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, 9 June 2019‒ 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 14:15-16, 23b-26

This homily was given at St. Kateri Parish, St. Margaret Mary Church, Rochester, NY, USA.

A proverb I heard not long ago says this: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” How might this proverb speak to our culture, including how we understand and live as Church? What might this kind of proverb have to do with Pentecost, which we celebrate today?

If I were to ask us when each of us thinks the Church began, historically or otherwise, how many of us would answer, “At Pentecost”? But then what is (or was) Pentecost? What is Church and why?

Might the readings we have heard today give us a clue toward the answers to these “brainstorm”-type questions? Fifty days after Jesus had risen from the dead (which is the meaning of the word “Pentecost,” fifty days), the Acts of the Apostles says to us that Jesus’ apostles, if not a larger group of Jesus’ disciples, those who had followed Jesus during his public ministry, passion, death, and resurrection, “were all in one place together.” It was at this point, when Jesus’ disciples “were all in one place together,” when the Holy Spirit descended upon them “like a strong driving wind” and in “tongues of fire.”

The rest of this account of Pentecost we hear from Acts also speaks of togetherness among the disciples of Jesus and an even larger group of “Jews from every nation under heaven” gathered in Jerusalem at the time. But this togetherness was not and could not be a too-simple and artificial uniformity. The group that witnessed to this first Pentecost, the birth of our Church, was too large and too diverse to be so uniform. All these different people from all over the world would witness together, but each “in their own tongues” to “the mighty acts of God”; to the power of God’s Holy Spirit; to the birth of a Church.

Does this not sound a lot like the Church today; like our reality here in Rochester and at St. Kateri? “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” I do not believe that proverbs like this are meant to be a criticism of those who “go alone” in our Church or civil society, or in our St. Kateri Parish for that matter, as if acting together is always better than acting alone; as if going far is always better than going fast.

The rightful diversity within the Church will forever welcome the faithful who view change in the Church—in decisions made at various levels of Church leadership, the people who lead, or sometimes even the teachings that guide and result from those in leadership—as more often good, and the faster the better. And the same rightful diversity within the Church will necessarily welcome those with usually the opposite view, who are wary of change or who stress caution or consensus before allowing change; who prefer going far to going fast; going together to going alone.

Instead of serving as an indictment of people with either view, I think our experience of Pentecost, in a similar way to that first Pentecost of which the Acts of the Apostles speaks to us today, has two effects on the Church and on us as the Church’s faithful. First, our experience of receiving the Holy Spirit, our experience of Pentecost, puts in right order these two complementary movements in the Church of going alone and therefore faster, and of going together and therefore farther. Second, our experience of Pentecost purifies our intentions behind preferring either to go alone and therefore fast, or together and therefore far, or a bit of each preference depending on our particular circumstances of life.

Our experience of Pentecost, like the very first experience Jesus’ disciples had of Pentecost, rightly orders the desire or movement in our same Church toward going together and therefore far, versus the desire or movement toward going alone and therefore fast. We hear of this right ordering in our readings today. The Holy Spirit first draws all this diversity of peoples together, so that they will be able to go far once they are sent out by the same Spirit, not in spite of but precisely because of their diversity. But the diversity of these earliest disciples of Jesus is a diversity whose unity is safeguarded by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and the same is true of the Church today. The same Holy Spirit who once drew together the diverse peoples of the earliest Church draws us into this “one place together” so that we may honor and celebrate together our diversity held in unity by the Holy Spirit. We may not be “Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene, as well as travelers from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs.” But we are from East Irondequoit, West Irondequoit, elsewhere in greater Rochester, New York State, or beyond; rich, poor, and middle class; ideologically left, right, and center; people who prefer more pre-Vatican II liturgy or post-Vatican II liturgy, and so on, all called to this “one place together.” We might only want to be wary of letting in certain Canadians who study in France; they may be a little suspect…

Only once we have been drawn together by the Holy Spirit into the unity of “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church” in this one celebration will we be able to set out, each in the particular ways in which we are called, to proclaim the Gospel, “glorifying [the one] God by our lives.” Only by learning by celebrating here and now our “going together,” our being “in one place together,” will we then be effective, if not sometimes surprisingly fast, if and when the Holy Spirit calls us to “go alone,” each putting our individual or unique gifts to the service of the same Gospel, remaining faithful to our unity as Church.

