A Church is born!

Coming as it does 50 days after Easter, the celebration of Pentecost summarises, as it were, the three years of Our I,ord's public life. The mission entrusted by Christ to his disciples, however, would have been doomed to failure had he not assured them of his abiding presence among them in the Person of the Holy Spirit.

That is why the Spirit is now being referred to as the Soul of the Church. Just as the human soul in each one of us is the source of life, growth and fruitfulness, so also the Church of Christ not only was born on the day of Pentecost, but remains alive and a means of salvation for all its members till the end of time.

The Church's liturgy in the celebration of today's solemnity is centred around the 'seven gifts' of the Holy Spirit. And today's Gospel, taken from St John, refers to some of them.

The first of these gifts is 'peace', the same peace which Jesus had promised his disciples when he appeared to them right after his resurrection. This kind of peace, peace with God and neighbour and peace with oneself, is what has been and still is a source of happiness among all the believers in Christ even to this day, after a span of almost 2,000 years.

The gift of peace has also been the secret of the Church's dynamism in the fulfilment of its mission, spreading Christ's teaching throughout the entire world notwithstanding all the persecutions, declared or undeclared, which it has been encountering from its very beginning to this day.

Another gift of the Holy Spirit referred to in today's Gospel is that of "mission". "Just as the Father has sent me, so I send you," the Lord said to his disciples. Hence they truly became Apostles in the full sense of the word, as the original Greek word apostello suggests. The Apostles were therefore the 'sent ones', and so are we as Christians. We too are being 'sent'. in the name of Christ, with the very special task of spreading Christ's teaching and announcing the good news of salvation.

A third gift given by the Lord on the day of Pentecost is that of 'forgiving sins'. This gift is given first of all to the Church as a community endowed with the task of continuing Christ's mission on earth, but also, more specifically and by participation in Christ's priesthood, to a chosen few who have been specificaIly commissioned to forgive the sins of others in the name of Christ. While the forgiveness of sins, however, remains a priestly task, every authentic follower of Christ is bound to forgive his fellow brethren, exchanging resentment with love and offence with peace.

A fourth gift of the Holy Spirit which we are reminded of today is that of 'truth', symbolised by the word 'light'. Before ascending into heaven Jesus assured his disciples that he would lead them into all truth. That was in a way the most important of all the other gifts mentioned above.

It is the task of the Church as commissioned by Christ to preach the most important of all truths, the combination of all those truths which alone can lead to eternal salvation. Here one cannot but bring to mind the loaded question set by Pontius Pilate to Jesus: "What is truth?" Many people today are asking the same question, if only in their heart of hearts. We are faced every day with all sorts of conflicting ideas, not excluding those about religion. In Christ and his teachings all truths leading to salvation are contained. It is the task of the Church to preach truth, all truth, and nothing but the truth.