Sixth Sunday of Easter
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| "I have been, and always will be, your friend." Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan |
It’s
interesting the effects that friends have in our lives. They can open us up to new experiences,
which we can then make our own.
For example, when I was in elementary school, my best friend got me
interested in Star Trek. And once
I had been exposed to it, I couldn’t get enough. I loved the Original Series, The Next Generation, and Deep
Space Nine. I’ve seen all the
movies. One memorable scene is
from “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.”
Be warned, this is a spoiler alert. Towards the end of the movie, in order to get clear of an
impending explosion, Spock has to enter a radioactive room to get the warp
drive working again. But before he
does so, he merges his mind with “Bones” McCoy, the ship’s doctor, which
becomes important in the next movie, “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.”
While
there is no merging of minds, Jesus, in the Gospel we heard today, promises to
send an Advocate who “‘will teach you everything and remind you of all that I
told you.’” This promise, made
during the Last Supper, is fulfilled at Pentecost. But because of the greatness of this gift, the Church, two
weeks earlier, starts focusing on the Person of the Holy Spirit.
The
Holy Spirit is the continued presence of Jesus, after He ascends into heaven,
which we, in this diocese, will celebrate next Sunday. He is the continuation of Jesus’ work on
earth among the disciples. He
instructs, leads, and protects the Church. The Spirit ensures that the apostles and their successors
will continue to preach Jesus’ words, and not their own. The Holy Spirit as Advocate, the one
who speaks for another, is the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise to St. Peter, that
the gates of the netherworld would not prevail over the Church, so that she
would never teach as part of the faith nor as part of Christian living what was
contrary to the will of God. Sure,
there have been individuals who have been grade A sinners in Church leadership,
but, by the grace of God, they never taught anything major, probably because
they were so concerned with their own, sinful lives.
We
need a guide to help us understand Jesus’ words. The Word of God needs unpacking. One of the great error of Protestantism is that the
Scriptures are clear, and that any person can understand them simply by opening
up and reading. Reading Scripture
is a beautiful and necessary thing, but we need a guide. Because sometimes Jesus is literal,
like when He says, “This is my body.”
Other times he uses figurative language, like when He says, “If your eye
causes you to sin, pluck it out.”
We need the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and the guidance that was
promised through the Church, to understand what God is making known through His
word. Otherwise, we end up straying
from Jesus and just creating our own thing, which sometimes can be very
weird. Origen, a late second-,
early third-century Catholic scholar, went to a weird place when he interpreted
Jesus’ words to cut off the part of you that causes you to sin (he struggled
with sexual sins, to give you some idea).
This was a theologian who knew Scripture, but he veered away from the
right understanding of it, which causes some irreversible damage.
We
see the early Church dealing with understanding properly the Word of God in our
first reading. The big
controversy, even at first among the apostles of Jesus, the ones He had
ordained to govern His Church, was whether or not Gentiles has to become Jewish
first to become Christians. Did
Gentiles have to be circumcised?
Did they need to wear Jewish clothing? Did they need to keep the dietary law? The very men who had walked with Jesus
for 3 years and listened to all He said in public and private were not
sure. But, gathering together, in
prayer and discussion, they decided that Gentiles did not have to become
Jewish, but did have to follow some basic rules with their roots in
Judaism. And they make it clear
that they needed guidance: “‘It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us not to place on you any burden beyond these
necessities.’” This was the basis
for the 21 Ecumenical Councils that would follow later: the bishops convene in
prayer and discussion to be open to the Holy Spirit to continue Jesus’ work in
the world.
So
how open are we to the Holy Spirit’s work in the Church today, which includes
both the hierarchy and the lay faithful.
We say the Prayer to the Holy Spirit each Sunday, but do we mean it? Do we really want the Holy Spirit to be
active in our lives? Are we like
wet clay that can be formed by the Holy Spirit, or are we hardened so that our
lives are not open to formation by the Divine Potter? If we are open to the Spirit, then the Gospel will spread
like wildfire, as it did in the early Church, to whoever is open to the need
for a Savior. If we are not open
to the Holy Spirit, then we become obstacles to God’s truth and God’s love in
the world. May we truly mean what
we say as we make our Prayer to the Holy Spirit: “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.”