“How can our hearts not be moved?” Archbishop Bernard Hebda asked the congregation at the Extended Vigil Mass of Pentecost June 7 at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul.
With five Scripture readings and a Gospel reflecting on the role of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the faithful, “How is it that we can’t be excited with that gift of the Holy Spirit that was first manifested to the Apostles on that first Pentecost, 50 days after the Resurrection?” the archbishop asked.
Opening his homily like a prayer, Archbishop Hebda brought to a culminating close the one-day, 450-member Archdiocesan Synod 2025 Be My Witnesses Assembly, with many Synod members joining hundreds of the faithful, many dressed in red to symbolize the fire of the Holy Spirit, at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul.
“That event changed everything for the Apostles,” the archbishop said. “Brothers and sisters, we gather this evening to pray that the gift of the Holy Spirit might be manifest in this local Church as well, in a way that is transformative, that changes us, that gives us new hope, that brings to us the unity about which Bishop (Michael) Izen spoke this morning.”
The archbishop called the June 7 Synod assembly to help him discern pastoral priorities for the years ahead in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis (see pages 10-11). The assembly followed a similar gathering held in summer 2022.
Both assemblies ended with the Vigil Mass of Pentecost.
Even the night before the assembly began, Archbishop Hebda and Bishops Izen and Kevin Kenney — with Synod assembly members and all parishioners of the archdiocese invited — held a Holy Hour of Adoration at the Cathedral to pray that the gifts of the Holy Spirit might flow through the proceedings.
In a homily at the Holy Hour, Bishop Kenney referred to the Gospel for the day’s Mass, John 21:15-19, when the resurrected Jesus reveals himself to the disciples, eats breakfast with them and asks Peter three times, “do you love me?”
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“Jesus asks us the same question,” Bishop Kenney said. “Do you love me after having denied me? Do you love me after running from me? As we stand at the brink of the Synod (assembly), Jesus asks us: ‘Do you love me?’”
“Then the question will be, ‘How will you feed my sheep?’” Bishop Kenney said. “How will we tend the sheep? …The outpouring of the Holy Spirit comes to us and feeds us, so we can feed the sheep. We do it when we accept the Holy Spirit coming to us, forgiving us, renewing us.”
The next morning, Synod assembly members gathered at Cretin-Derham Hall in St. Paul for a full day of prayer, discussion, sharing and discernment. Bishop Izen led morning prayer and adoration of the Eucharist. He called on attendees to work and pray for unity in a challenging world.
“Unity is different than uniformity,” Bishop Izen said. “Community is about respecting what one another says, loving them, even if we disagree.”
“We are the Lord’s,” the bishop said. “You are the Lord’s, I am the Lord’s, we are the Lord’s. We’re united in the Lord. St. Paul reminds us of that. Scripture reminds us, the Eucharist reminds us, that we are one in Christ. Pray for that communion among ourselves today that we might be one, as (are) the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
In his homily at the vigil Mass, Archbishop Hebda also stressed unity in the Spirit, referring to the first reading from the Book of Genesis, when people built a high tower to make a name for themselves but to prevent further presumption were thrown by the Lord into a confusion of languages and scattered all over the Earth.
“To correct that, God divided our languages,” the archbishop said. “And yet we hear, brothers and sisters, of how it is that in the new Israel, the Holy Spirit gathers people from many tongues and nations and unites us once again.”
The reading from Ezekiel spoke of the Lord’s spirit giving life to dry bones, and the archbishop told a story about recently receiving a telephone call from a man from Wisconsin, who brings loads of scrap metal to a scrapyard in St. Paul.
“After he brings in the scrap, he always walks a little bit through the yard to see if there’s anything of value there,” the archbishop said. “He said as he was walking through, something caught his eye. He said, ‘bishop, I have to tell you, I haven’t been much of a churchgoer in many years, but when I saw the top of this crosier, I knew that wasn’t scrap metal. I knew it had value to the Church.”
He and the owner of the business decided the crosier should be returned to its rightful use, the archbishop said — as he held the very ornate, golden crosier, or staff, that was found in the scrapyard.
“We don’t know whose crosier it was, but how magnificent that in the midst of that scrapyard — maybe like that field of dry bones — that there was that sign of hope, that glimmer of hope, that we can celebrate this evening,” the archbishop said.
“We hope, my brothers and sisters, that we might be like that gentleman who found this crosier in the scrapyard. That we might be able to recognize the treasure that God has in our midst,” the archbishop said.
“Those of you who labored so hard this day with your Synod work, you, I think, were really working hard to discover that treasure that’s in our Church, that treasure that comes from the Holy Spirit, recognizing that that gift is the people of God.”
