Homily for Sunday, 5 June 2022– Pentecost

Readings of the day: Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 104:1, 24, 29-30, 31, 34; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13; John 20:19-23

John’s Gospel is peculiar in many ways, not least of which is John’s account of Pentecost, Jesus breathing the Holy Spirit on his disciples, which we hear today.

Remember that, one week ago, for our celebration of Jesus’ ascension to heaven, we heard Luke’s version of these events. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus asks his disciples to remain in Jerusalem until he ascends to heaven, and then he sends the Holy Spirit upon them: “Stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

In John’s Gospel, Jesus’ appearances after his resurrection and his gift of the Holy Spirit to his disciples happen all at once. We hear today how, on the very day Jesus rises from the dead, he stands among his disciples in a house where they had gathered, behind locked doors “for fear of the” Jewish leaders who had handed Jesus over to the Romans to die. Jesus appears in his disciples’ space, despite the locked doors, and greets them, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And Jesus sends his disciples, as John makes a point of saying, with the gift of the Holy Spirit that he had promised them during his ministry and at the Last Supper: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

So, which is it? Did Pentecost—Jesus’ sending of the Holy Spirit upon his disciples; the birth of the Church—happen after or before Jesus’ ascension? Or did Pentecost happen more than once?

The renowned Sulpician Bible scholar Fr. Raymond Brown caused no small controversy at the time when he wrote that Christians should consider that Pentecost has happened not only once; not twice, before and after Jesus’ ascension to heaven, but many times. And the Holy Spirit still descends upon and inspires our Church to action, to mission today. We have all experienced Pentecost-like moments, sisters and brothers, many times in our own lives. I am not only speaking of our celebration of Pentecost once a year, fifty days after Easter, but much more often than that. And, most of the time, we are not even aware when we are experiencing an encounter with the Holy Spirit; a Pentecost-like moment.

The first Pentecost-like moment in each of our lives as Christians is at baptism. Now, at baptism if, as most of us are, we have been baptized as infants, we will not have been aware that we have just encountered the Holy Spirit. But our parents and godparents will have been aware of this Pentecost-like moment. They will have spoken for us at our baptism, when they respond, “It is,” to the question of the priest or deacon just before the baptism: “Is it your will that [this child] should be baptized in the faith of the Church, which we have all professed with you”? At the anointing with chrism after baptism, the Rite of Baptism clearly speaks of the effects of this sacrament: “The God of power and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has freed you from sin, given you a new birth by water and the Holy Spirit, and welcomed you into his holy people.” The moment of our baptism is our first encounter with the Holy Spirit as members of “God’s holy people,” the Church. It is our first Pentecost-like moment.

In baptism we (or our parents and godparents for us) make our first profession of faith, one St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians says today is only possible by the grace of the Holy Spirit: “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” And St. Paul connects the moment of our baptism back to those first Pentecost moments Jesus’ apostles experienced, in the locked room when Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit upon them; in Acts when tongues “as of fire” descended upon them. St. Paul says, “For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body… and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”

In confirmation we are again anointed with the chrism oil we received at baptism: “Be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit.” If, for most of us, our parents and godparents witnessed for us and assented to the work of the Holy Spirit in us from the moment of our baptism, in confirmation we have the chance to assent; to agree to, witness and consciously receive the Holy Spirit for ourselves. For us, as St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians, the singular “gift of the Holy Spirit” becomes a remarkable diversity of gifts that spur us on to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ by all we say and do. In confirmation, this vast array of gifts of the Holy Spirit is summed up in a formula of seven: “The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of right judgment and courage, the spirit of knowledge and reverence… the spirit of wonder and awe in [God’s] presence.”

We may sum up the gifts of the Holy Spirit in this kind of list of seven but, as St. Paul knew and we know, the Holy Spirit’s gifts to us are unlimited by any of our human categories or language. Still, all these gifts of the Holy Spirit, without number, is meant to serve one purpose in us; in the Church. St. Paul says, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” And our ultimate good, sisters and brothers—the good God desires for all of us together—is eternal life.

