Readings:

Gn. 11:1-9; Ps. 104; Rom. 8:22-27; Jn. 7:37-39

“Come, Holy Spirit, Creator blest, and in our souls take up Thy rest; come with Thy grace and heavenly aid to fill the hearts which Thou hast made.” On this great Solemnity of Pentecost, we invite the Holy Spirit into our hearts so that rivers of living water will flow from within us. Jesus promises the Spirit to all who come to believe in him. And so, today we give primary focus to the Holy Spirit, who is the source of all life, the source of all love, the source of all being.

But first, in a spirit of great joy, I am happy to share that we received some great news from our bishop and our pastor today. In a couple of weeks, the church will once again be open for the public celebration of Masses and liturgies. I am so happy to say this because, as St. Paul describes, the Spirit has been groaning within me, as I am sure it has within all of you who have been so faithfully attending our live streamed Masses. For many of us, the groaning within us is truly a longing to be united not only in spirit, but in the body as well. Many of us had a foretaste of the joy of the Spirit last Sunday as we distributed Holy Communion for the first time in many months. I hope it goes without saying that for the priest, the single most important aspect of our ministry is to lead people closer to Jesus. The primary way in which that happens is through the sacraments, especially the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.

So, I would like to take a moment to explore two contrasting images, the first of which comes from the Book of Genesis: the famous tower of Babel, the unity of humankind; and the second, our reception of Holy Communion, which is the unity of humankind with God. In our First Reading, we heard how the people of the whole world all spoke the same language, using the same words, and they all settled together in the land of Shinar, which was ancient Babylonia, or today, Southern Iraq. The great unifier of the people was their language, their words, their common tongue. This enabled them to work together in a way like never before. In this text, we see a great development in ancient building techniques. The people say, “Come, let us mold bricks and harden them with fire.” Prior to baking bricks, people mostly built with mud bricks, mud plaster, and wood. Such materials were good enough for small homes, but lacked the strength to build larger structures. Once the people began baking bricks, however, the bricks were then strong enough to stack quite high. The ancient Sumerians built large pyramid-like temple towers called ziggurats, which at the time were among the tallest man made structures, reaching high into the heavens. There are thirty-two known ziggurats throughout Mesopotamia, most of which are located in Iraq. Many scholars believe these towers are the structures described in today’s passage of Genesis.

So, what is the issue with these structures, and why did God confuse everyone’s language after seeing them? The answer is in the words of the people. They say: “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky, and so make a name for ourselves….” They had one goal in mind with building this city: To make a name for themselves. The only problem with this goal is they forgot about God. They built a city for themselves alone, what St. Augustine would call a City of Man.

Another question we might ask is: Why did the Lord see this unity of people with a common language as a problem? Well, the Lord, as our Creator, knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows that he placed within each of us a soul, imbued with gifts of reason and freewill, gifts that share in God’s own mind and will. He knows that if we were left to our own devices, we would be little more than what evolutionists describe as organic machines. But, we are more than flesh alone; we are embodied spirits, who have been given life by the Living God. This is the river of living water Jesus speaks of in the Gospel. Without this water, we go thirsty and die, but with this water, which St. John describes as the Spirit of those who believe, we have another kind of unity, far beyond a common tongue or a common city; we have union with God himself. And the most significant way in which that union is manifest is through the sacraments, most especially Holy Communion.

Jesus invites us to abide in him, and the way we abide in him is by making him the center of our life. When we do so, we realize that our life is not just about our human experience on earth, but about the spiritual reality that God has made us for himself. In other words, God has given us dominion over the earth not so we would dominate it for ourselves alone, but rather, that we would be united for a higher purpose, a great commission, a deeper share in the life of God. And the life of God comes to us today in the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Breath of God.

So, as the Easter Season draws to a close this Pentecost, remember that Jesus is with us always in his Spirit. In the Spirit, we live, and move, and have our being; in the Spirit, we respond to God’s invitation to love; in the Spirit, we offer our lives so that we may receive life from him. It has been the Spirit groaning within us during these days of isolation and trial. But, now, it is the Spirit that unites us once again as God’s people; the Spirit, who loves us as sons and daughters; the Spirit, who brings us together as one body, one parish family, and restores us to new life. May the Holy Spirit continue to unite us and fill us all with rivers of living water as we return once again to the public worship and the celebration of the sacraments in Jesus’ Name. Amen.

Given during the COVID-19 pandemic.