E pluribus unum 

Acts 2: 1-11 tells us that for the Jewish feast of Pentecost, one of the three major festivals: Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles, which called for a pilgrimage to the temple in Jerusalem, “they were all in one place together.” Presumably, this means all the “believers” who Acts 1:15 says, “numbered about one hundred twenty persons.” When the Spirit came, “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.” 

At the Tower of Babel, pride led to conflicts, violence, and eventual dispersion, which in time led to different languages and an inability to communicate. In our day, every peer group speaks the special “language of its culture,” which both teaches and distorts truth, restricting our ability to understand other people and God himself. God’s answer to all this is to pour out his Spirit on the “prophets.” These are all the believers who accept their baptismal consecration as prophets and stand up in the power of the “Gift of the Spirit” to challenge the assumptions of their culture, including unexamined teachings and practices of “cultural Catholicism” that the Second Vatican Council “urges all concerned to remove or correct” in the measure that they are abusive, excessive, or defective. (See Vatican II: The Church, nos. 48, 51.) 

The Presentation of Gifts encourages us to trust that, as the bread and wine we bring forward will be transformed into the divine Body and Blood of Christ, we who, like bread, are “fruit of the earth and the work of human hands” can also be transformed and empowered to speak the “language of the Spirit” that reunites the dispersed and divided members of the human race. This is the promise of Eucharist: “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” (1Corinthians 10:17) 

Losing ourselves to be found as one  

1Corinthians 12: 3-13 reminds us that the Spirit unifies: 

There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit, varieties of services, but the same Lord, varieties of activities, but the same God who activates all of them in everyone. 

The Spirit is given to individuals for the good of the whole community: “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” And so in the Presentation of Gifts, we are brought forward as separate hosts, but pledged to be one bread, one Body in Christ. 

Through locked doors  

Prophets can polarize. Those who march by a different drummer can throw those in line out of step. So it is significant that John 20:19-23 tells us Jesus came through “locked doors.”   Those who fear the challenge of truth and freedom will divide into clinging groups of partisans—hiding behind locked doors, employing both offensive and defensive tactics for the preservation of their inertia. Jesus sent his Spirit into the Church for deliverance from sin and fear: “Peace…. As the Father has sent me, so I send you…. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven.” The prophets say, as Jesus did, “Peace be with you.” But there is no true peace or unity, except in truth and freedom. If the prophets break through locked doors, it is to deliver. “Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.” 

Today’s Psalm (Psalm 62) asks, “Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.”

Prayer Prompt: What does the Presentation of Gifts express for me now? How can I recommit to my Baptism? and to my baptismal consecration as prophet. 

— Fr. David M. Knight

View today’s Mass readings, Lectionary #62, on the USCCB website here

Fr. David M. Knight (1931-2021) was a priest of the Diocese of Memphis in Tennessee, a prolific writer, and a highly sought after confessor, spiritual director, and retreat master. He authored more than 40 books and hundreds of articles that focus primarily on lay spirituality and life-long spiritual growth.