Homily for Tuesday, 3 December 2013– Memorial of St. Francis Xavier

Tuesday of the 1st week in Advent

Readings of the day: Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72:1-2, 7-8, 12-13, 17; Luke 10:21-24

If I were to ask each of us to draw on a sheet of paper the first images that come to your mind when you hear “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit,” how many of us would have difficulty with this exercise?

Each year while I was in the seminary in Toronto, I would assign this same exercise to teenagers I was preparing for the sacrament of confirmation. Many of them would draw an old man in the sky, a young man on land, and a bird. There would be bonus points for representing the Holy Spirit with wind or fire, or something more creative… One year, one confirmation candidate, completely mystified by this question, presented me with a blank page. This, I said to him and the class, was the best answer I had ever seen!

God as Trinity, and especially the Holy Spirit, defies imagery. We may try to capture the Spirit of the Lord in images: a bird; lines and clouds indicating wind; fire; the beautiful inscriptions on our stained glass windows of the gifts of the Holy Spirit of which we hear in our first reading today from Isaiah, but all these are approximations of who God the Spirit is. We might as well represent God’s Spirit with a blank page.

Yet, even though we cannot represent the Spirit with mere images, we know and perceive the Holy Spirit among us here in this very celebration. When we are gathered as a worshipping community, the Holy Spirit is present. When we await with joy the return of Our Lord Jesus Christ in our celebration of Advent, the Holy Spirit is present. When we hear the Word of God, the Holy Spirit is present. When we call the Spirit upon our gifts of bread and wine on the altar, the Holy Spirit is present. When we leave here and bring the Gospel message into our world though our actions and words, the Holy Spirit is present.

Today’s Gospel reading especially emphasizes the Holy Spirit’s presence in the present. We are invited after Jesus Christ to rejoice “in the Holy Spirit.” We rejoice not in a Spirit who can be reduced to an image, but in the Holy Spirit whose wisdom is first revealed to “the childlike”; those most open to and trusting in this divine wisdom.

We who perceive, confess, and bring this gift of the Holy Spirit into our present world with joy will be blessed as were Jesus’ first disciples. In this time of Advent, then; in this time of anticipation of Christ’s coming again in glory, may we be blessed in the words of Our Lord Jesus Christ: “Blessed are you who see what you see.” Blessed are we who have the gift of the Holy Spirit among us in the present.