Each of our Church’s sacramental rituals include a moment when we call upon the Holy Spirit and his gifts without number to direct us toward this “common good” and ultimately toward eternal life with God. I will not analyze each time in our sacramental rites when we call upon the Holy Spirit. This would take me far too much time, and I would be keeping us from (eventually) leaving here to proclaim the Gospel to the world with the gifts the Spirit has given us. And I do not wish to do this.

But I want to draw our attention simply to the Mass, since we are in the midst of it now. Most of us, if we are paying attention, know the first major moment at which we call upon the Holy Spirit during the Eucharistic Prayer at Mass: The priest extends his hands over the bread and wine and prays that the Holy Spirit transform this bread and wine into “the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Yet I often wonder if even the most faithful, attentive Catholics at Mass realize that there is a second moment during the Eucharistic Prayer when we call upon the Holy Spirit. There is no change in the position of the priest’s hands, or much of anything, to indicate when this happens, except that the priest prays that the Holy Spirit might descend not upon the bread and wine a second time, but upon us. We pray that the Holy Spirit might transform us to “become one body, one spirit in Christ.”

“Just as the body is one and has many members,” St. Paul says, “all the members of the body, though many, are one body.” We pray, every time we celebrate our Eucharist, that the Holy Spirit might transform us to make this unity in multiplicity of gifts and members of the Church a reality.

I find it astounding, every time I hear our reading today from Acts, that “every nation under heaven,” people speaking and hearing the Gospel in their own languages, were “all drawn together in one place.” All witnessed together, in unity yet phenomenal diversity, that first Pentecost when the Holy Spirit descended like wind and in tongues of fire on Jesus’ first apostles.

They—Jesus’ first apostles; the vast multitude of people, each speaking and hearing the Gospel in their own language—are a lot like us: Gathered together in one place before God; gathered to receive gifts of the Holy Spirit without number but all oriented toward “the common good” and toward our eternal life with God. That, if anything, is amazing. Only the Holy Spirit of God can do this. Only the Holy Spirit can gather us together “in one place” to hear the Gospel; gather us together to be transformed, more and more, into “one body, one spirit in Christ”; gather us together where we may receive the strength and inspiration to proclaim the Good News and communicate the Spirit of God to our world.

This is our Pentecost: Not only a one or two-time communication of the Spirit to Jesus’ first apostles, but a Pentecost moment projected into our history and our memory as a people of God. We celebrate here and now an ongoing Pentecost; our encounter now and forever with the Holy Spirit that draws us all “together in one place”; that orients us toward the common good and that will bring us to eternal life.

Homily for Sunday, 17 April 2022– The Resurrection of the Lord, Mass of Easter Sunday

Readings of the day: Acts 10:34a, 37-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 16-17, 22-23; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-9

The Motherhouse Chapel of the Vincentian order, the Congregation of the Mission, in Paris includes a Latin inscription along the arch above the tabernacle and high altar: Pertransiit benefaciendo, “He went about doing good.” This inscription is surrounded by illustrations of Vincentians doing works of goodness and charity, especially among the poor, for which the order is so famous.

When I lived in Paris, my apartment was across a courtyard from the Vincentian Motherhouse. So this inscription in the Motherhouse chapel, Pertransiit Benefaciendo, “He went about doing good,” resonates especially with me. It is taken from the reading we hear this Easter morning from the Acts of the Apostles. In our reading, St. Peter describes Jesus’ ministry in this way as he preaches in the house of Cornelius, a Roman centurion who would become an early Gentile disciple of Jesus Christ. “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power,” Peter proclaims; “he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.”

The earliest Church, in the years right after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, and God’s sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, had a problem. I would describe it as a good problem to have. The problem is that—if we follow the Acts of the Apostles’ account of events—on the one hand, the Church was expanding; people were being baptized, both Jews and Gentiles like Cornelius, exceptionally quickly and in great numbers. Acts gives us a sense of an early Christian Church blessed with great fervor; great piety; people dedicated to going about “and doing good,” following Jesus’ own example. Acts says that, in these earliest Christian communities, “nobody had need”; the wealthiest gave of their excess to support the least well-off. All was well. This was, without doubt, the work of the Holy Spirit, as Acts so often emphasizes. Peter says of Jesus in Cornelius’ house that he was “anointed… with the Holy Spirit and with power.” Truly, this could have been a description not only of Jesus, but of any Christian disciple; any of us. Each of us, sisters and brothers, have been “anointed… with the Holy Spirit and with power” from the moment of our baptism. We have been anointed, after Jesus himself, to go out and do good.

