Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Holy Spirit

  • Monday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    This is a tough text from the Gospel today. Jesus says that “whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never have forgiveness…” A lot of people come to me, worrying about whether or not they have “sinned against the Holy Spirit.” There’s a lot of worry around that, but really it’s pretty hard to sin that way, or at least it is if we live our faith. Now this statement from Jesus seems to be rather incongruous, since he came to be all about forgiveness. That he would withhold it from any sinner is perhaps a little shocking to hear.

    But we have to remember what it is that Jesus was addressing here. The scribes who had come from Jerusalem catch up with Jesus and begin to make trouble for him. They are being obstinate in their unbelief, even to the point of being intellectually dishonest. They know that Satan cannot — would not — cast himself out, but that’s just what they’re accusing Jesus of being and doing. They would rather say foolish things than to believe that Jesus came to cast out sin and forgive sinners and address the fundamental issues of human existence.

    Salvation and forgiveness are a gift, and gifts must be accepted. If one refuses to be forgiven, he or she will never have forgiveness. That is the infamous sin against the Holy Spirit. If one refuses to believe that he or she needs a Savior, then he or she will never come at last to eternity.

    May we always remember how much we need our Savior, and always give thanks for the demons he casts out of us, and others.

  • The Solemnity of Pentecost

    The Solemnity of Pentecost

    Words contain a lot of power.  We know that well, because sometimes we say the wrong things, or these days, text the wrong things, and we see how it upsets people we love.  And equally we experience the power of someone saying just the right thing at the right time and we see how that expression of love changes everything.  Words can convey a range of emotions from love to hate, and everything in between.  Words can start an argument, but the right words can diffuse a really bad situation.  We’ve seen it so many times.

    Most of us receive the gift of speech at birth, and come into it during our childhood.  We develop the gift of speech throughout our lives, perhaps learning foreign languages, or become skilled speakers.  Speech is crucial to living in society.  Speech allows us to communicate with others, to develop relationships with them, and to understand their story.  But sometimes speech is used to demean others, to break relationship and marginalize them.  We have to be careful, really careful, how we use our gift of speech.

    But the gift of speech can be divisive. Just as in the book of Genesis, the gift of speech was confused so that the people wouldn’t think they could overtake God, so we sometimes use speech to divide. Often, people will speak in another language just so people around them won’t understand. But even worse than that, we use language to label others or perpetuate stereotypes or put others down. We use language to argue and cause political division to the detriment of the common good. We use language to argue with family members such that communication ceases and relationships are broken. Language, a gift that is meant to unite us, can be abused so very easily and cause division that is not God’s will.

    Our speaking needs to be done in the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who enables us to say anything really good.  The only way that we can say “Jesus is Lord,” as Saint Paul tells us, is by the Holy Spirit.  The only way that we can witness to the faith, is by the Holy Spirit.  That was true of the first Apostles.  Remember what happened to them right after the events of Good Friday.  They scattered.  They were frightened, and they fled the opportunity to talk to anyone.  When they did speak, they put their foot in their mouths.  Peter used his gift of speech to deny that he even knew the Lord, let alone witness to the Lord’s power to save.  At that time, the Apostles couldn’t even fashion words to describe what they were experiencing, so they were never going to be able to spread the Gospel.

    Until Pentecost.  Receiving the gift of the promised Holy Spirit, the Advocate that Jesus promised to send them, they are able not only to preach the Gospel, but to preach it in a way that people who spoke different languages were all able to understand it.  The outpouring of the Holy Spirit brings everything together for them, and now, only now, are they able to say that Jesus is Lord!

    The absence of the Holy Spirit is unparalleled sadness. We can’t say – or do – anything really good without the advocacy of the Holy Spirit to inspire – literally breathe into us – the goodness for which we were created.