In John’s Gospel today, Jesus reinforces this point: To learn by celebrating our “going together” is necessary if and when the Holy Spirit, who keeps us together as one Church, calls us within this Church to “go alone”; to exercise our more particular or unique gifts at the service of the Gospel. In the same discourse as when Jesus promises his disciples the Holy Spirit, “another advocate to be with [us] always,” Jesus says to his disciples, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments… Whoever loves me will keep my word.” My sisters and brothers, love; keeping the commandments of Jesus, first among which is to love one another as Jesus has loved us; keeping Jesus’ word: These are not individual actions that we accomplish without any grounding in community; as one Church that gathers together to hear and celebrate God’s word in our Eucharist, together. To keep Jesus’ commandments, to love, presupposes our gathering “in one place together.” In fact, God himself is a communion, a “togetherness” of three distinct persons (more on this next Sunday, when we will celebrate more specifically the Most Holy Trinity).

Yet togetherness, unity, communion does not stifle diversity, individuality, uniqueness of spiritual and other gifts. In fact, our unity reinforces and honors our diversity, individuality, uniqueness of gifts. Our Pentecost experience of the Holy Spirit not only puts in right order the complementary movements in the Church of going together and therefore farther so that we may be able to, if necessary, go alone and therefore maybe faster, but also our Pentecost experience of the Holy Spirit purifies these two seemingly opposite movements, so that indeed they are complementary and will never stifle each other. As 1 Corinthians says to us today, we remain “one body though [with] many parts. We receive “different spiritual gifts” by “the same Spirit.” We perform “different forms of service” by the grace of our “one Lord” and God.

By “going together,” we gain the strength and unity we need for when we are called to “go alone.” As Church, we breathe with two lungs. Our unity and then our diversity are inspired by the same Spirit. Insofar we gather “in one place together” to celebrate this, we will both “go far” and “go fast,” because our Pentecost experience empowers us to do both.

Homily for Tuesday, 30 June 2015‒ Mass of the Holy Spirit

Tuesday of the 13th Week in Ordinary Time

This homily was given during a votive Mass of the Holy Spirit celebrated with faith formation and youth ministry leaders of the Diocese of Rochester at St. Bernard's School of Theology and Ministry, Rochester, NY.

Readings of the day: Isaiah 11:1-3a; Psalm 104:1, 24, 29-30, 31, 34; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13; Luke 4:16-21

My sisters and brothers, I feel humbled to celebrate with you, faith formation and youth ministry leaders of this Diocese of Rochester, this Mass of the Holy Spirit. Have any of us ever experienced how the Holy Spirit is beyond our words; concepts; images? We are in danger of limiting the Holy Spirit; limiting God if we try to describe the Holy Spirit by our words, concepts, and images.

And yet we are teachers; we are engaged in faith formation of our young people; sacramental preparation for confirmation. We work and live in a world of words; concepts; images. And so where do we begin in understanding something of the Holy Spirit? Or is not the Holy Spirit somebody, not something, not primarily to be understood but first a personal relationship with God that we experience?

How, then, do we experience the Holy Spirit? How are the youth we form in our parishes; the youth we form for the sacrament of confirmation experience the Holy Spirit? During my years in seminary in Toronto I ministered in children’s sacramental preparation. One of my favorite activities, when speaking of our experience of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, was to give the children three blank sheets of paper. On one sheet, I would ask them to write or draw the first word or image in their minds when they thought of God the Father, then the same for the Son, and then the same for the Holy Spirit. Each year I received many drawings of an old, wise, and kind-looking man in the clouds to represent God the Father; a young, handsome, bearded man on land to represent the Son (the hippie Jesus?); and doves, wind lines, or occasionally fire to represent the Spirit. One year, when we were discussing our images of the Holy Spirit, one child handed me his still-blank page. “I don’t get it,” the child sighed, frustrated. To this day this child’s blank page is the best response to this activity I have ever seen!

