HOMILY OF PENTECOST SUNDAY — YEAR A 2026
HOMILY OF PENTECOST SUNDAY — YEAR A 2026
HOMILY THEME: EMPOWERED TO RENEW THE FACE OF THE EARTH
BY: Fr. Gerald Muoka
Act 2: 1 – 11, 1 Cor 12: 3 – 13, Jn 20: 19 – 23
A funny story was told of a little boy who wanted to park his new bicycle in the Church’s parking lot. Fortunately, he saw the priest and requested a prayer over his bicycle so that it wouldn’t be stolen. The priest invited him into the church for the prayer. But before they got into the church, the little boy muttered a little invocation. The priest asked him to lead the prayer so that he would give the final benediction. The boy started, “In the name of the Father and of the son… Amen.” When the priest wanted to know why he wasn’t mentioning the Holy Spirit, he replied, “Fr. I do not want to distract the Holy Spirit. Before we got in here, I had asked Him to keep watch over my bicycle. If I invoke Him now, He will leave my bicycle to answer me, and my bicycle will be stolen. Please, let’s not distract the Holy Spirit.”
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My dear friends, today is Pentecost Sunday: the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles. At Pentecost, we see the fulfillment of Christ’s promises to his disciples, “I will ask the Father, and He will send you another advocate.”
The first reading tells the story of Pentecost and describes the power and influence of the Holy Spirit on the apostles. There are two important details we need to consider in today’s liturgy:
1. Luke tells us that there was a sound like a rushing wind. Tongues of fire rested on the apostles, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit. In Genesis, creation begins with the Spirit of God hovering over the formless deep. At Pentecost, God’s Spirit fills the disciples. What is inaugurated is not the creation of the world, but the beginning of a new creation, a renewed humanity brought to life by the same divine breath. That is why Pentecost is often called the birthday of the Church. The spirit of new beginnings.
2. The spirit dissipated their fears and emboldened them to witness to the gospel. Luke tells us that they spoke in their native language, which is likely Aramaic, and people different parts of the world with different languages understood them. This takes us back to the story of the tower of Babel, where out of arrogance, pride, self-reliance, and rebellion against God, humanity wanted to build a tower scaling to the heavens. God responds by confusing their language that they could no longer understand each other.
At Pentecost, we see the reversal of Babel. With the Pentecost experience, the curse of confusion is undone. Through the power of the Spirit of God, the division and fragmentation of peoples are overcome, not by doing away with our differences but by restoring understanding. Humanity becomes one again not by having a single language, uniformity, or gathering around the tower of Babel but around the gifts of God’s Spirit, who creates unity in diversity and communion amongst peoples and reconciles us with the Father as one. St. Paul stresses this in the second reading, “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons.”
Jesus, in the gospel, empowered the apostles to perpetuate the mission of reconciling with God and making us one another through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the Sacrament of Penance.
Take Home Messages
St Paul reminds us in the second reading that every one of us has been blessed with gifts by the Holy Spirit. These gifts are meant to be used for the service of others and build up the body of Christ. St. Paul used the different parts of the body, which play different roles, yet functioning to the good of the whole to remind us of how important we are to the mystical body of Christ.
We need to ask ourselves, “What gifts have I received from the Holy Spirit?
Reflect on what you do with the gifts of the Holy Spirit in you. Do you use your gifts to build or destroy; restore peace or cause confusion in the community; intimidate or comfort others; oppress, or support others? The psalmist calls us renew the face of the earth with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, “Send forth your Spirit, and they shall be created – And you will renew the face of the earth.”
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