On the other hand—and the earliest Christian disciples would have been acutely aware of this, especially as the Church expanded rapidly beyond the Jewish world and into the Gentile world, its cultures and customs—nobody directly witnessed Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. The Church had a problem.

The person closest to witnessing Jesus’ resurrection from the dead directly is Mary Magdalene, in John’s Gospel from which we hear on this Easter morning. But when Mary Magdalene arrives at Jesus’ tomb, the resurrection has already taken place, only Mary does not know this yet. The stone at the tomb’s entrance has been rolled away. John very deliberately says that Mary arrives at Jesus’ tomb “while it was still dark.” Mary Magdalene does not (yet) encounter the risen Christ. Instead, her first encounter is with darkness; confusion; emptiness. Mary Magdalene presumes the worst when she returns to tell Simon Peter and the beloved disciple, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”

The beloved disciple and Simon Peter “set out” to the tomb to investigate. But, like Mary Magdalene, they, too, encounter darkness; confusion; emptiness; no body, much less that of the risen Lord. John says of the beloved disciple and Simon Peter: “As yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”

The beloved disciple and Simon Peter return “to their homes.” But, to her great credit, Mary Magdalene remains on scene. She remains to grapple with the darkness; the confusion; the empty tomb. Mary Magdalene is often called “the apostle to the apostles,” because she is the one who returns to the (male) apostles to announce to them that Jesus is indeed truly risen. Yet, in John’s Gospel, she does not return to the eleven remaining apostles until the very end of this episode; this encounter with the empty tomb. She remains there for some time to grapple with; to ponder in the darkness; the confusion; the emptiness. It is there, where Mary Magdalene is before the empty tomb; where Mary Magdalene at first mistakes the risen Jesus for a gardener (a subtle reference to God the creator-gardener of Genesis’ Eden; Jesus has been “with God”—he is God—from before “the beginning” of creation), where the Church is born.

Only then is Mary Magdalene ready for the great revelation: The gardener is the risen Lord; her and our Rabbouni; her and our Teacher. But now Mary must not remain there; she must not grasp onto Jesus as she has until now tried to grasp onto the mystery of the empty tomb. Otherwise there would be no Church. Our Easter story would have ended there, in the darkness; the confusion; the emptiness. “Do not hold onto me,” Jesus says to Mary Magdalene, “but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and to your Father, to my God and your God.’”

Only then is Mary Magdalene ready to return to Jesus’ disciples and announce to them, “I have seen the Lord.” And only then (thankfully because, again, had it been otherwise, there would be no Church) are Jesus’ disciples ready to believe Mary’s witness: She has seen the risen Lord!

That they believe her is remarkable, because there was no body in that tomb when Mary Magdalene, and then the beloved disciple and Simon Peter, first saw it on the morning of the third day after Jesus’ death. So the Church still has a problem. It is a problem with which Peter grapples as he preaches to the household of Cornelius, sometime after Jesus’ resurrection and to a pagan, Gentile household at that.

All Peter is able to say in Acts about the first witnesses to the risen Christ concerns later events. Nobody saw Jesus rise from the dead. But, Peter insists, “God raised him on the third day.” And God “allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses”: To Mary Magdalene; to Jesus’ apostles; then maybe to a slightly larger group of Jesus’ disciples… To a rational, critical mind, and especially to Gentiles a step further removed from Jesus than his inner circles of disciples, Peter’s testimony to the appearances of the risen Christ to a limited group of witnesses must have seemed absurd. If Jesus is truly risen, why did he only appear to this select group of witnesses? Why did he send Mary Magdalene to tell his disciples that he had risen? How did such conviction that Jesus was truly risen and had commissioned them beyond an inner circle to communicate this news to all the world emerge from darkness; confusion; one woman peering into an empty tomb?

