Pentecost, Year A (2026)
Pentecost – Year A
Acts 2:1-11
Psalm 104:1, 24, 29-30, 31, 34 (30)
1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13
John 20:19-23
May 24, 2026
It is fifty days since Jesus rose from the dead. It is now time for Pentecost and the descent of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirt arrived as a loud noise, like a strong driving wind just as Jesus spoke of in John 3:8.
The Holy Spirit appeared as “tongues of fire” and “came to rest on each one of them,” just as God had appeared in fire in the burning bush (see Exodus 3:1-6) and on Mount Sinai (see Exodus 19:18).
At Pentecost, “They were all filled with Holy Spirit.” From the gift of the Holy Spirit, they all began to speak in different tongues. To fully understand the significance of this we need to recall the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9.
At the time when the people began to construct the tower at Babel, “the whole world spoke the same language, using the same words.” They could all understand one another. Able to communicate well, they could accomplish much.
They could have sought to build a “city of God.” Instead, with pride in their hearts, they began to build a “city of man” for themselves with “a tower with its top in the sky” to make a name for themselves. Are there things you do to make a name for yourself in this world? Are you more interested in having your name recorded in human history or to have your name written in the Book of Life?
God knew that if they were successful in building the tower, they would continue to do whatever they desired, including sin. To humble them he confused their language. They could no longer understand one another. They stopped construction of the tower and went their separate ways.
Do you choose to follow “the plan of the LORD” or do you seek the “plans of nations”?
We seek to make our own plan when abandon God’s Truth in favor of determining our own truth. Yet, when we make it up ourselves, our “truth” really isn’t truth. It’s just our opinion. When everyone seeks to determine their own truth, we confuse our own speech and we cannot understand one another, let alone us even trying to listen to one another or, more importantly, to God.
We must always remember that “The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The decree of the Lord is trustworthy, giving wisdom to the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart” (Psalm 19:8-9).
If we all seek to determine our own truth, we are just a bunch of individuals doing our own thing and we limit what we can accomplish and we fall short of God’s Will.
When we allow the Holy Spirit to be at work in us to do God’s Will, we each hear and understand God’s Truth just as those gathered at Pentecost each heard the disciples “speaking in their own language.”
What we experience today in the loss of the sense of a universal truth with God as its origin, is polarization and division. Little gets accomplished because people do not listen to one another and they do not listen to God. Somehow people have come to think they know better than God.
Instead of living in division, we need to seek the peace of Christ (see my articles “From Peace to Peace” and “Pray for Peace…What is Peace?”) When we listen to the Holy Spirit, actually it is not just enough to listen, we need to embrace the Holy Spirit, then we receive peace as a fruit of the Holy Spirit.
When we embrace the Holy Spirit, we stop being a bunch of individuals and become one body with many parts all working together. We accomplish so much more and we fulfill the words we say in the Lord’s Prayer, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done.”
With this in mind, we cry out, “Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.”
Peace,
Fr. Jeff