Receiving the Holy Spirit

Sunday after the Ascension
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  St. Peter lays out some challenging admonitions for us in our epistle today: “be serious and sober for prayers…let your love for one another be intense…be hospitable without complaining…[use your gifts] to serve one another.”  Those are all things to which I hope we aspire.  But maybe we feel like we simply have to muscle through to get these things done.  And perhaps, as we try to lift ourselves up by our bootstraps, we get frustrated because in day to day life exhibiting these behaviors doesn’t always come easily, and maybe we even fail on a regular basis. 
    But God does not want us to muscle through or to try to lift ourselves up by our bootstraps.  God gives us a gift that will give us what we need to live as St. Peter exhorted.  That gift is the Holy Spirit.  He is the one who makes living as a disciple of Christ possible as the Holy Spirit leads us into all truth, and gives us the power to live that truth daily.
    I know that sometimes as Catholics who love the traditional Latin Mass we can get nervous about the Holy Spirit.  Maybe we see charismatic Catholics whose outward appearance seems more like Pentecostals than Catholics in their devotions and even in their liturgies.  Or people equate the way Vatican II was implemented (which was often a hot mess) with the Holy Spirit who called Pope St. John XXIII to convoke the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council.  So perhaps we are a bit skittish when it comes to this Third Person of the Blessed Trinity.
    But we do not believe in a Binity, only two Divine Persons of the Godhead.  We profess our faith each week in the Trinity, which includes the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life.  And without Him, we miss something of the full expression of our life in Christ.  Christ promised us the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to help us to know the truth who is Christ, and to live that truth, even in the face of persecution and suffering.  And these nine days between the Ascension and Pentecost are precisely the days when our Lord asked the Apostles and the Blessed Mother to pray for that gift of the Holy Spirit, who would give them a new power from on high to evangelize and transform the world.

    So how often do we call upon the Holy Spirit?  When, if ever, do we ask the Holy Spirit to fill us?  Is it only in these nine days as we pray our Holy Spirit novena?  Or is it more frequently?  A local priest is known to invoke the Holy Spirit every time he loses his train of thought or is having difficulty expressing himself as he says, “Come, Holy Spirit.”  Though I still need to grow in my comfort and relationship with the Holy Spirit, I will ask for His guidance in the hiring process, or when I need to make a big decision. 
    But the Holy Spirit is not just for new hires or major changes.  I need to, and I encourage you to, make the Holy Spirit more of a daily part of my life.  The Holy Spirit is not just the closer you bring in towards the end of the ninth inning to help you win the game.  The Holy Spirit should be the starter, the reliever, and the closer, all rolled up in one.  And the more we condition ourselves to be attentive to His voice in our daily lives, the more even our small choices will be guided by the Holy Spirit so that we cooperate with God in the big and the small matters.  This is the way the saints lived.
    One of the primary ways the Holy Spirit guides us is through the conscience.  Again, most people act as if the conscience is some subjective voice which tells me what do to without any connection to anything else.  Basically, we can use the word conscience to justify simply following our feelings.  But the Holy Spirit, as our conscience, tells us how the moral law applies in various situations.  He does not make us a moral law unto ourselves, determining right from wrong, though many would like that to be the case, which is exactly what Adam and Eve wanted.  They wanted to determine right from wrong, rather than let God guide them.
    As a parent, and especially today as we honor mothers, the Holy Spirit helps you to know how to raise your children.  I do not envy you parents in trying to raise your children today.  On the one hand, kids are so often over-exposed to social media, to extreme violence, to lust, and to unkindness from others.  Yes, I got teased when I was a young boy, but I could get away from it when I went home.  Today, kids will mercilessly make fun of each other on social media, and you never seem to be able to find a place that is not connected to it.  I was first exposed to pornography in a magazine when I was in high school.  Today, due to phones and the internet readily available in most places, many kids see images they should never see in fifth or sixth grade and devices their parents give them (because every other kid has one), and it can affect their future relationships and their interactions with the opposite sex.  When I was growing up, we knew that boys and girls were different, even if some girls liked rough sports and GI Joes, and some boys didn’t appreciate those things as much.  Now, our national leaders can’t even say what makes a woman and woman, and kids are told that gender dysphoria is not only not an illness that needs therapy, but should be celebrated and protected. 
    On the other hand, you can’t just live in a bubble (at least most can’t).  Eventually, children will go out into a rough and morally dangerous world, and parents are tasked with preparing them to choose virtue even when vice seems more attractive and readily available.  Part of the vocation of a mother or father is to help their children be attentive to the voice of the Holy Spirit to know what behaviors will lead them away from God the Father, and which behaviors will lead them toward God the Father.  A mother or a father’s vocation is to help their children be able to interact with people who are different from them and love others who do not live as God invites us, but to be able to reject the behaviors of those who reject God’s laws and teachings.  That is only possible if parents are calling upon the Holy Spirit daily to help them know when to push towards freedom and when to pull back to safety.  The Holy Spirit can guide you to know how best to discipline with charity, and not simply out of anger or a lack of patience. 
    So not just in these nine days between the Ascension and Pentecost, but each day, may we all call upon the Holy Spirit to help us hear the voice of God in our hearts, which is really His voice, and to follow it, so that we can go where Christ has led and has brought our human nature with Him, the right hand of God the Father, who with Christ His Son and the Holy Spirit who proceeds from them both, lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.  