    So when we receive the Holy Spirit, we are inspired to say and do good things too.  The Holy Spirit will inspire us to speak many kinds of words in many situations.  We can depend on the Spirit to give us the words when we don’t have them.  Saint Paul teaches that the Spirit even prays in us when we can’t pray, expressing our needs in groanings when we can’t find the words to say.  So we can depend on the Holy Spirit to inspire us to speak …

    • Words of comfort to those who are going through difficult times. Maybe just by being with them and saying nothing at all.
    • Words of challenge when we are in a situation that is veering off course, and others are urging us to go the wrong way.
    • Words of correction when someone we love is acting out or not living up to their full potential.
    • Words of reconciliation when we seek to heal a broken relationship.
    • Words of vision when we are part of a group that is seeking to do something new.
    • Words of healing when we comfort another person who has been wronged by others.
    • Words of change when we stand up for what is right in a society that wants to do what it wants to do.
    • Words of mercy when we let go of a grudge or forgive someone who has hurt us.
    • Words of inclusion that de-marginalize others, open the doors to reconciliation, and help us to build up our corner of the world.

    The Holy Spirit will give us the right words for all of this at the right time, and we will be able to speak them in a way that everyone who needs to understand them can understand them.  We may never be able to speak multiple languages – I sure can’t! – but in the Holy Spirit we will be able to proclaim that Jesus is Lord in our words and actions and no one will be able to miss the significance of that – everyone will understand it, no matter what language they speak.

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • Mass of the Holy Spirit

    Mass of the Holy Spirit

    This homily was for the Mass of the Holy Spirit, celebrated at the beginning of the new school year.

    Readings: Isaiah 42:1-3; 1 Corinthians 12:4-13; Matthew 5:1-12a

    I’m grateful that we can come together as a community to celebrate Mass on this second day of the school year.  It’s good that we begin our year with Mass, and that we begin by asking for the help of the Holy Spirit.  That’s why we are celebrating a Mass of the Holy Spirit today.  A Mass of the Holy Spirit is a traditional way to begin a school year.

    So I once heard a story about a priest who was walking through the jungle.  At one point, he comes face to face with a very hungry lion.  The priest, of course, is very frightened and he makes the sign of the cross and prays, “Lord, if you can hear me, please fill this lion’s heart with the Holy Spirit.  The lion stops right in his tracks and a bright light begins to shine all around him.  The priest is relieved until he sees the lion fold his paws, bow his head, and say, “Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts…”

    But of course, that’s not what the Holy Spirit is really like.  We know that the Holy Spirit is God: the third person of the Holy Trinity.  The Holy Spirit is the One who fills us with grace and helps us to do the really hard things in life, helps us to do the things that are really worth doing, those things that are part of who we are, those things that are our life’s vocation.

    I really don’t think we spend enough time praying to the Holy Spirit.  And that’s too bad, because we have to do really hard things in life, and we aren’t ever expected to do them all by ourselves.  In fact, if we do them by ourselves, we will very rarely be successful.  God the Father calls us to an amazing life, and wants us to shine and do great things, but when we insist on doing them ourselves, it can be very disappointing. 

    Just think about the Blessed Virgin Mary.  She was called to do maybe the hardest thing anyone has ever been called to do: to be the Mother of God.  Raising Jesus was probably very hard.  There was a lot of danger, and lots of people didn’t agree with the way Jesus was practicing the faith.  We know that she eventually had to watch her Son die on that cross.  How could she do all that and still have faith?  Well, she did it by relying on the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  The Gospels tell us that she was filled with the Holy Spirit, and that’s how she conceived our Lord.  And she relied on the Holy Spirit to help her do her part in God’s plan.

    The Blessed Virgin is amazing.  Her faith is incredible.  But we are called to have that same faith, too, and we can get it the same way she did, by letting the Holy Spirit come into our lives and bring great things to birth in us.  We aren’t called to give birth to our Savior, but we are called to give birth to great ideas, to important technology that will save lives, to social programs that help those most in need.  And all of that starts now, with you learning in our school and especially by inviting the Holy Spirit into your life.

