Today’s readings: Acts 2, 1-11; 1 Corinthians 12, 3-7.12-13; John 20, 19-23.

The condition of the disciples following the death of Jesus is depicted by John in today’s gospel as that of people who locked themselves in a room believing the outer world to be hostile. The spirit that takes over in such a state is that of fear, hopelessness and diffidence. It only generates isolation.

Unfortunately this is how the Church lived for quite long stretches of time, rather diffident of the world and hardly acknowledging how the Spirit of the Lord operates even beyond its own boundaries. But surely enough the Church was not founded to remain trapped in fear and diffidence.

The coming of the Spirit as the Lord who gives life, which we are celebrating on this Pentecost Sunday, is the exit from darkness in which very often we are trapped. The Spirit gives the Church a new heart. This is the Spirit that made the disciples robust. They had been confused and doubtful after Christ’s death. He re-energised and re-composed the first Jesus community that was disheartened and dispersed by persecution. It is the Spirit described in today’s gospel as the one through whose power sins are forgiven.

The first disciples and communities needed the Holy Spirit to bring to fulfilment what the Word incarnate had operated in them. From a broken body, doubly broken on the cross and now as a dispersed community, the Spirit “filled the entire house” and reconstructed their faith and hope. The Spirit is love in persona, he who makes possible the community of disciples, and making of it a living and powerful sign in the midst of chaos.

We today need badly and constantly this same Spirit, who sustains us in a runaway world. ‘Runaway’ because we are losing connection with our own selves and between us; because we need a compass to find direction; because we need solace, to experience forgiveness and forgive, to cherish inner harmony and share it with the outer world.

I recently came across a review written in 1947 by Gabriel Marcel of Albert Camus’s La Peste. It may sound bizarre to create a parallelism between the plague at Oran that Camus was writing about and the advent of the Spirit in Pentecost. The plague at the centre of Camus’s book really happened at a certain point in time. So it cannot be taken as an allegory.

Yet it is hinted that it needs to be considered, not just for the disaster it was, but also in its repercussion on human life. Revisited today, the plague triggers in us the questioning about the poison that lurks in us all. Across the borders, believers and unbelievers alike, the celebration of the Spirit on this Sunday cannot fail to make us discern the epidemic that is rendering our daily living heavy, dramatic, at times even unbearable.

There is a sickness of heart that may be taking over today in the way we approach life and in the way we connect with each other. The Spirit is the antidote to that sickness. The Spirit that filled the entire house on that first Pentecost heals the heart, restores courage, and banishes the fear that blocks whatever vision we can cherish of life and living.

On this Pentecost we need to open up to the Spirit, the Lord who gives life, who enables us to discover the scourges that today afflict humanity and the churches, debilitating the human spirit. This is the revolution we cannot afford to stifle.

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