The conviction in the resurrection of the Lord and his mission to us must have emerged and spread from the Holy Spirit’s continued action through these first disciples. It is the only possible explanation. This conviction in God’s mission must have spread through the Church, all the way through history to us, so that we Christians (not perfectly, because we are sinners, but somehow still intelligibly and convincingly to the world) have continued to act as Christ did.

Jesus “went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him,” Peter proclaims on this Easter morning. Pertransiit benefaciendo: Peter was describing Jesus, his life and ministry; his death and resurrection, to a Gentile household of a Roman centurion, Cornelius. But Peter could just as well be describing us. Peter could just as well be describing the commissioning of every Christian from the moment of our baptism.

Sisters and brothers, from the moment we are baptized, the Holy Spirit of our risen Lord impels us to go about “doing good.” Our Easter story begins, as we have heard, in the darkness and confusion before an empty tomb. But it cannot remain there beyond a short time: “Do not hold onto me, but go to my brothers [and sisters] and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and to your Father, to my God and your God.’”

“Do not hold onto me,” but go forth “doing good,” Jesus invites us. The risen Jesus lives in us. His Spirit is poured out on our world every time we do good; every time act with kindness and mercy; every time we care for the sick; the poor; the disadvantaged; every time we simply listen for the presence of the risen Lord and his Spirit in one another; every time we heal divisions and reject any form of violence. When we go about doing good, the Church is reborn, time and again, in our longing world.

So may our Easter proclamation be active in our going “about doing good.” Christ is risen; he is truly risen! Alleluia!

Homily for Sunday, 18 April 2021– Third Sunday of Easter, Year B

Readings of the day: Acts 3:13-15, 17-19; Psalm 4:2, 4, 7-8, 9; 1 John 2:1-5a; Luke 24:35-48

“Peace be with you,” alleluia!

How many of us have noticed that today, for the second Sunday Gospel reading in a row, Jesus’ first words to his disciples when he stands among them after he rises from the dead are, “Peace be with you”? Jesus’ greeting has become very familiar to us. And I imagine that Jesus’ greeting to his first disciples quickly became very familiar to them, too, after his resurrection. After all, both Luke’s and John’s Gospels, from which we have heard this Sunday and last, feature the risen Jesus greeting his disciples in this way. In fact, in John’s Gospel (think back to last Sunday), the risen Jesus greets his disciples not only once but three times—first to his disciples, except for Thomas, on the evening of the day he rose; a second time immediately after that, when Jesus also breathes the Holy Spirit on his disciples; and then a third time with Thomas present: “Peace be with you.”

Luke has Jesus greet his disciples only once, in Emmaus, “Peace be with you.” But it is effective. I imagine that, at this point, although Luke says that Jesus’ disciples were still “startled and terrified,” they began to think, “This is bizarre, even terrifying, but we have heard this greeting sometime, someplace before.”

And we hear from Luke today the second major part of the Easter story that, in Luke, begins with Jesus among only two of his disciples on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus. By the beginning of today’s Gospel, these two disciples have already met up with and “told the eleven [apostles] and their companions what had happened on the road to Emmaus, and how Jesus had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”

My sisters and brothers in the risen Christ, Jesus is still making himself known by this same simple action; this same simple greeting as he did those first times to his first disciples: He “had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.” He made himself known to them by greeting them, “Peace be with you.”

There is a reason why, since Vatican II, the sign of peace has been included as part of what we call the Communion Rite at Mass, which extends from the Our Father until we receive communion. To greet one another in the risen Jesus’ words, “Peace be with you,” is essential in order to recognize Jesus “in the breaking of the bread.” When we greet one another at Mass, “Peace be with you,” we recognize the Christ really and truly present in one another, in the Church. We need to recognize the Christ really and truly present in one another, in the Church, before we are able to recognize and worship him as really and truly present in the Eucharistic bread and wine that become his Body and Blood.