The Root, the Shoot, and the Fruit

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

            One of my favorite classes at Sacred Heart Major Seminary was Theology of the Trinity. 

Bishop John Quinn,
Bishop of Winona, MN

Besides being a great subject to study (you can never go wrong learning more about God), I also enjoyed the class because of the professor, Bishop John Quinn, who was at the time an auxiliary bishop of Detroit, and is now Bishop of the Diocese of Winona, Minnesota.  He taught well, but also became a mentor to me, and a kind of friend, with whom I still keep in touch today with an occasional letter or email.  In that class we learned about the different images that were used to describe the Trinity: The Sun (s-u-n) Itself (God the Father), the Light of the Sun (Jesus), and the Warmth of the Sun’s Rays (God the Holy Spirit); the Root (God the Father), the Shoot (Jesus), and the Fruit (God the Holy Spirit); and many others.  But what was key to describing the Most Holy Trinity was the understanding that God was not simply a monad, but a Communion of Persons.

            Our belief in One God, yet Three Persons, distinguishes us from the other two major monotheistic religious of the world: Judaism and Islam.  They both hold, with us, that God is One, based upon the words of Deuteronomy: “Shema Yisrael: Adonai Elohim, Adonai Echad”: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One.”  And yet, throughout the Gospels, Jesus makes clear that He and the Father are One, not just in some metaphorical sense, but in the core of their Being, shown when Jesus forgives sins, something which only God could do.  That is why the Sanhedrin condemns Jesus for blasphemy, for claiming to be God.  And in today’s Gospel, Jesus affirms the role of the Holy Spirit, who is God, as continuing His work.

            But while we can talk until the end of time about the Trinity, seeking to understand more fully who God really is, we experience the Trinity in our everyday lives.  For, if God is a Communion of Persons, and we are created in the image and likeness of God, then we too are called to be a communion of persons.  And we know this from the beginning.  We know, as the Book of Genesis states, that it is not good for the man to be alone.  It is not good for us to lack communion.  We have, built within ourselves, a desire to know another and to be known by another, and to pour ourselves out for another, just as God is known in His fullness by the Trinity of Persons, and shares that knowledge with each Divine Person, and each Divine Person pours out all of who He is to each other.

            First and foremost, our desire for communion leads us to desire God.  St. Augustine rightly said in his Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”  Each person, even the most hardened atheist, has a desire for communion with that Communion of Persons in the Trinity.  We want to be connected to the infinite.  And whether we are single, ordained, consecrated men and women, or married, there is an aspect of our desire for communion that can only be filled by God.  And when we try to fill that with someone else, even a best friend or a spouse, we are perpetually frustrated, because they are finite, and we desire communion with the infinite.

            But we do also desire communion with each other.  For many here, that life of communion is fulfilled in a special way through marriage, which is itself a symbol, something which points to another, of the communion of the Trinity: each spouse pours their life out to the other, which is always open to new life, just as the Father and Son pour themselves out to each other, in a love which is so strong that it spirates, or breathes forth, the Holy Spirit.  That is why Jesus, and therefore the Church, teaches that divorce cannot be a possibility, because marriage is called to make visible the invisible total union of God, which will never be divided or broken up.  My dear married couples, you are the way that we witness what the love of the Trinity is meant to look like.  What an exalted vocation!!  For those who promise celibacy or take a vow of chastity or virginity, that spousal union is lived out with God, which then allows us to share that infinite love of God with you, whom we are called to serve. 

