What follows is a
reading especially suited for the Feast of Pentecost from the celebrated church
father (recognized spiritual guide from the early period of Christianity) St.
Irenaeus. This passage points out a number of important truths.
When the Holy Spirit
anointed Jesus at his baptism, it marked the first stage of the Spirit’s coming
to be with humanity in an interior, personal manner. It is a solemn reminder
that the same Spirit that rested on Christ has been shared with us in baptism.
Irenaeus then reminds
us that the gift of the Spirit re-unites humans divided by sin (indirectly
recalling the Tower of Babel from Genesis). All true Christian teaching and
practice will draw people together to God through living holy lives, not divide
us from God and each other in selfishness and sinfulness.
Finally, this great
Father of the faith alludes to Christ’s parable of the talents by reminding us
that the “coin of the kingdom” we have been given in the Spirit is to be used
and increased—not hidden away and ignored.
Our faith is never a
knickknack or sentimental memorabilia: it is the active presence of God in us,
drawing all things into perfect communion with the Holy Trinity—in whose image
all humanity was made.
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hen the Lord told his disciples to go and teach all
nations and baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit, he conferred on them the power of giving men new life in God.
He had promised through the prophets that in these last
days he would pour out his Spirit on his servants and handmaids, and that they
would prophesy. So when the Son of God became the Son of Man, the Spirit also
descended upon him, becoming accustomed in this way to dwelling with the human
race, to living in men and to inhabiting God’s creation. The Spirit
accomplished the Father’s will in men who had grown old in sin, and gave them
new life in Christ.
Luke says that the Spirit came down on the disciples at
Pentecost, after the Lord’s ascension, with power to open the gates of life to
all nations and to make known to them the new covenant. So it was that men of
every language joined in singing one song of praise to God, and scattered
tribes, restored to unity by the Spirit, were offered to the Father as the
first-fruits of all the nations.
This was why the Lord had promised to send the Advocate: he
was to prepare us as an offering to God. Like dry flour, which cannot become
one lump of dough, one loaf of broad, without moisture, we who are many could
not become one in Christ Jesus without the water that comes down from heaven.
And like parched ground, which yields no harvest unless it receives moisture,
we who were once like a waterless tree could never have lived and borne fruit
without this abundant rainfall from above. Through the baptism that liberates
us from change and decay we have become one in body; through the Spirit we have
become one in soul.
The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of
counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of God came down
upon the Lord, and the Lord in turn gave this Spirit to his Church, sending the
Advocate from heaven into all the world into which, according to his own words,
the devil too had been cast down like lightning.
If we are not to be scorched and made unfruitful, we need
the dew of God. Since we have our accuser, we need an advocate as well. And so
the Lord in his pity for man, who had fallen into the hands of brigands, having
himself bound up his wounds and left for his care two coins bearing the royal
image, entrusted him to the Holy Spirit. Now, through the Spirit, the image and
inscription of the Father and the Son have been given to us, and it is our duty
to use the coin committed to our charge and make it yield a rich profit for the
Lord.
St. Irenaeus of Lyons, bishop (died c. 202, commemorated June 28)
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