    That Holy Spirit will make demands of us, just like he made demands of Mary and even Saint Joseph who was the father of Jesus.  But he will never demand anything of us that we cannot do with the help of his grace.  Just as Mary was full of grace, which helped her to be the Mother of God, so that same Holy Spirit can give us grace to make the world a better place.

    Our second reading today tells us about the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  We all aren’t filled with all of the gifts, and we all don’t have the same gifts.  But the Holy Spirit gives us all different gifts that serve the world and make it better.  It’s important to remember that those gifts aren’t for us alone: we are given gifts to share with others and help others and to continue to let God create great things in our world.

    So, this school year, we should rely on the Holy Spirit.  We shouldn’t expect him to give us answers to the test we didn’t study for.  We shouldn’t expect him to finish the homework we never started.  But we can expect him to help us to understand new things that seem hard.  We should expect him to make new ideas spark creativity in our souls.  We should expect him to inspire us to be there for our friends and classmates so that we can do our part in making our school a grace-filled place.

    All we have to do is to let the Spirit into our lives so we can be filled with his gifts.  Then our reward will be great in heaven!

  • The Solemnity of Pentecost

    The Solemnity of Pentecost

    Today’s readings

    We’ve gathered today on the Solemnity of Pentecost … one of my favorite feasts of the whole year. Today, we have one last opportunity to celebrate the joy of the Easter season. For fifty days, we’ve been celebrating our Lord’s resurrection, his triumph over the grave, and his defeat of sin and death. We’ve been celebrating our salvation, because Christ’s death and resurrection has broken down the barriers that have kept us from God and has made it possible for us to live with God forever. In the last week, we’ve been celebrating our Lord’s Ascension, with His promise that though He is beyond our sight, He is with us always. And today, today we celebrate the wonderful gift of the Holy Spirit, poured out on the Church, who breathes life into nothingness to create the world, who recreates the world with power and might, and who pours out the power of forgiveness on a world hardened by sin.

    The Hebrew word for Spirit is ruah, with is the same word they use for “breath.” So the Spirit who hovered over the waters of the primordial world also breathed life into our first parents, giving them not just spiritual life, but physical life, and life in all its fullness. The psalmist today makes it very clear that this Holy Spirit is the principle of life for all of us: “If you take away their breath, they perish and return to their dust.  When you send forth your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth.” (Ps. 104:34).

    It is this same Spirit that is poured out on our world, which often times doesn’t look very life-giving. This world of darkness of sin, of war and terror, of poverty and injustice, of sickness and death; this world can be recreated daily when the Spirit is poured out on hearts open to receive Him. This Spirit bursts forth from the believer into action: working in various forms of service, works and ministries to proclaim, not just in word, but most importantly in deed, that “Jesus is Lord” (1 Cor 12:3).

    It is this same Spirit that is given to create the Church as Jesus breathes on the apostles on the evening of that first day of the week. In today’s Gospel reading, the Holy Spirit is given for the reconciliation of the sinner. Our Church picks up this theme in the Sacrament of Penance when the words of absolution tell us that “God, the Father of Mercies, through the death and resurrection of His Son, has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins.” Because it is in the forgiveness of rivalries, it is in the healing of broken relationships, it is in the restoration of peace and in the pardoning of sinners that God’s plan for creation is most fully realized.

    That same Holy Spirit who hovered over the waters at the creation of the world now hovers over the Church. The apostles first received that Holy Spirit, but now it is poured out on us as well. Nothing that is truly good can be conceived of, nor realized apart from that Holy Spirit. As the sequence tells us today: “Where you are not, we have naught, nothing good in deed or thought, nothing free from taint of ill.” It is the Spirit who gives life, both physical and spiritual. It is the Spirit who speaks in our prayer, putting those prayers in our hearts in the first place, and uttering all of our inexpressible groanings when we cannot pray ourselves. It is the Spirit who gives gifts to enliven our works and ministries. It is indeed the Spirit who gives us faith to cry out, “Jesus is Lord.”