“Peace be with you” and “the breaking of the bread” are inseparable. But is the sign of peace, where it has been in the Order of Mass for over fifty years now, not still a bit startling? Most if not all of us have, I suppose, gotten used to the sign of peace where it is now in the Mass. Certainly it is not terrifying as Jesus’ disciples found it when Jesus greeted them, “Peace be with you,” that first time in Emmaus. And maybe we have gotten used to our “text of peace” during our Masses streamed over Zoom for the last year or so, even if it still commands our attention in (I still find) a bit of a jarring way when we exchange peace through Zoom’s chat function: Make sure we exchange a sign of peace with panelists and participants, and so on…

During Vatican II, where the sign of peace was to be placed within the Mass, and whether everybody in the assembly or only clergy during a Solemn Mass (as had been before Vatican II) would exchange peace ritually, were hotly-debated among the bishops at the Council. The English former Master of the Dominican order, Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, tells one of my favourite stories about the sign of peace when it was inserted back into the Mass just after the Our Father after Vatican II. Two French Dominicans Fr. Radcliffe visited at that time, Frs. Yves Congar and Marie-Dominique Chenu, both important figures at Vatican II, had very different approaches to the sign of peace although both lived in the same house in Paris. Congar’s sign of peace “was a grave and formal gesture, whereas Chenu affectionately punched and hugged… and pulled one’s hair”!

“Peace be with you”: We hear the same oh-so-familiar greeting; it is the same Christ really and truly present in one another as in the “grave and formal” Congar, the excitable Chenu, or the terrified disciples who had just witnessed Jesus’ death on a cross and “thought they were seeing a ghost.” It is the same Christ who makes himself known “in the breaking of the bread” and who opens our “minds to understand the Scriptures”: That death no longer has power over the risen Christ, or over us; that we are invited to proclaim the “repentance and forgiveness of sins” that Jesus’ resurrection has made possible, “to all nations.”

This seems to be a daunting task, does it not? How are we to proclaim this “repentance and forgiveness of sins… to all nations” in Jesus’ name? Well, we could begin with a familiar greeting, one that captured its hearers’ attention when Jesus said it, and still does whenever we say it and live it: “Peace be with you”; shalom!

The familiar peace Jesus offers us stirs the world to attention because it does not and cannot come from this world. Jesus’ shalom captures our attention, but it also consoles, reconciles, empowers each and every one of us not only to speak this greeting to one another, but to live it: To seek to console, to reconcile, to empower and so to point out God’s work to still more people in our world and to point one another to God, our only everlasting peace and salvation.

In the Acts of the Apostles, St. Peter gives us an example of how to proclaim and live the risen Christ’s shalom. Yet, I will admit, I find the way in which Peter addresses the people “at the temple gate” in Jerusalem a bit troubling at first hearing. His preaching sounds at first to be heavy on the fire and brimstone, speaking to the people about “Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate… You killed the author of life, whom God raised from the dead,” Peter rails. This is not a homily I think I would be capable of giving!

But, if anybody knew their need for Jesus’ shalom—“Peace be with you”—it was Peter. It was Peter who stood before the temple gate, a redeemed sinner, witnessing to his reconciliation and peace with God made possible only by Jesus’ death and resurrection and that is now available to all of us, redeemed sinners whom we are. “Repent therefore, and turn to God”; turn toward the one who greets us, “peace be with you”… “so that your sins may be wiped out.” How remarkable is Peter’s message from the temple gate?

And the first Letter of John proclaims the same message, the same greeting at its heart, in a slightly different way than Peter. Jesus Christ is “our advocate with the Father… the atoning sacrifice for our sins” and the sins “of the whole world.”

Jesus Christ, crucified at the hands of sinners,

Jesus Christ, “our advocate with the Father” and the redemption of sinners,

Jesus Christ, our reconciliation with God,

Jesus Christ, who calls us to proclaim his peace to all peoples and nations,

Jesus Christ, really and truly present in all the Scriptures, in the Eucharist, and in each of us and our signs of peace,

Jesus Christ, of the familiar greeting that stirs the world to attention; that forgives; that quells fears and doubts; that saves,

Jesus Christ, risen from the dead,

Jesus Christ, our shalom.

“Peace be with you.”

