The Breath of God: The Pentecost 2025

                                                           The Breath of God:

The Pentecost 2025 

June 8, 2025

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Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 104; Romans 8:8-17; John 14:15-26

 

Pentecost shows us our potential glory, who we are capable of being, when we cooperate with God’s grace. At the Resurrection, we were raised with Christ into a new family of faith and a dignified way of being. We were given the grace to think as God thinks and to gain a new perspective on our relationships with our neighbors. We can love and act as God does because we have been brought closer to God’s mind and attitude. No longer do we have to be conditioned by human nature. As we receive the Holy Spirit, we can rise above our humanity to be our best selves as we put on the mind and heart of Christ.

 

The Tower of Babel shows the negative potential of humanity. Our selfishness, greed, and quest for power and control leads us to division and confusion. It leads to an existence in which we do not even try to understand each other and we are fueled by our misperceptions and judgments. We feed the world hatred, fear, anxiety, malice, and revenge. We prey upon others’ weaknesses to our own advantage and we build walls around us for protection. We demonize our brothers and sisters as we hold them in suspicion because they may be different from us. This is a world that we created and sustain in our human nature. It is a choice we make. We are free to choose a world apart from God.

 

Pentecost reminds us that building a world charged with the grandeur of God is possible. In fact, it is our duty as a believer of Christ. Pentecost is our mission to unite God’s kingdom to our world, which means to reconcile with our adversaries and opponents. If we are bringing people together in justice and peace, then we are cooperating with the Spirit. This is from God and for God. If we are causing division, we are doing the work of the enemy of human nature. 

 

We must begin this unity project by creating an atmosphere of trust. The person to whom we are interacting must detect that trust in our voices. One must feel increasingly more comfortable because of the love they detect in your voice. What must we do? We must learn how to listen to understand. To begin, we must acknowledge that each person wants to be seen, heard, known, and respected, and is trying to communicate a particular need to us. Our task is to discover, uncover, recover our understanding of a person’s soul. We listen reverently so that we can learn a bit more about the other person. When we understand better, we have greater compassion and greater love that binds us to the person because we are learning how to trust. Our relationships depend upon the capacity of each of us to understand our own difficulties and aspirations, and those of others. 

 

To do this, we are given by the Spirit the most fundamental tool possible – the gift of breath. Breath is the root of all freedoms, of all choices. When we learn to breathe, we can do anything. The Spirit gives us confidence and boldness through our breath. The breath is our unifying principle that allows us to behold one another in reverence and respect. The breath takes away fears and sustains life. When the Spirit of God permeates our breath, we renew the world with love, admiration, wonder, and trust. Breathe on me, of breath of God. 

 

Scripture for Daily Mass

Monday: (Genesis 3) After Adam had eaten of the tree, the LORD God called to him and asked him, “Where are you?” He answered, “I heard you in the garden; but I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid myself.” Then he asked, “Who told you that you were naked? 

 

Tuesday: (2 Corinthians 1) As God is faithful, our word to you is not "yes" and "no." For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was proclaimed to you by us, Silvanus and Timothy and me, was not "yes" and "no," but "yes" has been in him.

 

Wednesday: (Acts 11) In those days a great number who believed turned to the Lord. The news about them reached the ears of the Church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to go to Antioch. When he arrived and saw the grace of God, he rejoiced and encouraged them all to remain faithful to the Lord in firmness of heart, for he was a good man, filled with the Holy Spirit and faith.

 

Thursday: (2 Corinthians 3) To this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over the hearts of the children of Israel, but whenever a person turns to the Lord the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

 

Friday (2 Corinthians 4) We hold this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing power may be of God and not from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not constrained; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not abandoned;
struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the Body the dying of Jesus,
so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our body.

 

Saturday (2 Corinthians 5) The love of Christ impels us, once we have come to the conviction that one died for all; therefore, all have died. He indeed died for all, so that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

 

Gospel: 

Monday: (John 19) Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.”  

 

Tuesday: (Matthew 5) You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

 

Wednesday (Matthew 5) Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.

 

Thursday (Matthew 5) I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven. 

 

Friday (Matthew 5) You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery.
But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.

 

Saturday (Matthew 5) You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, Do not take a false oath, but make good to the Lord all that you vow. But I say to you, do not swear at all; not by heaven, for it is God's throne; nor by the earth, for it is his footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.

 

Saints of the Week

 

June 9: Ephrem, deacon and doctor (306-373), was born in the area that is now Iraq. He was ordained a deacon and refused priestly ordination. After Persians conquered his home town, Ephrem lived in seclusion where he wrote scriptural commentaries and hymns. He was the first to introduce hymns into public worship.

 

June 9: Joseph de Anchieta, S.J., priest (1534-1597), was from the Canary Islands and became a leading missionary to Brazil. He was one of the founders of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janiero. He is considered the first Brazilian writer and is regarded as a considerate evangelizer of the native Brazilian population. Alongside the Jesuit Manuel de Nobrega, he created stable colonial establishments in the new country.

 

June 11: Barnabas, apostle (d. 61), was a Jew from Cyprus who joined the early Christians in Jerusalem to build up the church. His name means "son of encouragement." He accepted Paul into his community and worked alongside him for many years to convert the Gentiles. He was stoned to death in his native Cyprus. He was a towering authority to the early church. 

 

June 13: Anthony of Padua, priest and doctor (1195-1231), became a biblical scholar who eventually joined the Franciscans. Francis sent him to preach in northern Italy, first in Bologna and then Padua. He very especially beloved because of his pastoral care, but he died at age 36.

This Week in Jesuit History

 

• June 8, 1889. Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins died at the age of 44 in Dublin. His final words were "I am so happy, so happy." He wrote, "I wish that my pieces could at some time become known but in some spontaneous way ... and without my forcing." 
• June 9, 1597. The death of Blessed Jose de Ancieta, Brazil's most famous missionary and the founder of the cities of Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro. 
• June 10, 1537. Ignatius and his companions were given minor orders at the house of Bishop Vincenzo Negusanti in Venice, Italy. 
• June 11, 1742. The Chinese and Malabar Rites were forbidden by Pope Benedict XIV; persecution broke out at once in China. 
• June 12, 1928. Fr. General Ledochowski responded negatively to the idea of intercollegiate sports at Jesuit colleges because he feared the loss of study time and the amount of travel involved. 
• June 13, 1557. The death of King John III of Portugal, at whose request Francis Xavier and others were sent to India. 
• June 14, 1596. By his brief Romanus Pontifex, Pope Clement VIII forbade to members of the Society of Jesus the use or privilege of the Bulla Cruciata as to the choice of confessors and the obtaining of absolution from reserved cases.