    Having gathered today in this place on this great Feast, we now pray for not only an outpouring of that Holy Spirit, but also for the openness to receive that Spirit and the grace to let that Spirit work in us for the salvation of the world. We, the Church, need that Holy Spirit to help us to promote a culture of life in a world of death; to live the Gospel in a world of selfishness; to seek inclusion and to celebrate diversity in a world of racism and hate; to effect conversion and reconciliation in a world steeped in sin. Brothers and sisters in Christ, if people in this world are to know that Jesus is Lord, it’s got to happen through each one of us. One life and one heart at a time can be moved to conversion by our witness and our prayer. Let us pray, then, that the Holy Spirit would do all that in us.

    Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and enkindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit, and they shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth. Amen.

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • Mass of the Holy Spirit

    Mass of the Holy Spirit

    Today, we celebrated a Mass of the Holy Spirit as we begin our school year.

    Today’s readings

    I’m so glad to welcome all of our students back to school this year!  It’s wonderful to see your faces again, at least from the mask up!  We missed you so much for the last six months.  I was able to walk around the school a bit yesterday, and was so proud of you to see that you’re following all the safety rules we have.  I know it’s a lot, but better that we be safe and still be together.

    Today, we are celebrating a Mass of the Holy Spirit to ask the Holy Spirit to be with us during this school year.  As we begin our school year together, we want to pray to the Holy Spirit so that he will give us whatever gifts we need to learn well (or, for the teachers, to teach well), to use our gifts in service to others, and to grow in our relationship with God.  We want to thank the Holy Spirit for those gifts, and promise to use them for our good and the good of the other people he puts in our lives.  And we should always thank God for those wonderful gifts, because they make us better, happier people and using them makes our world a better place.

    Today for our Mass of the Holy Spirit, we couldn’t have better readings!  I love the first reading from the prophet Ezekiel.  There is nothing more lifeless than a pile of dry bones.  But when Ezekiel speaks God’s word to them, they are filled with the Holy Spirit and come to life.  That sometimes happens in our lives.  Things going on around us make us feel like a pile of dry bones.  But when we hear God’s word, we are filled with the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit helps us to know and experience how much God loves us, and that fills us with life.  When we are filled with life and with the Holy Spirit, we can’t help but spread that to others.  Maybe we are the ones God wants to use to help other people know that he loves them too.

    In our Gospel reading, the Pharisees are giving Jesus a religion test.  Just to give you some background, the Jewish people had over 600 laws in the scriptures, and they were required to know them and study them.  So one of them asks Jesus which of those 600 laws was most important.  That’s a question that the Pharisees discussed – and argued about – all the time.  Jesus tells them the most important law of all is to love the Lord God with all their heart, soul and mind.  And then he goes for extra credit: he says the second important law is to love your neighbor as yourself.

    Do you notice what’s common in both of those?  It’s love, right?  Love God and love your neighbor.  Jesus says all of the law and prophets – which is really saying all of the scriptures – depend on those two commandments.  It’s all about love, and that makes total sense because God is love.  God created us in love and loves us so much that he wants to have all of us come to heaven and be part of his life one day.  That’s what we are all supposed to be longing for.  If we want to be happy forever, we need to make sure we go to heaven.  If we want to go to heaven, we have to do what God does: and that is love.  Love God who loves us, and then love our neighbor.  If we do these things, we will be happy with God forever.  That’s good news!

    So as we begin our school year together, we pray that the Holy Spirit would help us to learn and grow, but especially that he would help us to love God and love our neighbor, which is really saying love every person he puts in our path.  So I think we should pray to the Holy Spirit for that gift today.  I know a lot of you know the prayer to the Holy Spirit, so if you do, pray it along with me:

    Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created. And You shall renew the face of the earth. Amen.