Alternative First Reading
– Acts 2:1-11 ©
First Reading – Genesis
11:1-9 ©
Psalm – Psalm
32(33):10-15 ©
Alternative Second
Reading – 1 Corinthians 12:3-7,12-13 ©
Second Reading – Exodus
19:3-8,16-20 ©
Canticle – Daniel 3:52-56
©
Third Reading – Ezekiel
37:1-14 ©
Psalm – Psalm
106(107):2-9 ©
Fourth Reading – Joel
3:1-5 ©
Responsorial Psalm –
Psalm 103(104):1,24,29-31,34 ©
Fifth Reading - Romans
8:22-27 ©
Alternative, The Gospel According
to John 20:19–23 ©
The Gospel According to
John 7:37-39 ©
(NJB)
Remember this always, keep it in the forefront
of your mind when you are reading scripture:
God is a God of law and order. God, the
creator of the universe, God is not a purveyor of magic tricks, God does not
dabble in the supernatural or trade in miracles.
The narrative in this reading from Acts is a
metaphor. Do not take it literally.
It means this:
The Church had grown to include a great number
of people from all parts of the Roman Empire, from Egypt and North Africa, From
Arabia and Persia, from all around the Mediterranean, from North and South of
the Black Sea.
In the company of believers there were
speakers and translators capable of sharing the Good News and teaching the
way, of sharing it in every tongue that was known; from Ethiopia to
Brittania, from Carthage to India.
This was meant to illustrate the essential
unity of the people, demonstrating for the nascent Church that by following the way we can regain a unity we lost
when we began to live in cities, serving priests and anointing kings.
Consider the fable of the Tower of Babel:
This is the story of the beginning of
agrarianism. It details an understanding about how cities came to be built in
the large agricultural centers.
Where the agrarian life was established, larger
and larger populations of people came to be supported.
They were able to build large communities, and
for protection against others they were able to build walls around their
cities.
The narrative surrounding the construction of
the first tower, is the beginning of religion, and the division of the people
into casts and classes.
In Mesopotamia these towers were called
ziggurats, they served a variety of purposes. They were built as granaries.
They also functioned as temples. They were under the management of the priestly
cast, and from the top of these towers the astronomers watched the movements of
the heavens, tracking the path of the stars in cycles that spanned years and
decades, centuries and millenia.
The move to agrarianism created fissures among
the people.
The division of labor ensued, a caste system
came to be, and the people were separated into laborers, merchants, priests and
royals. As time passed these castes became increasingly more rigid, and
movement between them became nearly impossible for ordinary people to
contemplate.
Jesus taught us the way, in it all distinctions of class and caste fall apart.
Listen
to the psalmist, the psalmist
is correct.
It is fitting to praise God. It is wise to
trust in the God’s counsel, to have faith in God’s mercy; though do not expect
God to rescue you from danger, and do not believe that God’s loves any one of
God’s children more than any other, including yourself.
God knows all things, and understands all
things.
You have heard this said.
God’s knowledge is not an abstract knowledge
of particulars details concerning individual events. God understands our
person, our choices, our lives; even as we understand them ourselves, only with
a clarity that we could never possess.
Trust in God’s plan for you, in God’s plan for
creation, but do not wait for salvation.
Salvation is already yours, go out and share
the good news
Proclaim salvation, and the forgiveness of
sins.
All have been forgiven.
Listen!
God’s salvation is close.
Have no fear.
The glory of God does not come and go
according to our deeds and merits. God is always present, God is present in all
times and all places. God is with you now
Have no fear.
God’s salvation reaches everyone.
God welcomes our participation in the work of
the faithful, there is much work to do and there is a role for everyone to
play.
Everyone of us comes to that work with
different gifts, different abilities and talents, we are called on to use them
for the benefit of our brothers and sisters, for those who share the same faith
and for those who do not.
God’s salvation is close.
Have no fear.
All of those things which we imagine, the
things which we hold in hearts and minds, those things which divide us one from
another, those things are illusions born of fear and a lack of trust in our
neighbors, a lack of trust in ourselves, and a lack of trust in God.
Pray to be released from them.
This is the understanding that you may take
away from the Apostle’s words.
God; who created the Universe, the God of
Jesus Christ, God is the God of all people. We are united to God symbolically
in our baptism, and in our being ontologically, insofar as we are created in
the divine image.
