Homily for Pentecost Sunday
8 June 2025
Readings: Acts 2:1-11; Ps 103(104):1,24,29-31,34; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13; Jn 20:19-23
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Wishing you a blessed Pentecost. Today we celebrate the time after the Resurrection of Jesus when Jews from anywhere and everywhere were gathered together, able to understand each other, despite their national, cultural and linguistic differences. Scripture scholar Luke Timothy Johnson tells us: ‘The real “event” of Pentecost is the empowerment of the disciples by the Holy Spirit. …[T]he emphasis is not on what happened to Jesus, but what happened to [the disciples]: the “fact” of Jesus’ new life is verified by the “fact” of their new experience of power, manifested by their bold proclamation of “the great deeds of God.”’[1]
Remembering the time when each of us received the sacrament of confirmation, we can recall the seven gifts of the Spirit: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of God.
Paul tells us in his second letter to the Corinthians: ‘There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit; there are different forms of service but the same Lord; there are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone. To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.’
Paul gives us a message of what Pope Leo would call unity and communion: ‘For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons, and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.’ Leo at his mass of inauguration on 25 May 2025 said: ‘communion is built primarily “on our knees,” through prayer and constant commitment to conversion. For only in this way can each of us hear within the voice of the Spirit crying out: “Abba! Father!” (Gal 4:6) and then, as a result, listen to and understand others as our brothers and sisters.’[2]
This Pentecost, the first since the conclusion of the Synod on Synodality, we are all being called as Church to ‘listen to and understand others as our brothers and sisters’. There are two issues in particular coming to a head.
You will recall that prior to the last session of the Synod, Pope Francis took ten difficult topics off the agenda and referred them to study groups in February 2024. Those study groups are due to report this month. The most contested topic was ‘the role of women in the Church and their participation in decision-making/taking processes and community leadership.’ This topic was referred to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. In particular, the study group was commissioned to publish ‘theological and pastoral research on the access of women to the diaconate’.
The final document of the Synod states: ‘There is no reason or impediment that should prevent women from carrying out leadership roles in the Church: what comes from the Holy Spirit cannot be stopped.
Additionally, the question of women’s access to diaconal ministry remains open. This discernment needs to continue.’[3] Whichever way the study group goes on the issue of women’s ordination, there will be many disappointed Catholics, and even angry Catholics. Pope Francis, having signed off on a document which he said was part of his magisterium, has left Leo with a daunting task as the Pontifex, the bridge builder, of a church which affirms that ‘what comes from the Holy Spirit cannot be stopped’.
February 2024 was a busy month for Francis and his advisers trying to manage the synodal process. Francis thought the German Church was getting ahead of the play proposing to set up a national ‘Synodal Council’ composed of bishops and lay people which would be an ‘advisory and decision-making body’ that ‘deliberates on essential developments in the Church and society, and makes decisions of principle, of supra-diocesan importance, on pastoral planning, future issues, and budgetary matters of the Church that are not taken at the diocesan level.’
Cardinal Robert Prevost, as he then was, joined with two other senior cardinals writing to the German bishops telling them to put the brakes on. They said the proposed Synodal Council was not contemplated by current Canon Law and would be null and void. They wrote: ‘Approving the statute of the Synodal Committee would therefore be contrary to the Holy Father’s command and would once again confront him with faits accomplis.’ A handful of the German bishops backed off – but only a handful.[4] Most of them have said they are committed to pressing ahead.
The president of the German Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Georg Bätzing, said the cardinals’ letter could be refuted from the point of view of content as a joint body of bishops and laity would not weaken the authority of the bishops, but rather strengthen it. Bätzing said: ‘We do not want to limit the authority of the bishop or bishops in any way. We want to place them on new ground because this authority has been undermined by the abuse and scandal we have experienced… And that’s why we need new, binding and transparent advice that really flows into decisions. This is the path we are looking for.’[5]
In today’s gospel, the disciples are locked away, besieged by fear.
Jesus appears amongst them and greets them: ‘Peace be with you’ – the same greeting with which Pope Leo commenced his papacy on the night the white smoke went up in the square.
Jesus breathes on the disciples and proclaims: ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.’
May this Spirit guide us as a Church as we contemplate the proper place of women in our Church and as the Vatican and German church leaders discern a church structure appropriate for the 21st century in the wake of the abuse crisis which was exacerbated by an all male celibate clergy being insufficiently aware, accountable and responsive. Let’s remember that ‘what comes from the Holy Spirit cannot be stopped’.
Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.
Bless the Lord, O my soul!
O Lord, my God, you are great indeed!
How manifold are your works, O Lord!
the earth is full of your creatures;
Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.
If you take away their breath, they perish
and return to their dust.
When you send forth your spirit, they are created,
and you renew the face of the earth.
Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.
Fr Frank Brennan SJ is serving as part of a Jesuit team of priests working within a new configuration of the Toowong, St Lucia and Indooroopilly parishes in the Archdiocese of Brisbane. Frank Brennan SJ is Adjunct Professor of the Thomas More Law School at ACU and is a former CEO of Catholic Social Services Australia (CSSA). Fr Frank’s latest book is An Indigenous Voice to Parliament: Considering a Constitutional Bridge, Garratt Publishing, 2023 and his new book is ‘Lessons from Our Failure to Build a Constitutional Bridge in the 2023 Referendum’ (Connor Court, 2024).
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[1] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Acts of the Apostles, Sacra Pagina Series (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1992), 45.
[2] https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/homilies/2025/documents/20250525-possesso-cattedra-laterano.html
[3] XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, Mission: Final Document, #60.
[4] See Four German Bishops Formally Disassociate Themselves from the German Synodal Path to Remain in the Catholic Church | ZENIT – English
[5] See https://www.osservatoreromano.va/en/news/2024-02/ing-008/german-bishops-are-asked-to-stop-synodal-committee-project.html
