Pentecost: Baptism is not a Sacrament for us to be tucked away

Thursday, June 2nd, 2022

Pentecost occurred in a locked upstairs room in downtown Jerusalem.

Afraid, Mary and the apostles were hiding, but in complete contrast, the Holy Spirit directs the ‘door be opened’ and redirect the initial Church’s focus outward.

New energy dawned with the birth of the Church and the Holy Spirit charged the Apostles and Mary to the missionary task of showing, being and voicing Jesus among the world.

What might Matthew (28:19-20) mean today when he writes Go out to all nations?

Christian Baptism is not a Sacrament for us to be tucked away!

For some, Baptism means becoming a missionary in another country.

For most, it is to continually be alert to those ordinary moments of our day and the people we met in the activities in our day; these moments and activities are opportunities for witnessing a Christ-like attitude and maybe moments for direct evangelisation.

Some years back, an injustice, caused a couple to lose confidence in the Church.

Each time I banged into them when out and about, I would always give them a good hearing as they repeated again the incident. Then I saw them at Mass!

Talking myself up? – hope not! – but for sure, listening was God’s Holy Spirit.

Authentic evangelization centres around mutual respectful dialogue.

The evangelist knows that God is already within each person.

Evangelisation is never about winning an argument to convert another to our beliefs as if we are right and they are wrong.

Nor is evangelisation expecting instant results.

Evangelisation is a process of the Holy Spirit, it is without a time frame, model or programme to follow.

Further, Christian witness means we are a letter from Christ to others, “Not written with ink, but with the Spirit of a living God”. (2 Corinthians 3:3)

Recently, a friend told me that radiation and chemotherapy have ceased to have any effect. She’s decided to live fully with her husband and family until she dies.

“I don’t want to die,” she tells me leaving me speechless in my powerlessness.

Out of the blue, I begin singing ‘Come Holy Spirit, I need you’ and she falls into my arms weeping uncontrollably. I assure her of her goodness and of God’s passionate love for her.

Talking myself up? – hope not! – but for sure ‘out of the blue’ was God’s Holy Spirit.

Joy and encouragement are a constant theme in Pope Francis’ document called The Joy of the Gospel – Evangelii Gaudium.

“There are Christians whose lives seem like Lent without Easter… I understand the grief of people who have to endure great suffering, yet slowly but surely we all have to let the joy of faith slowly revive as a quiet yet firm trust, even amid the greatest distress.” (Evangelii Gaudium No 6)

Then again in No 10: “An evangeliser must never look like someone who has just come back from a funeral!”

We’re not to live lives that seem like Lent without Easter Pope Francis says in article 6 or as if we have just come back from a funeral in article 10.

And to priests he writes: A missionary heart… never closes itself off, never retreats into its own security, never opts for rigidity and defensiveness. It realizes that it has to grow in its own understanding of the Gospel and in discerning the paths of the Spirit, and so it always does what good it can, even if in the process, its shoes get soiled by the mud of the street.” (Evangelii Gaudium No 45)

For Pope Francis, the Church grows by attraction.

In the book ‘How to Read the New Testament’ Etienne Charpentier writes: “If a non-believer, utterly ignorant of Christianity, went into a place where Christians were worshipping, he would see from their attitude that something was happening: if he asked them what it was like, they would reply, ‘The Lord Jesus is present among us, he invites us to his table, we eat with him, we listen to him and speak to him.'”