Sixth Sunday of Easter
No one likes to be ignored. But if there’s one Person of the Blessed Trinity that we often ignore, it’s the Holy Spirit. We tend to always remember the Father in our prayers, especially the Our Father, or sometimes we’ll just refer to Him as God. Jesus, as the one who took flesh and was our means of being reconnected to the Father is usually at the front of our minds as well. But the Holy Spirit tends to get left out. How many prayers do we being with some form of: Dear Holy Spirit…? Probably not many, if any, while we are very comfortable with beginning prayers with: Dear God… or Heavenly Father… or Lord Jesus.
Our first reading reminds us of the role of the Holy Spirit in guiding what we are to believe as Catholics and how we are to live as Catholics. Having discussed whether or not the Gentiles (the non-Jews) had to be circumcised and follow Judaic laws, and with the testimony of St. Peter, St. James sends a message to the Jews who had become Christians about what is required for Gentiles to become Christians. And he writes specifically, that it was “‘“the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us not to place on you any burden beyond these necessities, namely, to abstain from meat sacrificed to idols, from blood, from meats of strangled animals, and from unlawful marriage.”’” It was not simply a group of old men getting together and thinking of the most pragmatic thing to do. It was the Holy Spirit, the love shared between the Father and the Son, who guided the apostles to decide that Gentiles did not have to become Jewish and follow those laws to become Christians. In other words, every time you eat a cheese burger or bacon (which Jews cannot do because it’s contrary to kosher laws), you should thank the Holy Spirit.
But the Holy Spirit did not stop guiding the Church with this decision. Throughout the 2,000 year history of the Church, the Holy Spirit has continued to guide the successor of St. Peter, the Pope, and the successors of the apostles, the bishops, in making decisions about what we are to believe and how we are to live. Some of those teachings are crystallized in the Creed. But also in all the 21 Ecumenical Councils, from Nicaea I in AD 325 to Vatican II in the 1960s, and even in Papal pronouncements in between, the Holy Spirit has continued to teach the Church everything and remind the Church of what Jesus told us. He has guided us on how many books to have in the Bible; who Jesus is; how many Sacraments were instituted by Jesus; Mary’s Immaculate Conception and Assumption; that only men can be ordained priests; that marriage is between one man and one woman for life; all these are part of Jesus’ words, which the Holy Spirit has helped us to understand and which the Holy Spirit has guided the Pope and the bishops to proclaim as being what is necessary to be believed if we wish to truly call ourselves Catholic. The Holy Spirit and the successors of the apostles, the foundation of the heavenly Jerusalem, work together to continue Jesus’ teachings into new times and new cultures.
But the work of the Holy Spirit is not limited to the Pope and bishops. The Holy Spirit wants to give us life. He helps us to understand what is right and wrong in our conscience. We receive the Holy Spirit in baptism, and a new gift in the Sacrament of Confirmation, to help us as individuals know what is God’s will in our daily actions and in the major decisions of life: what vocation we should choose, how to use our gifts and talents in a job, how to educate and raise our family. Of course, the Holy Spirit would never contradict Himself, and we as individuals do not have the gift of infallibility, as the bishops in union with the Pope, and even the Pope by himself on matters of faith and morals has. So if our conscience is ever telling us to do something that is contrary to what the Church officially teaches as to what we need to believe or how we need to live, we should do some major research on what the Church teaches and why, because it is more likely to be right than what we think our conscience is saying. But the Holy Spirit is in us, too, and wants to make our living of the Gospel a joy-filled experience. The Holy Spirit wants to give us the power to say yes to God and no to our fallen nature and to evil. And by virtue of our Baptism, all we need to do is ask the Holy Spirit to strengthen us.
It may not come as naturally, but may we also pray to the Holy Spirit, especially when we are making choices. We can pray in our own words, in conversation with the Holy Spirit, or we can also use that wonderful prayer to the Holy Spirit that we said as a Diocese a few years ago, and which I will lead today. Please join in if you remember: Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faith, 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. O God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that, by the same Holy Spirit, we may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