Where do we begin with the Holy Spirit? Our readings today do not help us much. Isaiah speaks of “the Spirit of the LORD” as a series of gifts received by the prophet: Gifts “of wisdom and of understanding… of counsel and of strength… of knowledge and fear of the LORD.” These are the seven spiritual gifts listed in the Rite of Confirmation; the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit received or, perhaps better yet, intensified in us when we receive the sacrament of confirmation.

Like Isaiah, St. Paul understands the Holy Spirit as many “spiritual gifts but the same Spirit.” This is analogous to Paul’s description of our Church, Christ’s Body, as one body “though it has many parts,” or his emphasis on God as one yet inspiring in us “different forms of service”; “different workings,” all given to us “for some benefit”; for our unity as a community of faith. Unlike Isaiah, St. Paul does not even presume to list off individual gifts of God’s Spirit. Again, Paul’s emphasis is on the unity among us wrought by the Holy Spirit: “We were all baptized into one body… and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.”

The Psalmist conceives of God’s Spirit as a force for our renewal. We pray, “Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.” And the high point of God’s renewal of “the face of the earth” is reached in God’s Son, Jesus Christ. In Luke’s Gospel we hear Jesus, standing before the synagogue crowd in his hometown of Nazareth, and proclaiming anew the words of Isaiah: “The Spirit of the LORD is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to bring glad tidings to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the LORD.”

Who is in need of the Spirit’s renewal today? Of course all of us are. But who are those especially in need of God’s Spirit: “The poor… the blind… the oppressed” among us today? It is no secret that our city; our diocese includes some of the poorest people in our nation. Even in the richest parishes, do we not encounter the materially poor; the unemployed and underemployed; the migrant; the refugee child and family? Have we not already encountered those “oppressed” by the breakdown of marriages and families; children who can become “blind” to God’s love for them by suffering; by experiences we would wish on no child; no person?

These are the people to whom the Lord sends us especially “to proclaim the Good News”: “Today the Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” Today God’s Holy Spirit is present among us. Today God’s Holy Spirit calls us to unity in Christ: “Many spiritual gifts” but “one body, one spirit in Christ.”

How do we proclaim this message today to those who are well-off; to those who are in stable households; to those who already have a strong faith; a strong relationship with God, and to those who do not; who are among “the poor,” the “oppressed,” and the “blind”? Today we are this living message. Today we are “the Scripture… fulfilled” in one another’s hearing; one another’s experience. Today we are sent to bear the Holy Spirit to all we meet; all we teach; all whom we form in our faith.

We may from time to time be like the child with a blank sheet of paper: “I don’t get it”! But is the Holy Spirit not less about “getting it” than living it? “The Holy Spirit is upon me.” How deeply do we believe and act by these words of Isaiah; words echoed by our Lord Jesus? If we live by kindness toward those we serve, even in the smallest ways; if we live in a way that seeks out those in special need and seeks to satisfy those needs as we are able; if we are humble enough to learn from those we teach; catechize; form; to place ourselves where they are in their experience of our faith, then we will know the Spirit more deeply than we could ever express in words or images.

We will then be able to say after our Lord: “The Spirit of the LORD” is upon me… Today this Scripture… is fulfilled in [our] hearing.” Today we are in relationship with our God of loving service as faith formators. Today God’s Holy Spirit dwells among us and is at work through us in the renewal of “the face of the earth.”

Homily for Saturday, 2 May 2015– Memorial of St. Athanasius

Saturday of the Fourth Week of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 13:44-52; Psalm 98:1, 2-3ab, 3cd-4; John 14:7-14

Are any of us confused or even troubled by some of Jesus’ words in our Gospel reading today?

Jesus says to Philip, “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me”? And he assures us, “Whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these.”

Do we not all take Jesus at his word, simply because we trust the words of our Lord? And yet this indwelling of the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father is deeply mysterious to us. To understand this mystery was one of the greatest struggles of the early Church. St. Athanasius, fourth-century bishop of Alexandria, in Egypt, whose feast we celebrate today, was exiled from Alexandria five times and spent most of his life trying to explain how Christ could be both fully God and fully human. How could God the Father be in this man, Jesus, and the Son be in the Father?

