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Tag: Pentecost

  • The Solemnity of Pentecost

    The Solemnity of Pentecost

    Today’s readings

    Come, Holy Spirit, come!
    And from your celestial home
    Shed a ray of light divine!

    veni_creatorI have come to discover about myself that I am not real good at languages. I took a couple of years of French in junior high and I don’t think I remember one word of it. In high school and in college, I took Spanish, and I was okay with it, but never got to the point of being able to have a conversation in Spanish. In seminary, I went to Mexico for six weeks to learn Spanish, and discovered that wasn’t even close to long enough. I can muddle through a little Spanish in the Liturgy, but to preach in Spanish or hear a confession in Spanish is insurmountable to me. I also took one unit of Greek in seminary, and that was almost disastrous. I was glad it was a zero-credit-hour class, so it didn’t get me thrown out on academic probation! I think some people are good with languages, and some are not; that ability is truly one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

    But, the disciples in our first reading weren’t picked out for their especially good facility with languages either. They were ordinary men, who probably didn’t even have the grammar of their native language down to a science. On these men, the Spirit descended and gave them the gift of proclaiming the Gospel in every language of the known world. This event is miraculous, I think, on two counts. First and obviously, they are given the ability to speak in languages they did not already know. Second, they were given the gift of being able to speak out boldly on behalf of the Gospel. These are men who would not necessarily have commanded the respect or attracted the attention of anyone. They weren’t naturally gifted in public speaking. Yet, they are able to proclaim the Gospel boldly and convincingly, making the message known in the ear of anyone who heard it, regardless of their native language.

    This was the first manifestation of the Spirit in the fledgling Church, indeed in some ways it is the birthday of the Church. The Spirit came in power to fill ordinary men with grace to proclaim the Gospel and make it heard by everyone on earth. This is the beginning of the fulfillment of Jesus’ command last week at his ascension: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” They had no idea how to do that before the Spirit came; now they have the power of the Spirit to speak to every creature in every part of the world in a language that could be understood.

    We’ve gathered today on the Solemnity of Pentecost … the commemoration of this great event. 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 all of us, giving us the power to accomplish the preaching of the Gospel.

    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: “you take back your spirit, they perish and return to the dust from which they came; when you send forth your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth” (Ps. 104:34).

    That renewing of the earth is accomplished in so many different ways. But the most important way is by the preaching of the Gospel. All of us who have been given to drink of the dew of the Spirit are called upon to preach the Gospel. We may not, as St. Francis suggests, use words all the time, but we must continually express the Gospel in every single moment. Our families need to experience the Spirit in the way that we love them and care for them. People in our workplaces need to experience the Spirit in the integrity we bring to our businesses and the concern we show to employees, employers, colleagues and customers. People in our schools need to experience the Spirit in the way that we learn or teach. People in our communities need to experience the Spirit in the way that we reach out to the needy among us. People in our world need to experience the Spirit in the way that we treat the earth and join efforts to help the poor in other lands.

    We need to be a people, filled with the Spirit, who fill our families, workplaces, schools, communities and our world with the grace of the Spirit by the way that we live. We were not given the gifts of the Holy Spirit to keep them for ourselves. They have been poured out on us in order to share with others and join in the Spirit’s effort to re-create the whole world.

    Our second reading reminds us that no one can say, “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit. It is this Spirit that gives us the grace to say anything truly worthwhile. In our own parish, we value the gift of shared wisdom. This is the way that our commissions and committees discuss issues and make decisions. Ultimately, we don’t vote on an issue; we look for consensus, we strive to come to a decision that everyone can live with, through the process of shared wisdom, guided by none less than the Holy Spirit.

    But this process of sharing wisdom is a great responsibility. It means two things. First, it means that if the Holy Spirit gives us something to say on an issue, we have no business keeping it to ourselves. We must engage others in dialogue about what’s right, or we run the risk of grieving the Holy Spirit, which we never want to do! Second, it means that we don’t just say the first thing that rolls off our tongue; we don’t fire off that terse email when we’re angry and can hide behind a keyboard; we wait for the gift of the Spirit, we pray, and we engage each other face-to-face. In my time here at St. Raphael’s, I’ve come to treasure this gift of shared wisdom – you taught that to me. That doesn’t mean that any of us – you or me – have always done it perfectly, but I love that we have been learning it together.

