Don't Forget the Holy Spirit!

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.  

It’s important, then, that in these last few Sundays of our Easter Season, the Church really focuses in on the Holy Spirit.  Of course, every Mass we begin with the Holy Spirit, and He’s mentioned in the Gloria, and our opening prayers always say “in the unity of the Holy Spirit.”  But the readings in these weeks also remind us that the Holy Spirit is God and guides the Church in a special way since the Ascension of 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.

Continued Presence

Sixth Sunday of Easter

"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.”