And how is it possible for us to do “greater works” than those of Jesus, the Son of God? I think an answer to this question lies in our first reading, from the Acts of the Apostles. We hear that after Paul, Barnabas, and the other Apostles were rejected and persecuted by many Jewish leaders (let us be careful here: Many Jews, the first to hear the Word of God, did accept Jesus as God), they took Christ’s Gospel to the Gentiles; pagan Greeks. And Acts says that, in Iconium, the Apostles “were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.”

Jesus no longer physically walks this earth. He has ascended to heaven. Yet he has given us his Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit lives in us and is the inspiration for all our good works; the life breath behind our faith and our works. One of the gifts of God the Holy Spirit is joy. When we act with joy, even in small works of kindness; of service; of love, our world takes notice. Not only other Christians but people of other faiths or no faith can feel joy; can and do experience love. This is, I think, what Jesus means when he says to us, “Whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these.”

Individually, we can do very little. Even as believers in Christ, we are limited by our physical bodies. But as a community of faith, we move with and through the Holy Spirit. We can do the works that Jesus did, even limited by his human body while on earth, and even more when we work together.

It is then, as a community of faith, that we get the fullest sense of what Jesus means when he says, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” The Father, Son, and Spirit dwell in one another and are one. And God, the Trinity, dwells in us. And we act; we serve; we love with joy, in a way that magnifies even the works of Christ! And so “whoever believes in [Christ] will do the works that [Christ does], and will do greater ones than these.”

Homily for Friday, 10 April 2015– Friday in the Octave of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 4:1-12; Psalm 118:1-2, 4, 22-24, 25-27a; John 21:1-14

How often does our Lord encounter us exactly where we are in our lives? And, at the same time, how often are we unprepared or even afraid to encounter our Lord in these humble, everyday circumstances?

From Acts today we hear the continuation of the story of Peter’s and John’s healing of a crippled man outside the temple. Peter and John are brought before the religious leaders for healing in the name of Jesus Christ: “Annas the high priest,” the “elders and scribes,” and “all who were of the high-priestly class.” The two Apostles face with tremendous courage this same group of leaders who had killed Jesus. Peter and John, as well as the religious leaders themselves, know that this strength to witness to Christ and the power to heal the crippled man in the first place was not their own. This power; this strength, Acts emphasizes over and over, is from the Holy Spirit. We hear that Peter, “filled with the Holy Spirit, answered” the elders, scribes, and priests who were trying him and John.

When have we been “filled with the Holy Spirit”? If we were to face persecution for our faith, would we have the same strength and courage of Peter and John; the strength and courage that are gifts of the Holy Spirit that we receive in baptism and confirmation? For us to face persecution for our faith here in the United States is unlikely, but not so in many places in our world. And so we pray for the people who are persecuted and killed; who are witnesses to Christ by their lives today. And let us pray for the same Holy Spirit to give us the strength to end violence and poverty in our world and here in our country and city.

But are there not times when we feel anything but strong and courageous? Have there been times in our lives when we are more like Peter and the other disciples in our Gospel reading this morning than like Peter and John in Acts? Are there times when we expect a great sign or surge in strength and courage from our Lord, and here we encounter him in simple, everyday events of our lives?

Imagine this: After his resurrection, Jesus had appeared to his disciples twice. But eventually Jesus’ disciples want to return to their everyday activities. Are they maybe still fearful for their lives should they identify openly as followers of Jesus, who had been brutally killed? Peter, the same Peter who, inspired by the Holy Spirit, would later show great courage before hostile religious leaders, announces, “I am going fishing.” And the others follow him: I am going back to my everyday activities; back to the life with which I was comfortable.

And it is then when Jesus encounters us again, not with a great sign at first but humbly and quietly. Jesus joins us; joins Peter and the Apostles, for a simple breakfast. Jesus breaks bread and fish with them. In this simple act, the Apostles recognize that “it is the Lord.”

In the same way, Jesus encounters us in our everyday activities, but also calls us beyond our comfort zones to acknowledge him as our risen Lord and to be his disciples.