With Pentecost coming up next Sunday, I was pondering what to write, and what kept jumping out at me, even while reading prayers in the Magnificat, was the word unity. 

At first, I thought it was very odd that unity kept coming to mind. I first brushed it aside and tried to think about aspects of the Holy Spirit, and again, unity came to mind. The Holy Spirit is the third person in the Trinity because it is the shared love between God the Father and God the Son. The Holy Spirit is, literally, the unity between Father and Son. Yet, my thought process wanted to write something about Pentecost being the birthday of the Church and the Holy Spirit being a central focus of the event. Unity is a lovely concept, but I can’t just put the single word in my post and be done with it. However, when the Spirit prompts, it’s way easier to go with the flow than for me to try and write what I think I should write.

No matter how mindful or empathetic I try to be, it’s all too easy for me to judge situations that I feel infringed upon. I think our society is so skewed towards the rights of the individual that it has lost sight of being a society itself, that is a gathering or community of people. In our attempt to connect with others, we like and share content on social media platforms. Yet that is not true interaction; it’s not listening to another and learning about them and their perspectives. Some take advantage of not seeing others to freely criticize them, and may cross the line from opinion to verbal abuse. We use the right of free speech as a shield and excuse to say whatever we want. However, as Catholic Christians we are called to unity; not just with God but with each other.

The Apostles, with the exception of John, deserted Jesus during His passion and death. When He returned after His resurrection, He showered His peace on them; both forgiving them and reinforcing the bond among them all. There are many times when we fail to follow God’s plan or commandments, yet He calls us back to a relationship with Him in the sacrament of Reconciliation.  When we return to walking with God, we are in communion with Him and all others who are in communion with Him: past, present, and future. God gathers us up to Himself, not just as individuals, but also into a community of His creation. It is Satan that scatters, the one who does not want to see God’s desire for unity in His creation to succeed. Satan is our accuser, the one who points out our faults and makes us feel that we are not worthy to be with God. While the latter is true, we can never be worthy on our own merit, but through Jesus Christ we can have a relationship with God and a seat at the heavenly banquet. Here again we have a theme of community. How many times in the Bible does it reference heaven as a feast or meal? We have heard that God calls us to this fellowship, this unity with others. But here on earth we look inward towards our own desires. We acknowledge others only to complain when they impede what we want.

If we truly want to have a relationship with God, we cannot have a mindset that our relationships with other people have no impact on our relationship with God. If we want a better relationship with God, one way to do it is to start looking at how we treat the people around us: in our families, our workplaces, our church, and any other place we go. Do we see each as a person, created by God with a unique set of gifts and talents? Do we treat them with the respect and dignity they deserve as sons and daughters of God, regardless of their professed religion? We may not agree with their perspectives and may bristle at the way they treat us, but that does not give us permission to discard them as not worthy of our time, attention, and respect. 

Pentecost is not just the birthday of the Church, rather it is a call of unity to all creation. The Apostles spoke in various tongues to bring the message of Jesus to all those scattered by different languages. They preached Jesus risen as our savior. They called for those who would listen to them to repent and be baptized so that they could receive the Holy Spirit, which is the unifying love between God the Father and God the Son. Unity does, indeed, sum up Pentecost and the greatest gift of the Trinity.