Homily for Monday, 10 June 2019– Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church

Readings of the day: Acts 1:12-14; Psalm 87:1-2, 3, 5, 6-7; John 19:25-34

Monday of the 10th week in Ordinary Time

What is the most important ministry in the Church?

My doctoral research in Paris is focused primarily on the development of ordained priestly ministry and how the Church expresses and understands the ministry of priests through its ordination rituals since Vatican II. Yet I am fascinated by the diversity of officially-recognized ministry, of both women and men, dating back to the earliest days of the Church. Very early in the Church, there were not only bishops, elders (or presbyters, the forerunners of today’s priests), and deacons, but women and men consecrated to focus their lives on particular forms of service for the good of the Church and the world. And then there were orders of virgins and widows, the minor orders (which persisted until after Vatican II) of porter, lector, acolyte, and exorcist, all with official rituals to install people into those ministries.

But do any of us notice that, in all this diversity of ministries, there is not and has never been a ministry of mothers officially recognized or marked by a formal ritual in the Church? This, I think, is why our Church’s veneration of Mary, mother of Jesus, under many titles, devotions, and feast days, is so significant. Not only is Mary celebrated as “Mother of God,” particularly on the first day of each calendar year, January 1, but since just last year Mary has been celebrated throughout the whole Catholic Church as “Mother of the Church” on this, the first Monday after Pentecost.

The Church herself is often called “Mother Church.” But what aspects of motherhood—the motherhood of Mary, the motherhood of the Church, the motherhood of mothers among the Church’s faithful—do we celebrate with this feast of Mary, Mother of the Church? How do these aspects of motherhood we celebrate on this day apply not only to Mary, but to each of us, whether we are actual mothers or not?

The portrayal of Mary, mother of Jesus and mother of the Church, “standing by the cross” in John’s Gospel from which we hear today, coupled with the specific mention in the Acts of the Apostles of Mary’s presence among the apostles and disciples of Jesus in “the upper room” in Jerusalem after Jesus’ ascension to heaven, stand out to me.

In both places, Mary shows motherhood to be a ministry of “standing with”; of praying with; of solidarity and empathy with those who are joyful; those who are waiting with hope; those who are suffering. This is a ministry to which each of us is called, sisters and brothers, whether or not we are actual mothers.

The motherhood of Mary, mother of the Church; the motherhood of the Church itself; the “motherly” ministry of each member of the Church’s baptized faithful, is a ministry that intentionally seeks out somebody to stand with and pray with and for, as Mary did beneath the cross and then in the upper room. Does each of us know somebody who is suffering in any way? Do we know people whose faith needs strengthening? Do we know anybody who is joyfully and energetically doing great work to better the Church or the world, who could benefit from our prayer and more vocal and deliberate recognition?

These are a few ways in which we could and maybe already do exercise our motherly ministry as Church. These are but a few ways in which we might emulate Mary, Mother of the Church, ways in which we stand and pray with one another, in times of joy as in the upper room and in times of sorrow as at the foot of the cross. Mary, Mother of the Church, pray for us.

Homily for Thursday, 11 June 2015‒ Memorial of St. Barnabas

Thursday of the 10th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Acts 11:21b-26, 13:1-3; Psalm 98:1, 2-3ab, 3cd-4, 5-6; Matthew 5:20-26

Who was St. Barnabas, whose feast we celebrate today? What made St. Barnabas the apostle, the effective teacher of our faith, and the trusted partner to St. Paul that he was?

Our Scriptures give us little information about St. Barnabas, but is the short description we hear in Acts, in our first reading today, of Barnabas not key to understanding something about who Barnabas was? St. Barnabas is described as “a good man, filled with the Holy Spirit and faith.”

Because St. Barnabas was “a good man, filled with the Holy Spirit and faith,” the people he served, first in Antioch, gained confidence in him and his teaching. For the same reason, St. Barnabas was able to find Saul (later St. Paul) in Tarsus and bring him to Antioch to serve with him there. Because Barnabas was “a good man, filled with the Holy Spirit and faith,” he was able to surround himself with an important cast of “prophets and teachers” to help him to evangelize and encourage the people in Antioch. For St. Barnabas, his work was not about him, but about Christ and his Gospel.

