Pentecost Sunday: A Gift of Unity & Peace within the Context of Diversity Our world is in the midst of unsettling times. When it comes to politics or policy, religion and nearly every other cultural topic of discussion, cordiality, politeness and simply giving the benefit of the doubt is seemingly a thing of the past. On Wednesday afternoon I stopped at Weatogue’s Dunkin Donut for coffee on route to the rectory. As I was waiting for my order, two young teenage guys were talking about what they were doing next and one of them told his friend he needed to call home to let his mother know, “he didn’t want to be impolite,” he said. Sadly, that struck me as unusual. Whatever alphabetical generation he might belong to today, one thing he is not supposed to be is concerned with another’s feelings—or so we are told.

This Sunday we celebrate Pentecost: the coming of the Holy Spirit sent by the Father to
continue, fulfill and extend the mission and ministry of Jesus Christ through you and me—all of us—in the way we accept the Holy Spirit into our lives and allow God to dwell within us and transform us into Disciples of Christ. And today’s account of the first Pentecost lays it all out for us.

The details of the first Pentecost are not vital. We are historically uncertain as to the exact location of the so-called Upper Room, what is important is that we are “in the neighborhood” in the City of Jerusalem and that is what is important—having a place to go to and commemorate and to reflect, similar to the burial of an empty casket when the whereabouts of a loved
one’s body is unknown at the time of death, and today’s Upper Room provides us a place to reflect on what we are told by Christ about the Holy Spirit and our role in the making of unity and peace amongst diverse thoughts.

Scripture scholar Father Donald Senior notes that in today’s first reading the mention of the various nationalities of peoples—“We are Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene, as well as travelers from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs…” indicates the role of common ground in our faith. Note that these nationalities listed while the height of civilization at the time of the first Pentecost are today’s hotbeds of political wars and tensions, fraught with violence in everyday life. They comprise today’s Turkey, Iraq, North Africa, Iran and more. But the Holy Spirit did
not come into that Upper Room and make them all Jews or all Christians or all anything else; the Holy Spirit rather enabled the many to hear in one tongue, one common ground of a language, one Spirit. In fact, scholars tell us the Word found a home in the diversity of the people and they would come to learn to live with each other in their diversity, and that Unity in
Diversity is what we call the Catholic (universal) Church. Why?

Because the Holy Spirit, the Word of God—Jesus Christ, speaks only Truth. Absolute Truth, as
Pope Emeritus Benedict VXI spoke of often and powerfully. God is Truth—Period. And our unbelief in that Truth does not alter it. God is immutable. He Was. He Is. He Will Be—forever. Truth is the foundational pillar of our belief and must return as the pillar of all and every conversation, dialogue or debate. While we may disagree about the implementation of
Truth, we cannot disagree on Truth itself.

Whatever our conversations are about in our homes or in legislative bodies or in churches they must be built upon Truth and debated, dialogued or discussed in truthful, honest and open ways without the disagreement being the cause or end result of hatred. It is in truthful
conversations we can place every topic on the table and talk about it openly and honestly and while a resolution pleasing to all might not be a reality at a given time, at least all topics are discussed in honesty and truth and the debate centers on the facts, not the emotions. For in our Church and in fact in right discussions philosophically, the topic of discussion must always be in the general and not the particular—where emotions take up home turf.

May this Pentecost 2019 be one the unifies us in faith and Truth, may it a time of indwelling of the Holy Spirit and a real transformation for all to become more closely conformed to Christ, His Love, Faith and Charity. In that we will find the real “upper room” no matter the locale.