Sts. Gregory (l) and Basil (r)

            But all of us, no matter what our vocation, are also blessed with the communion of friendship.  In that platonic union, we are also able to pour ourselves out to another, such that sometimes friends become like another self.  What a great blessing to be able to have a person who accepts us as we are, but also calls us to the heights of holiness and virtue, with whom we can be open and honest.  Two of Christianity’s greatest friends, Sts. Basil and Gregory Nazianzen, lived this out, though they had their very rough patches.  St. Gregory wrote on the anniversary of the death of St. Basil, “We seemed to be two bodies with a single spirit.  Though we cannot believe those who claim that ‘everything is contained in everything,’ yet you must believe that in our case each of us was in the other and with the other.”  We can each experience something akin to that in our trusted friends.

            What we celebrate today, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, is not some far-removed doctrine which has nothing to do with our life.  It is a defining part of who we are as Christians, and it is built into the very nature of our being.  May the Eucharist, though which we have communion with Jesus, and therefore communion with the entire Trinity, draw us each day deeper into the communion which is the basis for all others: the Communion of Divine Persons in the Most Holy Trinity.

The Best Things

Second Sunday of Advent

            From time to time, surfing through the channels on the TV, I’ll see a worship service for a mega-church, or a televangelist ministry.  Most times I skip over them, but every once in a while I stop and listen to what is being said.  Because we share faith in Jesus Christ, a lot of what is said is very familiar and is consistent with what the Church teaches.  However, there are some that preach what’s called the “Gospel of Prosperity,” that is, if you tithe 10% of your adjusted gross income, and you come to Church, and you do all these different things, you’ll never have to worry about money, a house, family problems, etc.  It’s easy to see why people are drawn to that message: who wouldn’t want all the good things that this earth has to offer?  But often, those who are truly striving to live out their faith do have to struggle with a lot of issues, whether of money, or health, or family.  Our view, then, as Catholics, is not quite the same as those who preach the Gospel of Prosperity.

            However, the Word of God tells us today, and we certainly believe, that God wants the best for us.  God doesn’t just want a mediocre life for us, floating along with some good stuff, and some bad stuff.  God wants the best for us.  But God’s beneficence, His over-flowing goodness, is not limited to the things of this earth.  In fact, the things of this world often get in the way of truly drawing closer to God, though this is not always the case.

            Today in our first reading, the Prophet Baruch proclaims to us that God wants to do us good!  He wants us to take off our robes of mourning and misery, and put on the garment of rejoicing, the cloak of justice.  God wants the best for us, and He is going to make that best thing possible.  He is going to level the mountains for us so that we don’t have to climb, and he’s going to fill in the valleys for us so that the way is not hard.  He will lead us in joy “by the light of his glory, with his mercy and justice.”  Where is this path leading us, this level path?  This path is the path to the best things in life, which is not a thing at all, but a Person, a Communion of Persons, a Trinity of Persons, God Himself.  The best of all is God, and He wants to give us Himself.  That is why we pray and wait during this Advent season, to recall the moment when we could see the face of God in Jesus, and to get ready for that time when Jesus will come again, not as a little baby, but in all His glory in majesty.

            But, because we have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God, as St. Paul says in his letter to the Romans, we need guides.  Sometimes we can see the path and we’re ready to start walking.  Other times we lose sight of where we should be going, and we need a person to show us the way.  That’s where our Gospel comes in.

            St. Luke tells us about the ultimate trail guide of all time, St. John the Baptist.  He came to prepare the way of the Lord.  He came to show the straight path, to announce that the valleys have been filled in and the mountains have been made low, and the rough ways have been made smooth so that all people can see the salvation of God.  He’s there to point out the way, to announce it, and to prepare people to make that journey to true prosperity with God, the prosperity, the blessedness, of the saints.  St. John the Baptist preaches repentance, the way to see the path, to recognize Jesus who is Himself the Way.  He is the one who points to Jesus, when He comes, and says, “Behold the Lamb of God!  Behold him who takes away the sins of the world!”  Because of this, Jesus says of him that of those born from women, there is none greater than John the Baptist.