Baptism is a rite which ties us to each other
in symbolic way, it binds us to the life of Jesus and his death through ritual;
the ritual is a reflection of the actuality of our unity that prefigures
creation, the essential oneness we have with God that is at the core of our
being. It prefigures creation itself, it belongs to us from eternity.
The body of the Church is not the Catholic Church
in communion with the Bishop of Rome, or with the Orthodox Church, or any other
single group of Christians.
The body of the Church is greater than the
entire number of self-professed Christians and people of the faith; protestant,
non-denominational, what have you. Neither is the body the people of Israel;
the body of the Church is not the old Israel or the new.
On earth, the true church is the whole of
humanity, everyone in existence now, everyone who has ever been, and everyone
who will ever be.
God has made us as a singular people, both
here on Earth and to the farthest reaches of the universe, we are one body, all
God’s children, here and everywhere.
Listen!
We must always be diligent regarding our basic
commitment to expose false theology
We cannot let our imagination linger on fables
and myths without at the same time naming them as such.
If we took these stories seriously, like the
story today from Exodus we would have
to uphold the tradition that human beings need an intermediary like Moses to
pass messages back and forth between the rest of humanity and God, the creator
of the universe.
We would have to accept as vital and necessary
the institution of a priesthood.
We would have to accept the idea that God, who
created the universe, has chosen one tribe out of the whole world, to represent
God’s will to the people.
These are things we cannot accept.
We are all the children of God, and God dwells
in our hearts.
God never did and we do need to see God
descending on the mountain.
There are no intermediaries, God speaks to us
directly, male and female, sons and daughters, Jew and Gentile, rich and poor,
those with titles and those without.
God is not a king or a lord, God does not come
in the pomp and circumstance of fire and trumpets, with drums and horns.
God speaks with the voice of love.
Remember this well!
God, the creator of the universe, God does not
require or even desire our praise and exaltations, except insofar as those
praises take the form of a merciful and generous bearing toward one other.
God does not dwell in a temple; God is present
in all places, in everyone, to everyone.
God is not a king.
Serve God through the love and kindness you
show one another.
This is the way. The way slips past the bounds
of this world.
The bounds of death are no impediment for
God’s salvific will.
God will go beyond any threshold to save God’s
children.
Have no fear for the present time, for time
itself is merely a tool of the almighty, a means for God to achieve God’s end.
Have no fear, there is nothing done that
cannot be undone.
This is what Ezekiel’s prophecy means.
Listen!
Let us affirm our trust in God; that God, the
creator of the universe is good.
God is not a partisan.
God made us in this world. God made us free,
and the world itself is free from divine coercion.
Be mindful.
God, the creator of the universe, God does not
require or even desire our praise and exaltations, except insofar as those
praises take the form of a merciful and generous bearing toward one other.
Serve God through the love and kindness you
show one another.
Remember
this!
God
is the creator of the universe, the eternal God is the first source and center
of all things.
The
infinite God engenders all potentialities, and yet interferes with none of
them.
The
universe that God created, God created it free from coercion. God does not
coerce creation. And yet the entirety of what is, moves according to God’s
eternal purpose.
Be
at peace with this mystery.
It is wise and good to anticipate the coming
of God. It is wise and good to desire to be in the presence of God.
Anticipate that moment, relish it, cherish it,
but remain present to the people and events that are actually occurring in your
life.
When you are in prayer, and your thoughts are
unformed, when your feelings are unclear and no words come to your mind, or
when the words that do come are inappropriate for prayer; then be silent, quiet
your mind, still the murmurs in your heart, let go of the voices; be silent and
listen.
Let your prayer be one of listening.
In
the Gospel readings for today we are reminded of the feast of Pentecost.
It
is a day that Christians celebrate throughout the world.
It
is the commemoration of the gift of the Holy Spirit, given by Jesus to the
church that was founded in his name.
For
the Church, this moment marks the beginning of a new era. Jesus is gone, and
the community of believers is now in the hands of his disciples; primarily, and
others who have heard the call, like Saint Paul, who never met him (Jesus) in
the flesh.
The
final departure of Jesus, and the bequeathment of the Holy Spirit, is the
beginning of the age of prophecy, it is a time of discernment; it is the dawn
of the Apostolic age. In it the Church evolves and becomes a new creation. It
is no longer merely a sect of Judaism, the Church becomes an international
movement, it spreads throughout the Roman Empire, and the new way is preached
in new languages, in new tongues, in new stories; such that Jesus himself had
never imagined.