Can we not imagine St. Barnabas as a person who took to heart and practiced Jesus’ message of reconciliation of which we hear in today’s Gospel reading, from Matthew? If Barnabas ever became angry (we can imagine that he did), can we not imagine him seeking reconciliation with the people with whom he was angry? Jesus does not say in Matthew’s Gospel that anger itself is sinful. But if we put up barriers to reconciliation; if our anger leads to gossip; to labeling and demeaning those with whom we are angry, this Jesus says is sinful. Figuratively (and with some exaggeration for effect), this deliberate failure to seek reconciliation is what Jesus considers to be like murder.

But I imagine saints like Barnabas as examples of reconciliation; of patience; of kindness to their early Christian communities. Barnabas was “a good man, filled with the Holy Spirit and faith.” This is what made St. Barnabas an authentic Apostle of Christ in whom the people he served trusted.

To what extent is the same true of us? To what extent are we “good [people], filled with the Holy Spirit and faith”? We do not celebrate St. Barnabas and the many saints like him because they are unattainable ideals of what the lives of Christians could or should be. No, we celebrate St. Barnabas because, with God’s grace, we are all invited to be like him: “Good” and “filled with the Holy Spirit and faith.” We are all called to holiness; to show this holiness to the world by the way we live, in small ways, minute-by-minute; day-by-day. And we are called to seek mercy; reconciliation with God and one another for when we fail to meet this divine calling.

We can be (and many of us are) just like St. Barnabas in this way. Not all of us are apostles like St. Barnabas or great teachers, or prophets. Yet to the extent we live by kindness; forgiveness; reconciliation; patience; joy, the world will take notice. And our God will certainly recognize us as authentic people of Christ; people who are “good” and “filled with the Holy Spirit and with faith.”

Homily for Sunday, 24 May 2015‒ Pentecost

Mass during the Day

Readings of the day: Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 104:1, 24, 29-30, 31, 34; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13; Pentecost Sequence; John 20:19-23

Imagine for a moment that you are in your favorite place in the world. What is this place? Is it your favorite vacation destination, perhaps one of the world’s great cities; a remote place to enjoy nature; a beach in the tropics? Is your favorite place somewhere you enjoy spending a day off work? Is it a place to be still; to encounter God in prayer; perhaps in silence; perhaps at Mass? Are you with somebody or alone?

I feel blessed to have many favorite places all over the world. I have encountered God in prayer; in the Eucharist everywhere from here at St. Kateri to the parishes in which I grew up, St. Theresa’s and Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Edmonton; to Notre Dame and Saint-Sulpice in Paris, to the chaotic Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and the calm of the shore of the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus once walked; to St. Patrick’s in busy New York City; to my highlights in Colombia in South America: At twelve thousand feet above sea level, Monserrate in Bogotá, for instance. This is one of the only churches of which I can think where the congregation remains standing during Mass, barely even able to turn, because of the number of people present!

Last week I enjoyed my parents’ visit here to Rochester; to St. Kateri. We visited places like the Corning Museum of Glass; wineries and breweries in the Finger Lakes, Sodus Point and El Rincón Mexicano, a favorite Mexican restaurant in Sodus to which Fr. Paul introduced me; Chimney Bluffs…  These are only a few of my favorite places near here to spend a day off; to eat; to learn; to enjoy nature. But it was particularly wonderful to be with people I love;  to be with Mom and Dad to enjoy some of my favorite places in New York State (and some places where I had never been before) during the week they were here.

Is there not something special about being together in one place with people you love; with family; with friends? This is the experience of Jesus’ disciples on Pentecost. We hear in our first reading from Acts that “they were all in one place together” when the Holy Spirit descended upon them. For Jesus’ first disciples, this is the necessary condition to receive God’s gift of the Holy Spirit. Their unity “in one place together,” in an upper room in Jerusalem, is the required setting for the birth of a community of faith, our Church. But why is this so? If God had so chosen, why could the Holy Spirit not have descended upon each of the disciples individually, alone, instead of descending upon them as a community?