            And yet, Jesus also says that the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than St. John the Baptist.  How can this be?  How can we be greater than the Precursor of the Lord?  Well, we, too, are called to point out the Lamb of God.  We, too, are called to help others find that path to true blessedness, the path that leads to God.  Under the guidance of Holy Mother Church, who tenderly and firmly helps us to understand what God has revealed through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, we are called to point out to others the way to true happiness.  Sometimes it happens by correction, or advice to avoid this or do that, whether it be with a family member, a co-worker, a friend, or whomever.  Other times it is simply by the joy and peace that we display as we conform our lives, not to this age and its opinions, but to the enduring Word of God, which is the same yesterday, today, and forever, even as it is applied in new ways to ever-changing circumstances.  We, like St. John the Baptist and (dare I say) the Blues Brothers, are on a mission from God, to help others find that straight, level path to God.

            Sometimes it will mean prosperity for us.  There are certainly many people to whom God gives many blessings, and invites them to share those blessings with others.  Other times, those closest to God are the ones who suffer the most, like Job, the apostles, the saints who were martyred, saints who put up with great trials like St. Kateri, St. Damien of Molokai, Bl. Teresa of Calcutta.  Some people very easily understand the loving and cheeky words of St. Teresa of Avila, “Lord, if this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few of them!”  But, whether, by the standards of this world, we are blessed or cursed, what truly matters is that we are prospering in drawing closer to God and following His will in all things, so that we can follow along the straight and level path to God, which will give us the desire of every heart, and the best thing that there is: communion with the Blessed Trinity itself.

Being Intimate

75^th Anniversary of the Diocese of Lansing

            When I was at Lansing Catholic High School as a student from 1998-2002, our principal was famous for one phrase: “Don’t dig yourself a hole.”  While many of us in the class heard it so often that we started to make light of it, as  high school students are wont to do, looking back, it was great advice which serves a person well in academics, sports, and extra-curriculars of any kind.    In essence, what our principal was saying was that starting out is very important in anything we do to being successful in the long run.

            As we begin our Year of Prayer as a Diocese, our Gospel starts us out strong, because we begin with the prayer of Jesus, the one who prays perfectly.  In our Gospel passage, we are allowed to enter into the private, intimate exchange between the Father and Son, just as the apostles were at the Last Supper, when this prayer was originally prayed. 

            Our Year of Prayer, as a Diocese, is precisely about entering into that intimate relationship between the Father and the Son, a love so strong that it breathes forth the Holy Spirit.  And we can only do so because we have been consecrated by Christ in Baptism.  We have been consecrated into the truth.  And because of that consecration we can take part in the pouring forth of love between Father and Son and Holy Spirit, which forms the foundation of any true love that exists in the entire universe.  How blest we are to be able to listen to the words of Love Incarnate to His Father!  Without God’s permission, we could never presume, as creatures, to be worthy of hearing that dialogue.  But God welcomes us, through Jesus, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to not only observe the dialogue, but to become part of it in Christ. 

            In this Mass, we celebrate the dialogue in ritual ways.  God speaks to us grace and peace, and we respond.  God speaks His Word, and we say, “Thanks be to God.”  Jesus ultimate gift of love to the Father, His very self on the cross, is re-presented for us on this altar of sacrifice in the Eucharist.  And this act of love is so great that we are invited to respond after the Words of Institution and I remind us that this is the Mystery of Faith. 

            Celebrating Mass, this celebration, is the best thing that I will ever do in my life.  Joining in the celebration with me is the best thing you will ever do in your life.  Nothing can top it, except heaven, of which this Mass is an anticipation.  In the reality of God, there is no more intimate union with God then what happens right here, because we are involved in the total gift of the Son, in whom we are members through Baptism, to the Father.

            But we are not given this great gift so that we can keep it to ourselves.  Jesus does not consecrate us and allows us to share in the most powerful, intimate love ever just to keep it to ourselves.  We then are called to be in union with Jesus, all of us together, through His teachings, given to us in Scripture and in the teachings of the Church.  And we are also called to share it with others, so that the world will believe that God sent Jesus, and that God loves us even as He loves Jesus.  And when we share that love with others, in union of action and belief with who Jesus is and what He teaches us through the Scriptures and His Body, the Church, then others want that.  They hunger for it.  They want that love, because they were created for that love.

            Each week, in the Mass, we enter into the most powerful, most intimate love ever: the love of the Trinity Who is Love itself.  Each week, if we receive the Body and Blood worthily, we are given grace to then share that love with others.  During this Year of Prayer, draw deeper into the love of God by growing deeper in love with the Mass, and with daily prayer which continues that love each day.  And then share that love with others, so that all may be joined to Christ in His Church, and experience the Love that God has for us.