    This process of shared wisdom and consensus seeking is another way that we as a parish strive to speak the Gospel in language we might not have as part of our native tongue. The Spirit gives us the words to speak, the prayers to pray, the wisdom to share when we don’t have them. And together, we all cry out “Jesus is Lord!” with the grace of the Holy Spirit, so that everyone who crosses our paths can hear it loud and clear, in a way they can understand it.

    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. Alleluia!

  • Saturday of the Sixth Week of Easter

    Saturday of the Sixth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    We gather here today on the eve of the Ascension. The tension is palpable; the disciples have so many more questions to ask, and they have no idea how short a time they have left to ask them. They are certainly not prepared to have the one they lost briefly to death ascend from their sight. They have been reunited with their friend and have gathered around him with a purpose; not wanting to ever be parted from him again.

    And Jesus has been preparing them in the Gospel readings this week for what must come. If God’s purpose is to be advanced on this earth, then Jesus has to return to the Father. They will mourn once again for the loss of their friend. But if he does not leave them, he would not be able to send the Holy Spirit, the new Advocate to come and lead them to all truth. If the Spirit does not descend, the Church would not be born. If the Church were not born, the Gospel would be but an obscure footnote in the history of the world.

    And so Jesus, their friend, prepares them for his parting. When he is gone from them, they will be able to ask the Father for whatever they need in Jesus’ name, and it will be given them. Their friendship with them will bear fruit in blessing.

    The same is true of us. We disciples, we friends of Jesus, can count on his blessing, the rich gift of the Holy Spirit, the great witness of the Church. Our lives are enriched by our faith and our discipleship. What we do here on earth, what we suffer in our lives, what we celebrate — all this will bear fruit for the glory of God.

  • The Solemnity of Pentecost

    The Solemnity of Pentecost

    Today's readings [display_podcast]

    tongues-of-fireIn a few moments we will stand together and pray these beautiful words:

    We believe in the Holy Spirit,
    the Lord, the giver of life,
    who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
    With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
    He has spoken through the Prophets.

    And we pray those words so often, that they are probably something of second nature to us.  They may even pass right out of our lips without us ever stopping to think about what it really means to believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life.  And that’s too bad, because people through the ages have literally suffered and died for these words.  The writing of them into our Profession of Faith was not done without some heated debate and many tears.  These words about the Holy Spirit unfortunately were partly the cause of the split between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox.  And so as we pray them, we need to take special note of them, knowing that it is never the intent of the Holy Spirit that we remain divided and when we pray these words we must remember our brothers and sisters who gave of themselves so that we might have faith.

    So, what does it mean to believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life?  The Holy Spirit informs our faith and guides our life, so our belief in that Spirit ought to be evident, it should look like something.  If we really, truly believe in the Holy Spirit, our lives should be a certain way, and I think our readings today give us some attributes of the Spirit-led life.

    In our first reading, the disciples receive the Holy Spirit in a very public setting.  They were all in one place together, and the Spirit descended upon them with a strong, driving wind and tongues of fire.  This Holy Spirit enabled them to proclaim the Good News in the various tongues of the then-known world.  Every foreign person in Rome was able to hear the Word in his or her own language.  Now being a person who has very little facility for foreign languages, this would be my dream gift of the Spirit!  I know un pocito of Spanish, and most days struggle a bit with English!  But here the disciples are able to speak in all the languages of the world, enabling the Word to be heard by people of every nation.

    Whether language is our gift or not, we too are filled with the Spirit and sent forth to preach to all nations.  That the Word was heard by people of every nation in their own tongue was evidence of the fact that Jesus was quite serious when he commanded the apostles to go forth and make disciples of all nations.  God really does want the Word to be known by every person everywhere, and he expects us to preach it.  Maybe we will be sent off in mission to speak to people in their own language.  Or maybe we’ll have to put the Word out there in a way that people in our own time and place can understand.  We’re in a culture that very rarely if ever speaks the word of God, and it’s evident that so many people have lost the ability to relate to God.  It’s up to us to make the Gospel known to them by preaching it with our lives.  As St. Francis said, “Preach the Gospel always.  If necessary, use words.”  People will come to know the Gospel as they see us living it.  Love is a universal language.  Joy is evidence of the presence of God.  People can relate to love and joy and peace and grace and kindness and compassion.  All we have to do is to live that way, and people will come to know the Lord.  The Holy Spirit gives us the ability to preach the Word to people of every nation and tongue.