Jesus
preached the way of love, of service,
of caring, of justice, of mercy; the way
of Jesus can be lived in silence, it does not require words.
The
myth of Pentecost, as related here in the Gospel of Saint John, narrates some
of the struggles of the early Church. It was written more than one hundred
years after the death of Jesus, and decades after the Romans destroyed the
Temple in Jerusalem. It was written for the Church; in an era when the
differentiation among Christians and Jews was concrete, and when the leaders in
the new movement were trying to establish their bona fides, as the heirs to Jesus’ ministry.
The
gift of the Holy Spirit, released in a breath of ritual remembering; is not the
reception of something new, for the Spirit of God animates all living beings, it
is the acknowledgement of that reality in the passing on of Jesus’ mission to
the next generation.
The
mission is this:
To
love and care for, to serve those in the greatest need, to love justice and be
merciful in the face of the world’s horrors, to do good.
The
passage from John would have been a fine place to end the gospels; except for
the final words, which were meant to cement the authority of the church in the
lives of the followers. This naked grab for power, marks the new creation as
one firmly rooted in the sinful world, and while that is simply the way of
things, it was not the way of Jesus.
Listen to Jesus!
Let the thirsty come.
Trust in Jesus and come, your thirst will be
relieved.
This is the
way.
Do not be confused on this point; belief is
not the coin you exchange for access to God, no one is standing by to punch
your ticket at the door, simply come if you are thirsty.
Come and drink, and be restored.
Jesus will bring you into the way, and the way
is life, trust in him and keep to the way.
Do not muddle around in the rhetoric of John,
do not let John’s confusion stop you. When John attempts to qualify the hopeful
message of Christ, John deviates from the
way.
Remember this!
The spirit has always been with us, all things
come into being, in the spirit of God, all things are sustained by God’s spirit,
and to God’s spirit all things will return.
We will return to God like the rain fall to
the sea.
There is no escaping it, no matter how we
meander on the way.
Alternative First Reading
– Acts 2:1-11 ©
They Were All Filled with
the Holy Spirit and Began to Speak
When
Pentecost day came round, they had all met in one room, when suddenly they
heard what sounded like a powerful wind from heaven, the noise of which filled
the entire house in which they were sitting; and something appeared to them
that seemed like tongues of fire; these separated and came to rest on the head
of each of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak
foreign languages as the Spirit gave them the gift of speech.
Now
there were devout men living in Jerusalem from every nation under heaven, and
at this sound they all assembled, each one bewildered to hear these men
speaking his own language. They were amazed and astonished. ‘Surely’ they said
‘all these men speaking are Galileans? How does it happen that each of us hears
them in his own native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; people from
Mesopotamia, Judaea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia,
Egypt and the parts of Libya round Cyrene; as well as visitors from Rome – Jews
and proselytes alike – Cretans and Arabs; we hear them preaching in our own
language about the marvels of God.’
First Reading – Genesis
11:1-9 ©
The Tower of Babel
Throughout
the earth men spoke the same language, with the same vocabulary. Now as they
moved eastwards they found a plain in the land of Shinar where they settled.
They said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks and bake them in the fire.’
(For stone they used bricks, and for mortar they used bitumen). ‘Come,’ they
said ‘let us build ourselves a town and a tower with its top reaching heaven.
Let us make a name for ourselves, so that we may not be scattered about the
whole earth.’
Now
the Lord came down to see the town and the tower that the sons of man had
built. ‘So they are all a single people with a single language!’ said the Lord.
‘This is but the start of their undertakings! There will be nothing too hard
for them to do. Come, let us go down and confuse their language on the spot so
that they can no longer understand one another.’ The Lord scattered them thence
over the whole face of the earth, and they stopped building the town. It was
named Babel therefore, because there the Lord confused the language of the
whole earth. It was from there that the Lord scattered them over the whole face
of the earth.
Psalm – Psalm
32(33):10-15 ©
Happy the people the Lord
has chosen as his own.
He
frustrates the designs of the nations,
he defeats the plans of the peoples.
His
own designs shall stand for ever,
the plans of his heart from age to age.
Happy the people the Lord
has chosen as his own.
They
are happy, whose God is the Lord,
the people he has chosen as his own.
