficult work, even when people are speaking the same language. Often, I don’t understand people because they speak too fast or too soft, with poor enunciation, or with an accent. But more often than not, the challenge of listening isn’t about the speaker: it’s about me. Sometimes, I’m too tired or too caught up in my own thinking to willingly engage all of my energy into trying to understand what the other person is saying. Or maybe, I don’t listen because I don’t like what the other person is starting to say!
Intentional listening definitely requires the gifts of the Holy Spirit. As the author Dean Jackson once wrote, “Listening is an art that requires attention over talent, spirit over ego, others over self.”
In the first millennium of Christian history, the Church had mastered the art of listening. When bishops faced complex problems, they would often bring a diversity of people together for a meeting called a synod, spelled S-Y-N-O-D. Synods featured the kind of hard listening that is best accomplished with the Holy Spirit. Some important Church teachings in the first millennium came from the Second Synod of Orange, the Fourth Synod of Toledo, and the Synod of Rome.
In the 1960s, Vatican II brought back the principal of synodality, but it has been difficult to figure out how best to implement it in this day and age. When I was a college freshman, I was selected to serve as a delegate at the 7th Synod of the Diocese of Rochester, New York. It was the first time that anyone in Church circles ever affirmed that the Holy Spirit had given me insights that others should listen to. Under the guidance of Popes Francis and Leo, the Church has made a deeper commitment to implementing synodal practices. We’re still getting the hang of it, but most historians agree that the Catholic Church’s 3-year Synod on Synodality in 2021-2024 was the largest consultative process ever undertaken in world history. The documents produced by the Synod on Synodality are remarkable in acknowledging the hopes, fear, and experiences of people outside of the Catholic hierarchy. They acknowledge that many good and holy Catholic women feel the call to priesthood. They acknowledge that Church teaching and policy has often been interpreted through colonialist goals, marginalizing those who belong to ethnic, racial, and cultural minorities. They acknowledge that the Church often marginalizes those who experience same-sex attraction, those who are victims of rising sea levels, and women and children who live in cultures that have no viable alternatives to care for them outside of polygamous families. It’s exciting that one of the people leading the Vatican’s synodal efforts is Sr. Nathalie Becquart, the highest-ranking woman in the history of the Church!
The word “synodality” is still unfamiliar to most Catholics. (The Parish Pastoral Council has been studying the concept for the past year, and we’re still struggling to pronounce the word!) But we’re trying here at Old St. Mary’s to become more synodal. Since July, 25 different people have written a pastoral reflection in the bulletin, including 14 women. We’re increasing the scope and number of our advisory councils. We’re trying to refashion our ministries so they aren’t as reliant on priests and other staff to run them, which means that we on the staff have to let go of some control and that more volunteers need to step into positions of responsibility. Every time we come forward to the one table to receive the bread and the cup, we acknowledge that we have many gifts from the one same Spirit.
And who knows what roles some of our volunteers will go on to fill for the larger Church community? One boy who sang in our choir about 75 years ago went on to become the archbishop of Chicago. That was Cardinal Francis George. And a woman who sang in our choir 7 years ago has gone onto become the undersecretary for the Synod of Bishops in Rome. That, if you haven’t figured it out yet, is Sr. Nathalie Becquart, the highest-ranking woman in the history of the Church!
On the first Christian Pentecost, the Holy Spirit unified the people of the world by allowing them to listen to one another. Today, our world seems to be increasingly divided, a world desperately in need of a new, unifying Pentecost. I am convinced that the Holy Spirit has already given the people here at Old St. Mary’s the gifts to bring about this new Pentecost.
Note:
- From the third paragraph of Eucharistic Prayer IV in the Roman Missal. ↩