Tag: #pentecost

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The Lord, the Giver of Life

   Today we celebrate Pentecost, the birthday of the Church. Birthdays are fun. but births themselves are simply miraculous. Anyone who has been there can tell you that perhaps the most profound moment of any birth is when the baby takes its first breath. The experience is indescribable. Perhaps it is because at that moment, we realize that where there is breath, there is life. In the same moment we realize that we are not the source of that life; we are merely its beneficiaries. 

       There is a story making the rounds on the nternet about an elderly Italian gentleman who was hospitalized after he had contracted COVID-19. He recovered but had to spend a day on a ventilator. As he left the hospital, he received a bill for €500. The old man began to cry. The embarrassed attendant assured him that financial assistance was available if he could not pay. The old man said, “Oh, I don’t cry because of the money. I can afford it easily. I cry because I have been breathing God’s air for free for the last 93 years.  I have never thanked him once. It takes €500 to use a ventilator in a hospital for one day. Do you know how much I owe God?”

       There are many different things we could meditate on this Pentecost, but given the times in which we live I would like to spend a little time on the Holy Spirit as the breath that gives life to the Church. 

       It helps to remember how we understand the Holy Spirit as the very love between the Father and the Son; the relationship between the lover and the beloved. It is this relationship of co-eternal, mutual love that is the life breath of the Church by inviting all of us into that relationship. It is the love of God that breathes life into the Church and animates its members. 

       We have two wonderful images of this in today’s Scriptures. In the reading from Acts, we see the first manifestation of the Spirit as “noise, like a strong driving wind.”  I’ve mentioned before that in Hebrew, the word for ‘spirit’ is “ru’ach” (רוח). Literally it means wind, breath, or soul. Thus, at the birth of the Church at Pentecost, the noise like a strong driving wind makes sense. It is God breathing life into the Church.

       In a similar, in the passage from John’s gospel, we see the resurrected Christ breathing on the apostles and saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” It is more personal, but the image is the same. It is the breath of Divine Love, the Holy Spirit, that animates or “ensouls” the life of the Church.

       It is through the Holy Spirit that we receive the gifts of Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Courage, Knowledge, Piety, Fear of the Lord.

       It is in our grateful acceptance of these gifts that we become aware of the charisms of the Holy Spirit given to certain individuals within the Church, including prophecy and healing, mercy, teaching, stewardship, perseverance, encouragement, hospitality, leadership, joy.       

Finally, it is in our exercise of these gifts that we each enjoy the fruits of the Holy Spirit: charity, generosity, joy, gentleness, faithfulness, patience, modesty, kindness, self-control, goodness, chastity, peace.

       St. Paul is right. “There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit; there are different forms of service but the same Lord; there are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone. To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.” (1Cor 12:4-7)

Perhaps it is a good time to pause, take a deep breath, actually and metaphorically, and thank God for the gifts that we have been given.

       The gift of life,

       The gift of faith

       The gifts, charisms and fruits of the Holy Spirit

              that are given to each of us for the building up of the Church and the world. 

Let us pray.

       Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created; and You shall renew the face of the earth. Amen.   

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Pentecost, 2025 – The Power of Relationship

The Power of Relationship

      Think of your best friend, soulmate, BFF, bestie, or whoever you consider the one who knows you better than anyone. Now think of the quality of that relationship. How did it start? How did it develop. Were there any particular moments, trials, achievements, that took it to the next level? When you describe the relationship itself, what words do you use? How do you explain such a relationship? At a certain point, words will fail, but you can at least describe such a relationship gives you life. 

       In a nutshell, this is exactly what the Church does when we try to describe the Holy Spirit. Words will ultimately fail, but that does not mean we should not try.

       The key to pondering the reality of the Holy Spirit is to understand that we are talking about relationship. Specifically, we are referring to the relationship between the Father and the Son. Like all loving relationships, such as the one between a husband and wife, it includes the two principle parties; but like a good marriage, such a love cannot be contained to just those two. This is manifested in several ways.

       Love by its very nature is creative and life-giving. For example, in the total self-giving spiritual and physical union of husband and wife, body and soul, we are talking about love so intense in its expression that nine months later you may have to give it a name! Such a love literally begets a life of its own. In a similar, but perfect and eternal way, all creation including you and me is begotten of the loving,  creative love between the Father and the Son. 

       This power of the love of God we  call the Holy Spirit also sustains and sanctifies. We Catholics are not ‘deists.’  We do not believe that God set the world in motion and then walked away. Maybe checking on it from time to time as one will check the soup. No, Divine Love cares for what it begets. As Catholics we believe that God is present to all creation, sustains us, continues to redeem us and sanctify us.

       It is this last bit about sanctification which is the kicker. It is a very heady thing to realize that each of us, by our baptism and by the other sacraments of the Church, are invited to participate in the very relationship that is God. This “Holy Spirit,” which is the power of the love of God between the Father and the Son, this relationship of sanctifying grace is what enables us to be what God has intended for each of us when he loved us into being.

       May we welcome such grace and let it transform us to reflections of such a perfect love.

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Holy Spirit 101

A truck loaded with thousands of copies of Roget’s Thesaurus crashed yesterday, losing its entire load.  Witnesses were stunned, startled, aghast, taken aback, stupefied, confused, shocked, rattled, paralyzed, dazed, bewildered, mixed up, surprised, awed, dumbfounded, nonplussed, flabbergasted, astounded, amazed, confounded, astonished, overwhelmed, horrified, numbed, speechless, and perplexed.

     Each year the Church commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Mary and the Apostles in the Upper Room. Pentecost is celebrated as the “birthday of the Church. We dress in red vestments to call to mind the tongues as of fire that rested on the heads of the disciples. We chant, “Come, Holy Spirit!” But who is the Holy Spirit and what’s it all about?

       The first thing we see from the sacred text is that the Holy Spirit is POWER, specifically the power of the love of God active in the life of the Church and in every Christian. Theologically, we understand the Holy Spirit as the love between the Father and the Son. By its very nature, love is procreating animating, and recreating. It is procreative in the act of creation itself. God does not need the universe and everyone in it, but God is love and love creates. So here we are, created in love for love.

       The Holy Spirit is also animating, that is it gives the “anima” or soul that enables the universe, the Church, each one of us to become what we are created to be in the first place. It was the power of the Spirit that breathed over the waters and gave life to all things. It was the power of the Spirit by which the Word took flesh of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was the power of the Spirit that breathed life and courage into the disciples in the Upper Room so that they ceased to be frightened and went forth boldly proclaiming the resurrection and the forgiveness of sins.

       The Holy Spirit is also recreating. Most profoundly, this happens in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Again, love by its nature leads to ever-deepening communion (unity at the very level of being).  However, because the world and everyone in it has limits, those limits will manifest themselves, sometimes in very hurtful and divisive ways.  It is here that the power of the Spirit enables us to seek forgiveness from those whom we have sinned against and to forgive those who have sinned against us. Forgiveness is the power of the Spirit overcoming our limitations and allowing us to transcend the offense and open the way for reconciliation. There is no sin greater than the power of God’s love to forgive. By the same token, because the same spirit dwells in us, there is no sin greater than our power to forgive.

       In sum, the Holy Spirit is the power of God’s love active in the world and the life of the Church. This love is at one procreating, animating and recreating. It is the power of the God’s love that enables us to love as God loves and so help the world become what he has created it to be.