From
the heavens the Lord looks forth,
he sees all the children of men.
Happy the people the Lord
has chosen as his own.
From
the place where he dwells he gazes
on all the dwellers on the earth;
he
who shapes the hearts of them all;
and considers all their deeds.
Happy the people the Lord
has chosen as his own.
Alternative Second
Reading – 1 Corinthians 12:3-7,12-13 ©
In the One Spirit We Were
All Baptised
No
one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’ unless he is under the influence of the Holy
Spirit.
There
is a variety of gifts but always the same Spirit; there are all sorts of
service to be done, but always to the same Lord; working in all sorts of
different ways in different people, it is the same God who is working in all of
them. The particular way in which the Spirit is given to each person is for a
good purpose.
Just
as a human body, though it is made up of many parts, is a single unit because
all these parts, though many, make one body, so it is with Christ. In the one
Spirit we were all baptised, Jews as well as Greeks, slaves as well as
citizens, and one Spirit was given to us all to drink.
Second Reading – Exodus
19:3-8,16-20 ©
Moses Led the People Out
of the Camp to Meet God
Moses
went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, ‘Say this
to the House of Jacob, declare this to the sons of Israel:
‘“You
yourselves have seen what I did with the Egyptians, how I carried you on
eagle’s wings and brought you to myself. From this you know that now, if you
obey my voice and hold fast to my covenant, you of all the nations shall be my
very own, for all the earth is mine. I will count you a kingdom of priests, a
consecrated nation.”
‘Those
are the words you are to speak to the sons of Israel.’
So
Moses went and summoned the elders of the people, putting before them all that
the Lord had bidden him. Then all the people answered as one, ‘All that the
Lord has said, we will do.’
Now
at daybreak on the third day there were peals of thunder on the mountain and
lightning flashes, a dense cloud, and a loud trumpet blast, and inside the camp
all the people trembled. Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet God;
and they stood at the bottom of the mountain. The mountain of Sinai was
entirely wrapped in smoke, because the Lord had descended on it in the form of
fire. Like smoke from a furnace the smoke went up, and the whole mountain shook
violently. Louder and louder grew the sound of the trumpet. Moses spoke, and
God answered him with peals of thunder. The Lord came down on the mountain of
Sinai, on the mountain top, and the Lord called Moses to the top of the
mountain.
Canticle – Daniel 3:52-56
©
To
you glory and praise for evermore.
You
are blest, Lord God of our fathers.
To
you glory and praise for evermore.
Blest
your glorious holy name.
To
you glory and praise for evermore.
You
are blest in the temple of your glory.
To
you glory and praise for evermore.
You
are blest on the throne of your kingdom.
To
you glory and praise for evermore.
You
are blest who gaze into the depths.
To
you glory and praise for evermore.
You
are blest in the firmament of heaven.
To
you glory and praise for evermore.
Third Reading – Ezekiel
37:1-14 ©
A Vision of Israel's
Death and Resurrection
The
hand of the Lord was laid on me, and he carried me away by the spirit of the
Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley, a valley full of bones. He made
me walk up and down among them. There were vast quantities of these bones on
the ground the whole length of the valley; and they were quite dried up. He
said to me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ I said, ‘You know, Lord.’ He
said, ‘Prophesy over these bones. Say, “Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.
The Lord says this to these bones: I am now going to make the breath enter you,
and you will live. I shall put sinews on you, I shall make flesh grow on you, I
shall cover you with skin and give you breath, and you will live; and you will
learn that I am the Lord.”’ I prophesied as I had been ordered. While I was
prophesying, there was a noise, a sound of clattering; and the bones joined
together. I looked, and saw that they were covered with sinews; flesh was
growing on them and skin was covering them, but there was no breath in them. He
said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man. Say to the breath,
“The Lord says this: Come from the four winds, breath; breathe on these dead;
let them live!”’ I prophesied as he had ordered me, and the breath entered
them; they came to life again and stood up on their feet, a great, an immense
army.
Then
he said, ‘Son of man, these bones are the whole House of Israel. They keep
saying, “Our bones are dried up, our hope has gone; we are as good as dead.” So
prophesy. Say to them, “The Lord says this: I am now going to open your graves;
I mean to raise you from your graves, my people, and lead you back to the soil
of Israel. And you will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and
raise you from your graves, my people. And I shall put my spirit in you, and
you will live, and I shall resettle you on your own soil; and you will know
that I, the Lord, have said and done this – it is the Lord who speaks.”’
