91�����

Audio / podcast

�The Presence of the Spirit Overcomes All Barriers�

by His Eminence Sean Cardinal O�Malley
Archbishop Emeritus of Boston
Convocation 2026
91����� Aquinas College, New England
August 22, 2026

The first reading today is from the book of Isaiah, and it is the very text that Jesus chose for his first sermon which he gave in the synagogue at Nazareth as the inaugural address for his public ministry.

I shall never forget my own first sermon because it ended in disaster. I was assigned to celebrate Mass at a prison in Butler, Pennsylvania. I wasn�t sure about how to plan a homily for that congregation. I decided to preach about the great escapes that are cited in the Bible, as a means of assuring the inmates that God is close to everyone in their times of need. Unfortunately, that night six prisoners escaped, and in the aftermath I wondered if I would ever again be assigned to say Mass outside of the friary.

One of the older Friars consoled me by reminding me that Jesus� first sermon also ended in the disaster. They took Jesus out to the brow of the cliff, and they were going to throw him down. Amazingly their efforts were flaunted, and the gospel continues showing how the ministry of Jesus unfolds according to the prophecy of Isaiah.

Jesus� selection of the reading from Isaiah was very intentional. �The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; He has sent me to bring good news to the afflicted, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and release of prisoners.� It all begins with the anointing with the Spirit. Indeed, Luke�s gospel begins with the Holy Spirit overshadowing Mary and the Incarnation takes place. The Holy Spirit accompanies Jesus into the desert, and throughout his public ministry. The continuation of Luke�s gospel is the Acts of the Apostles, which is often called �the gospel of the Holy Spirit.� At the beginning of Acts, we see how at Pentecost the Holy Spirit overshadows Mary and the disciples and the Body of Christ, the Church, is born.

 �The Spirit dissolves all the frontiers that separate us from each other to form the Body of Christ.�

In my childhood I heard a priest give a sermon about St. Paul�s sermon in Athens where he points out the altar to the unknown God. The priest said that for many Catholics the Holy Spirit is the unknown God. Indeed, in those days we used to call the Holy Spirit the Holy Ghost. Today I find that poetic, but as a child I thought it was spooky. I wondered if the Holy Spirit was like Casper the friendly ghost.

In the Church, the charismatic movement did much to make people more aware of the action of the Spirit in our lives. Jesus promised us the gift of the Spirit to guide and strengthen us. After the Ascension, the apostles returned to the Cenacle. The reading from Acts today describes how the eleven apostles gathered with Mary and the holy women to pray for the coming of the Spirit. It was the first novena, nine days of intense prayer: to call down the Spirit upon us. This novena was the preface to Pentecost.

A couple of years ago I was asked to celebrate the Pentecost mass at the Pantheon in Rome. The Pantheon, I believe, is the oldest church in Christendom. It started out as a pagan temple a century before the birth of Christ, but for almost two thousand years it has been a Catholic Church. There are no windows in the Pantheon. It has one of the largest domes in the world. In the center of the dome is a large opening called the oculus. At one point during the Pentecost mass Roman firemen throw huge quantities of rose petals through the oculus that descend on the congregation like tongues of fire. It is a glorious way to celebrate the feast of Pentecost.

Pentecost recalls how the coming of the Spirit changes our lives and the course of history. The Church is born. The apostles and disciples overcame their fear and confusion. Today�s gospel describes the apostles locked in the Cenacle for fear. It�s on Pentecost that they emerge transformed, filled with courage and zeal to announce the good news. The presence of the Spirit overcomes all barriers and the people from all parts of the world understood the gospel message each in his or her own language. The Spirit dissolves all the frontiers that separate us from each other to form the Body of Christ, the community of faith, the Church.

If we could travel back two thousand years in time and observe what institutions, organizations, and kingdoms existed then, we would realize that the only one that is still here is the Catholic Church. Jesus promised that the gates of hell would never prevail again and that the Holy Spirit would guide us and that he would be with us always even to the end of the age.

Today�s gospel is an Easter scene. When the Good Shepherd was slain, the sheep were scattered as Jesus had prophesied. But on Easter the Good Shepherd goes out to seek the lost sheep, to gather the scattered. Of the apostles only young John was on Calvary. The other apostles fled into the witness protection program and hid in the Cenacle with the doors locked.

Jesus appears in their midst and greets them with the words we hear at mass: �Peace be with you.� Jesus then shows them his wounded hands, as if to say, behold how much I love you. The apostles were overcome with joy, but their joy was tinged with shame because of their cowardice. Jesus had washed their feet at the Last Supper and then the apostles used those feet to run away and hide. Peter even denied knowing Jesus three times. And not to a soldier with a long spear, but to a waitress with an attitude.

But Jesus is not there to scold them, but rather to assure them of his love. Not only does he forgive them, but he gives them the power to forgive sins. The first gift of Easter is the gift of the Holy Spirit. Jesus breaths upon them. The breath of God is the Holy Spirit that enlivens them is it enlivened the clay that became Adam. �Receive the Holy Spirit, whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven them.�

This is the first installment of Pentecost. In Jesus�s farewell addresses and Holy Thursday and Ascension Thursday He is saying farewell but at the same time promising us that He will always be with us. He promises to send the Spirit. At Pentecost Jesus fulfills that promise, and the presence of the Spirit fills his disciples with renewed courage, deeper faith, and a burning desire to announce the good news of the gospel to the world.

The Pentecost event is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. During the Easter season we read from the Acts of the Apostles every day. It is one of my favorite books in the Bible. It is the gospel of the Holy Spirit. In this glorious account St. Luke describes for us the work of Jesus, His mission and how it is continued in His disciples, His Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Acts of the Apostles described the ministry and martyrdom of the great figures of Peter and Paul, two flawed men who are profoundly converted by the grace of the Spirit and become pillars of the church.

Those early Christians were so aware of the action of the Spirit in the church that they could say, �the Spirit and we have decided.� They saw their duty as discerning God�s will through the action of the Spirit. The Acts of the Apostles gives us a glorious account of the Gospel in the Holy Spirit, how Peter and Paul and the holy men and women to follow them carried on the mission that Jesus had entrusted to us.

In the seminary when we studied the New Testament, we studied it in Greek of course. It was fascinating to see how St. Luke who was obviously a very cultured man wrote down the Word of God with such elegance and exhibited his classical training. The strange thing, however, was to see that the Acts of the Apostles do not end with the elegant classical literary forms that are exhibited throughout the rest of the book. The Acts of the Apostles ends very abruptly. Scholars have tried to explain this in various ways. Some say that Luke died before he could finish the book. Others say that he lost his publisher. Still others conjecture that the abrupt ending of the Acts of the Apostles is deliberate on Luke�s part. Luke is trying to show us that the Acts of the Apostles, the Gospel of the Holy Spirit, continues in the church today.

The acts present the ones who made up the faith community: Mary and Peter surrounded by the apostles, Stephen and the first deacons, Timothy and Titus, Saul of Tarsus, Aquila and Priscilla, Lydia, Silas, Tabatha, Rhoda, John Mark, and scores of people. The story does not end. Yes, the Acts of the Apostles continues and we are the protagonists today, commissioned by the Holy Spirit in our baptism and confirmation to carry on the mission that Christ gave us when he commanded us to love one another as he loves us and when he sends us to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.