If I were to say, for example, that Australian troops should come home from Afganistan, that is just my opinion, and people would ignore it. But if the Prime Minister were to say those very same words it would have a meaning of great importance. It would mean that the troops would come home. The words we use can have different meanings depending on who says them. The great story of Pentecost tells of the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles assembled in the upper room in Jerusalem in what seemed like tongues of fire. It tells of Peter's fiery preaching which people of different ethnic groups heard with great astonishment in their own language.

Words are more than the black symbols we put on a page of paper. The spoken word can be many different things. The same words can tell the truth or they can be a lie. Sometimes we can even judge if someone is telling the truth or not by their body language. With our words we can reveal or conceal what is going on inside us. The bully's words on the surface say one thing. But at another level they reveal perhaps the anger and frustration that is living inside even as the person tries to conceal it. The spoken word does not live in isolation. It is always spoken by a person. We all recognise how a parent can understand what an infant is communicating without words. The child's whole being communicates better than any written word. A sensitive person can see through a person's words to the truth of that person.

Further more, as Christians we speak of the scriptures as God's Word. We realise what we are reading does not simply refer to the words in this book I read from. It refers ultimately to Jesus who is God's Word of love spoken to us. It is the person of Jesus Christ who is the Word of God. Jesus being so intimately united with God in the Trinity speaks only what the Holy Spirit speaks.

We who are born of the Spirit in Baptism speak with the language and gifts of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. So the word of a Christian living by that Spirit is not just his or her own words. God's Spirit speaks to our spirit. Those words are what the Spirit enables one to say. Jesus says I John's Gospel, "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come" (John 16:13).

And we know when we are living by the Spirit when our lives demonstrate those fruits as Paul outlined them for us and which I don't mind repeating again and again: the fruits of the Spirit's seven-fold gifts are things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galations 5:22). Living that kind of life speaks much louder than words no matter how accurate the our spoken or written words might be.

As an aside, when we hear Jesus words in the Gospel of Pentecost, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." John 20:22), we naturally think of the Sacrament of Reconciliation or Penance. That text is one of the basic sources of the Church's ministry of reconciliation. Yet in different ways all the sacraments are part of that ministry of healing and forgiveness which is at the heart of the Gospel. It is just that in those early days the sacraments were not clearly diversified. It was not for a few centuries that the Sacrament of Reconciliation as we know it was established. So commentators suggest that the immediate situation Jesus addresses was more about Baptism which is our first Reconciliation with God. The question for the early church in the midst of persecution was, Who should we baptise? It is still a question today.

We are beginning to use some new words at Mass this weekend. These words like all our prayers can be mere words on a page. You and I might be a bit tongue tied for a while as we get used to them. That does not matter. It is who we are that makes them a prayer. It is the Holy Spirit dwelling in us who enables us to pray. So are the words we speak every day telling the truth? Do they reveal the source of our life in the Holy Spirit as surely as Peter's words did on that first Pentecost? We end the season of Easter today with the celebration of the gift of the Holy Spirit upon the Church.

Fr Graham