Homily for Pentecost Sunday, May 19, 2024, Year B
Fr. Charles Irvin Diocese of Lansing ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) Some things cannot be proven to exist. Take love for example. We know it exists, but forensic science cannot prove it as a fact. If you ask the finest and most sophisticated science laboratory to give you a report on how love is constituted the report will never be given. It cannot be proven to exist in itself. It is found only in certain human behavioral characteristics. The same would be true of friendship. Like love, it cannot be proven to exist in and of itself, it can only be found and identified in the way humans behave with each other. Now the same is true with the Holy Spirit. That aspect of God, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, can only be discerned in the way God acts, discerned and “seen” in the actions of the Holy Spirit, more precisely in the interactions of the Holy Spirit with human beings. Speaking about the Holy Spirit is difficult because the Spirit of God transcends human cate