Bound Together by the Gift of Pentecost

Bishop Richard J. Sklba

At the end of the fifty days of Easter each year the Church celebrates the great Feast of Pentecost, commemorating the gift of the Holy Spirit poured out on the men and women in the upper room. Christ promised that the Spirit would reunite them after their splintered and fractured experiences of the Lord’s death, and would transform them into courageous witnesses to the saving work of God.

The tongues of fire symbolized the gift of speaking so that all nations might understand, as if in their own language (Acts 2:1-12)! Like all communication, this gift binds people together. Speaking, hearing and understanding inevitably bind people together. Lack of communication in families or between spouses can only isolate. We know how exasperating it can be when teenagers don’t communicate or tell anyone what’s bothering them. The newspaper columns of “Dear Abby” provide countless examples of those problems every week!

One of the most powerful images used by Saint Paul in his description of the Community of believers is that of a temple. To the Corinthians he wrote, “Do you not know that you are God’s Temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you (1 Cor 3:16)?”

We tend to conclude, especially as contemporary Americans so steeped in the individualism of our Western culture, that this text refers to each individual person as that temple of God. That may be true, but even more fundamental is the fact that all of us together form the Temple, and that the gifts of the Spirit tend to be those which come between and among people, not necessarily to and within them alone! The “you” is a plural form of the pronoun, not singular.

The Holy Spirit makes the Church into a temple of the living God (2 Cor 6:16). Only when cemented together by the Spirit do we become that Temple. The talents of one person complement the needs of another as living stones which grow together.

Becoming a witness to truth presumes at least two persons, as do love, forgiveness, compassion, justice and reconciliation. The gifts of wisdom, good counsel and understanding which offer guidance are realities which bind people together. The Spirit as our Helper and Guide presumes direction offered by one person and accepted by the other. Reverence is the attitude we bring to others and their unique set of gifts.

The inner dynamism of the gifts of the Spirit creates a sense of cohesion between us and among us. They unite us and bind us together. They form the living Body of Christ, and we are only individual members and parts of that One Body.

No one is an island, and certainly no believer ever stands alone. The Holy Spirit of Pentecost could not and would not allow it!