Tomorrow is Pentecost, the feast of the gift of the Holy Spirit. By Luke’s account, the Spirit arrives with a strong, driving wind and tongues of fire. Filled with the Spirit, the disciples will be able to proclaim the gospel in words intelligible to people from every nation under heaven. By the fourth gospel’s account, the Spirit is received as the very breath of Jesus, and with it comes the power to forgive sins.

And today, on the eve of Pentecost, we have. . .Peter behaving badly. Again. Today’s gospel follows right after yesterday’s, in which Jesus asked Peter ‘do you love me?’ three times. Who wouldn’t have been distressed by both the repetition and the mystifying injunctions to feed and tend his lambs and sheep? So perhaps it’s no surprise that Peter breaks his focus, that he turns away from Jesus and goes on the offensive against someone else. Spotting the disciple whom Jesus loved, Peter asks: what about him? It’s easy to imagine jealousy simmering just beneath his question. Maybe Peter isn’t exactly behaving badly, but he is—once again—thoroughly human.

Nor is Peter alone in displaying his less-than-exemplary humanity. The beloved disciple can easily be read as a master of the humble-brag, the one who asks the right question at the right time, the center of puffed-up gossip, the one whose testimony we know is true. Not a much more attractive model of discipleship for anyone to imitate!

Did whatever committee that set the cycle or readings chose this gospel to draw a bright line between Jesus’ so-very-human disciples and the life that would soon be theirs in the Spirit? Perhaps, but it is important not to take that distinction too far. That way lies an ancient and persistent tendency (historically, a heresy called Manichaeism) to divide light from darkness, spirit from flesh, human from divine.

We can never forget that Jesus chose these very human disciples (and us!) Moreover, God chose to be human like us. Not to replace our humanity or even improve it, but to illuminate our lives from within, in ways both mighty and gentle, just as the Spirit is said to move.

Today’s gospel ends with one more humble-brag, but one that turns out to be true in ways the evangelist could not have foreseen. Indeed, the world cannot hold all the volumes containing

‘the many other things that Jesus did.’ His spirit works on, in countless human lives, including our own. Today, just before Pentecost, the scriptures invite us to pause and appreciate two gifts–of the Holy Spirit, and of our very human selves.
—BJ Brown

Today’s readings can be found on the US Conference of Catholic Bishops website.