A Truly Universal Mission

In previous years, for Pentecost Sunday I would order fifty helium-filled red balloons. After the main Mass the children would stand in front of the church and release them, watching them disappear into the sky: a fitting symbol for the celebration of the birthday of the Church. But is Pentecost really ‘the birthday of the church’?

Pope Pius XII, in his encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi (para: 28), wrote: ‘That He completed His work on the gibbet of the Cross is the unanimous teaching of the holy Fathers who assert that the Church was born from the side of our Saviour on the Cross like a new Eve, mother of all the living.’

St Ambrose wrote: ‘For it was from the side of Christ as he slept the sleep of death upon the cross that there came forth the “wondrous sacrament of the whole Church.” As Eve was formed from the sleeping Adam’s side, so the Church was born from the pierced heart of Christ hanging dead on the cross. Therefore, we can say that there is a moment when the Church was born (Good Friday) and there is another moment when the Church started her public ministry (Pentecost).’

So it was at Pentecost that the Church began her public ministry, when Mary and the Apostles received the Holy Spirit, yet the Church is not simply a group of disciples who preach the Gospel to the nations. Not merely functional, in the sense of existing in order to preach, but also mystical, in the sense that she is the Body of Christ.

As we celebrate with Archbishop John the 150th anniversary of the church building, this Sunday, we acknowledge that this building is a symbol of the living body of the Church, the people of God, who over all these years has sought to respond to the Holy Spirit, who has enabled us to unite all of humanity into one body. On this feast we, too, are like the apostles at the first Pentecost. We are being sent forth to proclaim the Gospel to all. In last year’s celebration of the feast of Pentecost, Pope Francis said: ‘We are sent into the world “not only geographically but also beyond the frontiers of race and religion, for a truly universal mission [Redemptoris Missio, 25]”. Thanks to the Spirit, we can and must do this with his own power and gentleness.’

Come, Creator Spirit, enlighten our minds,
fill our hearts with your grace,
guide our steps,
grant your peace to our world. Amen.