The trouble here is that, unlike when we are enjoying quality time off; a vacation; perhaps peaceful time at prayer, Jesus’ disciples were not gathered in their favorite place in the world. Our Gospel reading today, from John, says that “the doors were locked” to the room “where the disciples were, for fear of” the leaders of “the Jews”; those who had put Jesus, their hoped-for Messiah, to a shameful death on a cross. But it is into this fear that the risen Christ enters and breathes the Holy Spirit upon the disciples as a community: “Peace be with you.” This Pentecost event would not have happened in the same way had the disciples have been scattered, facing their fears alone.

Pentecost, the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Christ’s disciples; the birth of the Church, is not a one-time event. We are reminded of this by today’s readings: The Acts of the Apostles and John’s Gospel speak of two distinct encounters with the Holy Spirit. In Acts the Holy Spirit appears to the disciples in “tongues as of fire”; as “a noise like a strong driving wind.” In John, the risen Christ breathes God’s Holy Spirit upon his disciples: “Peace be with you.”

And Pentecost continues to happen, here and now. The Holy Spirit continues to work; to be present among and within us. How is the Holy Spirit present, working among and within us? Might many of us here now be feeling anything but like you are in your favorite place in the world? For many of us there is no better place to be than here, on a beautiful Sunday morning, celebrating our Eucharist. And yet many more of us bring to this celebration our griefs and sorrows: Personal or loved ones’ illnesses; loss of loved ones; loss of employment or underemployment; struggles with our faith; marriage or family disunity. We bring to this celebration our distractions: Some of us barely awake; others with small children in tow with their own needs; still others finding it difficult to remain focused in prayer… And yet how blessed we are as a community of faith by one another’s presence: Joys, hopes, griefs, distractions and all! Still more of us may be bringing to this Eucharist very real fears: Our fear of death; what will happen after our death and how the people we love will cope; our fear of economic instability; our fears for those we love who have turned away from their faith; our fear for the state of our world, full of hope but with many instances of despair; violence; evil…

Our joys and hopes but also our griefs; our distractions; our fears are similar and every bit as real as those Jesus’ first disciples faced on the first Pentecost when they encountered the Holy Spirit. Some first encountered the Holy Spirit in the stillness of Jesus’ breath, “Peace be with you.” Others encountered the Holy Spirit amid their fear of death at the hands of those who had put Jesus to death. These first disciples encountered the Holy Spirit as they touched the risen Jesus’ wounds, an image of our own woundedness; our own sin; our own need for forgiveness and healing. And they encountered the Holy Spirit as fearsome, rushing wind and “tongues as of fire.”

Our encounters with the Holy Spirit are as varied perhaps as the encounters with the Holy Spirit of Jesus’ first disciples. The gifts we receive from God’s Holy Spirit are as varied as the encounters with the Spirit themselves: “Different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit,” St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians. But do we not have something else in common with these earliest disciples in how they encountered the Holy Spirit? We, like them, are “all in one place together.”

In this “one place together” our joys and hopes meet their source, our God whom we are united here to worship and to celebrate. Here our diverse “spiritual gifts” are refined; made ready through this celebration to be put to service of the one Body of Christ; one community of faith; one world; one human race. A “body with many parts,” we become, more and more, “one body, one spirit in Christ” in the words of our Eucharistic Prayer that we will hear and pray in a few moments.

In this “one place together” our griefs; our distractions; our fears are transformed by the Holy Spirit. Together we are invited to let our fears that could paralyze us without community; without God’s Holy Spirit be transformed into “fear” in the sense of awe and reverence in God’s presence. This “fear of the Lord”; awe and reverence in God’s presence is the first and greatest of the gifts of the Holy Spirit we all receive in baptism and confirmation.

In this “one place together” is our Pentecost. In this “one place together” we encounter God’s Holy Spirit who strengthens, gifts, unifies, and transforms us. In this “one place together,” my sisters and brothers, Church is born. In the whole world the best place for us to be; the place where God is; the place where we are prepared to serve God as Christian disciples in our world that hungers for God’s Spirit, is right here, in this “one place together.”