I recently came across a charming story about a little boy who was trying to come to grips with his fear of the dark.  Every night as he tried to fall asleep he became overwhelmed by the thought that…when the lights went off…there might be monsters and any sorts of evil things lurking under the bed…in the closet…behind the dresser.  Night after night he would run into his mom and dad’s room and jump into bed with them.  His parents were at a total loss as to what to do.  And so finally one night his mother took him back into his room and…looking deep into his eyes…said, “You don’t need to be afraid…you aren’t alone here in your bedroom.  God is right here with you.  So when you get scared…just invite Him in…through the door...and he’ll be with you…he’ll protect you.”  The little boy said, “I know God is here…but mommy I want someone in my room who is real…a person…someone with skin.” 

A wise little boy for sure!  He’s no different than you and me…and no different than the Disciples that night in the upper room on that first Pentecost.  We all need a God who has some skin…a God we can touch…a God we can hold on to…a God present in those moments of our lives when we’re scared…confused…anxious.  It’s interesting…the human condition is same no matter what age…culture…or even century.  I’m 40 years old and I’m still scared of what lurks in the dark.  Our minds tell us that God is with us…in the midst of those dark nights…in the midst of the dark moments of our spiritual lives…the little boy knew that God was there…the Disciples knew that God was with them…you and I know that God is with us.  But it’s very difficult to feel that God is present…to feel that he is in fact sitting right now right next to you in that pew…that he’s actually out there looking for that job with you…that he is right there working on your marriage with you…that he’s sitting right there with you when the doctor gives you the news that the test results indicate that you have cancer.   It is a long way from the head to the heart…from knowing to feeling.

The Holy Trinity is not an easy concept grasp much less talk about.  How do you put into words unexplainable mystery?  We can sort of understand the whole Three Person thing because we’re persons…and we can certainly understand that there was a person just like us walking the dusty roads of Palestine 2000 years ago…Jesus.  And it’s reasonably easy to come to grips with the Father…because we have fathers.  But the idea of the Holy Spirit is pretty challenging.   It’s hard to put our hands around Spirit.  What exactly is it?  In many ways we wish that Jesus was still here…so that we could put our hands around him…talk to him…touch him…it’s our Thomas complex.  It would be so much easier if he would have never ascended in to Heaven at all…if he would just walk through those doors into this church so that I could sit down and stop trying to explain the unexplainable.  But that’s not the Christian experience.

And it’s precisely why today is so important to us.  Pentecost is the day that God makes himself known to us over and over again right in our bodies.   When the Holy Spirit breathed into their souls that day 2000 years ago in Jerusalem God once again took on flesh.  Just like the little boy wanted…God got some skin.  Not in the same way in which Jesus was born years earlier in Bethlehem.  We all know that there can only be one Jesus and one Father.  The Disciples didn’t become Jesus or the Father themselves that first Pentecost.  We don’t become Jesus on Pentecost.  That day God took on their flesh…He chose them…as he chooses you and me…to be his bodies in this world.  He takes on our bodies so that when we need to see him…when we need to feel him…when we’re scared and we need him to stay with us in our locked rooms late at night all we have to do is to look around at his Mystical Body.  In giving us the Holy Spirit God awakens in each of us His very presence so that through our presence…our skin…He might show himself to each one of us.  At Pentecost what He’s really doing is becoming even more interconnected with His human family.  We call this the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  It’s the most intimate reality of the God – Human experience…Creator connecting with Creature…and that bonding agent that holds God and us together is the Holy Spirit. 

There are so many different names for the Holy Spirit…The Consoler…The Helper…The Advocate…The Comforter…The Paraclete…Wind…Fire…Breath of God…Holy Ghost.  Maybe…though…of all these images one that most connects with us and our church is the name Divine Energy.  The Holy Spirit is Divine Energy.  Now what exactly is that?  God’s Divine Energy is that which animates everything that is.  Without Divine Energy things would just remain inanimate objects…disorganized matter with no direction or character.  Our Christian tradition tells us that God’s very essence overflows into all that is.   This is not only important for our understanding God himself but more importantly for what it means to be a human being.  Existence on its own…without energy…is impossible.  Think about it…Everything that is - is a result of a force that comes from outside itself.  In other words …something just can’t create itself…it has to be created by something greater than itself.  God’s Divine Energy…The Holy Spirit…fully actualizes everything that is…it gives everything that is its distinctive properties.  A tree is known by its fruits…an orange tree…an apple tree…a peach tree.  Without the fruit it doesn’t fully arrive its most authentic identity.  It would just be limbs and leaves.  And this Divine Energy is especially true for people.  We come to know ourselves and each other by our distinctive properties…which can only develop as a result of the Divine Energy animating us…they way we act…the way we react…they way we experience life and each other…our tastes…our talents...our instincts.  Mere existence…devoid of this Divine Energy…devoid of the Holy Spirit…isn’t truly living at all.  A person is fully alive only when his or her Divine Energy is received and embraced.  That’s Pentecost!  Pentecost makes you the most you you were ever intended to be by God.  You couldn’t have become without Divine Energy…The Holy Spirit… because Divine Energy actualizes you into the image and likeness of the one who made you.  An authentic embracing of Pentecost divinizes the Human Person. 

St.Theresa of Avila…the great 16^th century Spanish Mystic put it this way…Christ has no body now but yours…he has ascended into heaven…no hands but yours…no feet but yours…yours are the eyes through which his compassion must look out upon the world…yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good…yours are the hands with which he is to bless now.  

Today we celebrate the Divine Energy that God gave us so that we might give him a body with which to do His work…At Pentecost God helps us help him bring about his Kingdom in the world.