    In the second reading, St. Paul preaches to the Corinthians that people of the Spirit can do everything.  “There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit;” he says, “there are different forms of service but the same Lord; there are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone.”  Now, I admit, some days we all get out of bed thinking there’s no way we can do anything really good.  Some days just breathing seems to be a major accomplishment.  So the ability to do everything is something that for most of us – me included! – seems so far out of our grasp.

    But we don’t have to be the one person who does everything.  We are all united in the Spirit, and together we can do everything.  We all have some gifts.  We have celebrated those gifts this year as our parish has focused on stewardship as our theme.  And as St. Paul tells us, the gifts of the Spirit are never given just for us.  We are meant to use them for the good of others and the glory of God:  “To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.”  The Holy Spirit gives us the ability to do everything, when we share the gifts we have been given in concert with all of our brothers and sisters in Christ.

    And finally, in the Gospel, Jesus forgives his apostles and calls on them to forgive others.  Now we’re getting to the end of the Gospel of John, a Gospel that has been a kind of mirror of the book of Genesis.  Both the book of Genesis and the Gospel of John begin with the words, “In the beginning…”  And that’s not an accident.  John is doing that for the very specific reason of showing us how God is re-creating the world.  Just as the book of Genesis showed the first creation of the world, so the Gospel shows us the re-creation of the world in Christ.  If the Gospels show us anything, they show us how we need to be re-created.

    The apostles were gathered on that first day of the week, the day of creation, but also the day of the Resurrection.  They are afraid, the Gospel says today, “for fear of the Jews.”  They knew that what happened to Jesus could certainly happen to them.  But there’s more to it than that.  Jesus has risen now, and they know that.  Gathered together, they are a group ashamed of the way they treated Christ on his last day.  They let him down by denying him and running away.  They had sinned, and their sin filled them with shame and fear.  The were hiding behind locked doors.  They needed to be re-created.

    They needed to be re-created just as much as all of us need to be re-created when we sin.  When we treat others poorly, or withhold compassion, or don’t forgive, or let our relationships deteriorate into sin, when we spend too much time on the internet looking at the wrong things, or cheat on a business deal or in school, when we waste the gifts of the earth or any of many other ways we can go wrong, when we do any of these things, we need to be re-created.  We too can find ourselves behind locked doors, afraid of what will happen to us and ashamed of the way we have treated God, ourselves, and others.  We need to be re-created almost every day, don’t we?

    But just as Jesus could break through the locked doors that kept the apostles cooped up, so he can break through our own locked doors.  And what he said to them then is what he says to us now:  “Peace be with you.”  That isn’t a fluffy, kumbaya kind of peace, but a peace that re-creates us from the inside out.  It’s a peace that wipes away our sins and gives us a second chance. 
    Or even a third or fourth or nine thousandth chance.  “Peace be with you.”  We receive this same kind of peace in Confession when the priest says to us in the prayer of absolution: “Through the ministry of the Church, may God give you pardon and peace…” 

    But having been forgiven, the apostles then and us now are told that that peace is something that has to be spread around.  We forgiven, re-created children of God must now reach out to others and invite them to experience that same peace.  “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,” Jesus says, “and whose sins you retain are retained.”  The cost of retaining any sin is disastrous.  In terms of the Church, the only sins that are really retained are those that are unconfessed and unrepented.  There is no peace possible when that happens.  But we can sinfully retain others’ sins when we refuse to forgive them, when we bind them up with stereotyping, discrimination and hate.  This is not the way that has been laid out for us.  This is not the example we have received.  We have received peace, and we are commanded to give peace in return.  We must be a people who forgive because we are a people who have been forgiven and at a great cost.  The Holy Spirit gives us the ability to be forgiven and to forgive.

    And so, we who believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, are a people who are enabled to proclaim the Word to every person in our words and deeds, a people who can do everything as we use our gifts in communion with our brothers and sisters, a people who can forgive as we have been forgiven.  We could never do any of this on our own, of course.  It takes the Holy Spirit alive in us and in our world to make all things new.  And so every day we pray with the Psalmist: “Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.”