Pentecost 2015
Cathedral of the Risen Christ
Bishop James Conley
May 24, 2015
Reading 2: Gal 5: 16-25 (option b), Gospel: John 15 (option b)
Dear brother priests, beloved religious and seminarians, dear friends in Christ,
Today we celebrate the great Solemnity of Pentecost, on which the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples of Jesus, in order to fulfill the promise Christ made in the Gospel today.
Saint John tells us today in chapter 16 of his gospel that Christ promised us, his disciples, that after his Ascension, the Holy Spirit would “guide you to all truth,” “declare to you the things that are coming,” and “glorify me.”
The Holy Spirit is truly God—the third person of the Blessed Trinity, who is the fruit of the dynamic love between God the Father and God the Son. The Holy Spirit is the breath of God, who inspired Sacred Scripture, who guided the patriarchs and prophets of old, and who guides the Church in her sacred mission in the world.
In the Gospel today, Christ reminds us that the Holy Spirit is the “spirit of Truth,” who testifies to all that is true. The Holy Spirit ensures that the Church teaches what is true. On the essential matters of Christ and the Gospel, the loving presence of the Holy Spirit ensures that the Church can never proclaim error or falsehood.
In the second reading, from the letter of Saint Paul to the Galatians, the great evangelist Paul proclaims the fruits of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers. The fruits of the Spirit are “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” In baptism, in confirmation, and in the Holy Eucharist, the three sacraments of Christian discipleship, these fruits are borne out in our lives. If we live “in the Spirit,” as disciples of the Most Holy Trinity, the spirit will transform us, by being present with us, to conform our minds, and hearts, and wills to the nature of God himself.
The Spirit indwells within us to transform us, from sinfulness, to holy goodness. Blessed John Henry Newman, the great 19th century British convert to the Catholic faith explains that Holy Spirit, “has ever been the secret Presence of God within the Creation”. In the new creation as in the first, His presence is a spiritual one, a revelation from within. The Father remains hidden, but is revealed by the Son in his life and teaching, passion and death and resurrection. The Holy Spirit remains invisible, but He is constantly revealing the Father. Since the time of God’s Covenant with the chosen people, the Holy Spirit is “the Guide of Faith, the Witness against sin, the inward light of patriarchs and prophets.” When Christ returned to His Father and with Him sent us the Holy Spirit, it was the Spirit who transformed Christ’s disciples into members of the Church, in which He remains present as its “Lord and Ruler.” To the end of times he makes Christ present in the Church and He is “the Grace abiding in the Christian soul.”
This is why we can call Pentecost Sunday the “birthday” of the Church. This was the day when Christ’s presence transfers, if you will, into the sacramental life of the Church, vivifying her members, equipping Christians with the presence of God and sending them forth to continue Christ’s work of evangelizing the world.
Pope Saint Leo the Great in the 5th century, in a remarkable passage, put it like this: with the Ascension of the Lord to the right hand of the Father, and the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost “our Redeemer’s visible presence has passed into the sacraments. Our faith is nobler and stronger because sight has been replaced by a doctrine whose authority is accepted by believing hearts, enlightened from on high. This faith was increased by the Lord’s ascension and strengthened by the gift of the Holy Spirit; it would remain unshaken by fetters of imprisonment, exile and hunger, fire and ravening beasts, and the most refined tortures ever devised by brutal persecution. [Leo witnessed the era of persecution] Throughout the world, women no less than men, tender girls as well as boys, have given their life’s blood in the struggle for this faith. It is a faith that has driven out devils, healed the sick and raised the dead.”
Alive in the Holy Spirit, we are transformed in holiness, and transformed in Christian maturity. Through the Holy Spirit, we “put aside childish things,” as St. Paul says, and become formed as men and women capable of building the Kingdom, and of proclaiming the Gospel.
The first reading, from the book of Acts, reminds us that the Holy Spirit is given to the Church for a purpose. The Spirit transforms us for a purpose. When the Holy Spirit comes to the disciples in the upper room, and “rests upon them” as “tongues of fire,” he does so in order to equip them to proclaim the Gospel to the world.
Because of the Holy Spirit, the disciples can speak the languages of the nations, and reveal “the mighty acts of God”—the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the vocation of the Church is to proclaim Christ to the world. The Church exists for this reason. The Second Vatican Council says that “the Church is missionary by her very nature.” The Church does not simply have the mission of proclaiming the Gospel--Pope Francis says that the Church is constituted by the mission of proclaiming the Gospel, and equipped by the Holy Spirit to do so.
Each one of us, because of our baptism, is a member of the Body of Christ. And because of our baptism and confirmation, we are equipped, like the disciples at Pentecost, to speak the “languages of the world,” and to proclaim Christ. This mission does not belong only to pastors, or to religious, or to catechists. The mission of evangelization belongs to each one of you, and through the Holy Spirit, each one of you has been given the tools, and the mandate, to be serious about the evangelization of the world.
St. Paul says that Holy Spirit “declares to us what is coming.” What is coming to us, dear brothers and sisters, is a culture devoid of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I am not exaggerating when I say that the United States is on the verge of a great period of de-Christianization. Fewer and fewer Americans report belief in a transcendent God, or in the basic precepts of Christian morality. Even among believers, many accept the falsehoods of moral relativism. The disintegration of marriage and the family prove this point. The marginalization and commodification of the poor prove this point. And the death of one million unborn children each year in America proof that basic morality is being eradicated from western culture.
We are blessed to live in a state, and a community, in which the presence of the Gospel is far more evident than it is in many places. But it would be a delusion to believe that the evil one does not wish to conquer and ensnare us.
Without a serious commitment to the new evangelization, our culture will be ever more imperiled by the minions of Satan. And if they do not encounter Christ, more souls—our family members and friends—will be ensnared by the lies of the devil. Christ calls us—the Church—to evangelize. And the Holy Spirit gives us the grace to defeat the lies of Satan, one soul at a time, building the Kingdom of God, and overcoming the “dictatorship of relativism.”
Christ alone can bring peace, truth, and justice to our families, our communities, and our nations. But Christ will not be known, or respected, or followed unless you reveal him to the world. The fruits of the Holy Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience—are signs of contradiction in the world. They witness to the truth of the Gospel. But our living witness to the Gospel must be accompanied by creative, joyful, direct, and convincing proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Holy Spirit empowers you to undertake the work of evangelization. The Holy Spirit forms you in Christian maturity for this purpose. The powerful witness of the early Church—which went forth from the upper room and brought Christ to every part of the known world—is a sign that the Holy Spirit will be with us, will sustain us, and will manifest fruit from our proclamation of the Gospel.
St. Paul told the Corinthians “our time is short.” Our time is short to proclaim the Gospel. Our time is short to witness to the Gospel. We are given our lives to witness to Christ, and we are given the Holy Spirit to make that possible. This is our vocation, and our mission. On this Pentecost, may we receive the Holy Spirit, and may we commit ourselves—each one of us—to follow the example of the disciples in the upper room. Speaking the language of the world, may we proclaim “the mighty acts of God.”
One of my favorite poets is Gerard Manly Hopkins, another 19th century British convert, who was also a priest. One of Hopkins most famous poem is entitled God’s Grandeur. It is a poem that recognizes the broken world in which we live, the suffering, the toil, the sin, the struggle of what it means to be human. But the poem also recognizes that God continues to guide his creation through the Holy Spirit. That the world is charged with God’s grandeur, a grandeur that in the end, is our hope and our joy. Let me end this homily with this short poem on the Holy Spirit by Gerard Manly Hopkins.
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