Psalm – Psalm
106(107):2-9 ©
O give thanks to the Lord
for he is good, for his love has no end.
Alleluia!
Let
them say this, the Lord’s redeemed,
whom he redeemed from the hand of the foe
and
gathered from far-off lands,
from east and west, north and south.
O give thanks to the Lord
for he is good, for his love has no end.
Some
wandered in the desert, in the wilderness,
finding no way to a city they could dwell in.
Hungry
they were and thirsty;
their soul was fainting within them.
O give thanks to the Lord
for he is good, for his love has no end.
Then
they cried to the Lord in their need
and he rescued them from their distress
and
he led them along the right way,
to reach a city they could dwell in.
O give thanks to the Lord
for he is good, for his love has no end.
Let
them thank the Lord for his love,
for the wonders he does for men:
for
he satisfies the thirsty soul;
he fills the hungry with good things.
O give thanks to the Lord
for he is good, for his love has no end.
Alleluia!
Fourth Reading – Joel 3:1-5
©
I Will Pour Out My Spirit
on All Mankind
Thus
says the Lord:
‘I
will pour out my spirit on all mankind.
Your
sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your
young men see visions.
Even
on the slaves, men and women, will I pour out my spirit in those days.
I
will display portents in heaven and on earth, blood and fire and columns of
smoke.’
The
sun will be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the day of
the Lord dawns,
that
great and terrible day.
All
who call on the name of the Lord will be saved, for on Mount Zion there will be
some who have escaped, as the Lord has said, and in Jerusalem some survivors
whom the Lord will call.
Responsorial Psalm –
Psalm 103(104):1,24,29-31,34 ©
Send forth your spirit, O
Lord, and renew the face of the earth.
Alleluia!
Bless
the Lord, my soul!
Lord God, how great you are,
How
many are your works, O Lord!
The earth is full of your riches.
Send forth your spirit, O
Lord, and renew the face of the earth.
You
take back your spirit, they die,
returning to the dust from which they came.
You
send forth your spirit, they are created;
and you renew the face of the earth.
Send forth your spirit, O
Lord, and renew the face of the earth.
May
the glory of the Lord last for ever!
May the Lord rejoice in his works!
May
my thoughts be pleasing to him.
I find my joy in the Lord.
Send forth your spirit, O
Lord, and renew the face of the earth.
Alleluia!
Fifth Reading - Romans
8:22-27 ©
The Spirit Himself Expresses
Our Plea in a Way that Could Never be Put Into Words
From
the beginning till now the entire creation, as we know, has been groaning in
one great act of giving birth; and not only creation, but all of us who possess
the first-fruits of the Spirit, we too groan inwardly as we wait for our bodies
to be set free. For we must be content to hope that we shall be saved – our
salvation is not in sight, we should not have to be hoping for it if it were –
but, as I say, we must hope to be saved since we are not saved yet – it is
something we must wait for with patience.
The
Spirit too comes to help us in our weakness. For when we cannot choose words in
order to pray properly, the Spirit himself expresses our plea in a way that
could never be put into words, and God who knows everything in our hearts knows
perfectly well what he means, and that the pleas of the saints expressed by the
Spirit are according to the mind of God.
Second Alternative, The
Gospel According to John 20:19–23 ©
As the Father Sent Me, So
Am I Sending You: Receive the Holy Spirit
In
the evening of the first day of the week, the doors were closed in the room
where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews. Jesus came and stood among
them. He said to them, ‘Peace be with you’, and showed them his hands and his
side. The disciples were filled with joy when they saw the Lord, and he said to
them again, ‘Peace be with you.
‘As
the Father sent me, so am I sending you.’
After
saying this he breathed on them and said:
‘Receive
the Holy Spirit. For those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those
whose sins you retain, they are retained.’
The Gospel According to
John 7:37-39 ©
'If Any Man is Thirsty,
Let Him Come To Me!'
On
the last day and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood there and cried out:
‘If
any man is thirsty, let him come to me!
Let
the man come and drink who believes in me!’
As
scripture says: From his breast shall flow fountains of living water.
He was speaking of the Spirit which those who
believed in him were to receive; for there was no Spirit as yet because Jesus
had not yet been glorified.
Pentecost
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