The Holy Spirit: Architect of Unity & Diversity

Today the Church celebrates her birthday, the great solemnity of Pentecost, which commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles in tongues of fire. Through the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Apostles went out and boldly proclaimed the Good News of Jesus’ Passion, Death and Resurrection, and the Jews of many nations each heard the Gospel in his or her own language (cf. Acts 2:1-11). Now, just like any other event in the Scriptures, the temptation is to relegate the spiritual significance of Pentecost to the past and lock it there in time, almost in a Deistic sense in which God the clockmaker set the Church in motion but has no active involvement in her now. Rather, Pentecost is now, today and every day, because God does not turn back on His promises, especially the promise of His abiding Presence in the Holy Spirit.

I find the “here and now” of Pentecost personally consoling because a lot of things I see in the news about my state, nation, the world and the Church are disheartening. War, violence, poverty, scandal, division: the list goes on. Amid this continual sin and dysfunction, the Holy Spirit, the perfect Love between the Father and the Son, abides with humanity through the Church. When we realize that we are incapable of saving ourselves from our personal and social sin, that is a very comforting reality, that the only One who can save us is with us and is saving us, if we allow Him to do so.

                When I think of Pentecost, my mind often goes to the theme of diversity. At my home parish, Pentecost Sunday was the day in which the readings were proclaimed in multiple languages, there were multilingual songs as well as a multicultural potluck afterward. At the same time, another prominent theme of Pentecost is unity, since the Jews from all nations heard the one Gospel and one faith preached to them in their individual languages. I believe that the Holy Spirit is working in our time toward a reconciliation between unity and diversity. On a strictly human level, there seems to exist a real tension between these two, especially as it relates to politics and culture. When unity is stressed to the detriment of diversity, we see far Right and far Left political ideologies, which are similar in their exclusion of difference. One need only look at the body count in Hitler’s Germany (far Right Fascism) and Stalin’s Russia (far Left Communism) to see how human unity sought through human means results in the obliteration of the other. When diversity is stressed to the detriment of unity, what results is moral relativism in its various forms. The differences between persons in gender, ethnicity, language, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, religion, etc. become so great that we cannot speak of a common human nature, morality or purpose without being offensive.

                It seems to me that only under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, God Himself, can these seeming contraries be reconciled. The Holy Spirit calls every individual, culture and nation to be one with Jesus Christ in His Body, yet being one in Christ does not destroy legitimate differences among peoples. Rather, the differences among people ultimately serve the one Kingdom of God, as St. Paul says: “As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ” (1 Cor 12:12). Therefore, if we are concerned about the lack of unity in our world or if we are concerned about the elimination of diversity, then we should always have the following on our lips and in our hearts: “Come, Holy Spirit!”