23/05/2026
We live in a time when, on the one hand, it has never been easier to communicate with each other. A dizzying array of technologies allow us to transmit an opinion, selfie or withering put-down to a stranger on the other side of the globe in mere seconds. On the other hand, it can sometimes feel like the more we ‘communicate’, the less we connect.
It’s hardly surprising that the messages we are most drawn to are those that reinforce what we already value and believe, helping us to feel smugly superior or ideologically pure. This tendency has only been supercharged by algorithms that trap us in comfortable echo chambers, feeding us a steady, self-perpetuating diet of outrage. Instead of doing the uncomfortable work of building real community—looking outward, welcoming each person’s unique gifts, exposing ourselves to new perspectives—we can quickly find ourselves settling for myopic tribalism and living in a fragmented, distrustful world.
The Church, of course, has never been immune from this dynamic, as we see in Paul’s first letter to the fledgling community of believers in Corinth. It seems there were some there who felt their spiritual experience and contributions were of a higher or purer order than those of their brothers and sisters—a way of thinking that Paul was keen to nip in the bud. What binds the community together, allowing each to declare that ‘Jesus is Lord’, he wrote, is not an insistence that each member adhere to a single, superior approach to the life of faith. Rather, he says, ‘There is a variety of gifts but always the same Spirit’ (1 Corinthians 2:4). It is the Spirit alone that brings us together as one Body, the Church.
In a world where we so often seem to be speaking at cross-purposes, the feast of Pentecost is worth celebrating. It reminds us that every human barrier to communication and community is overcome by the Spirit of God, who draws us together into the Church, in all our splendid diversity, and communicates to us, each in our own language, the ‘marvels of God’ (Acts 2:11).
🎨 Pentecost, by Juan Bautista Maíno.
