HOMILY for Pentecost Sunday
Acts 2:1-11; Ps 103; Gal 5:16-25; John 15:26-27,16:12-15
There are certain things that are so important, so essential, that we can take them for granted. Our parents, for example, have always been there for us. Or to use an example that is very topical, the very act of breathing and being able to take a breath with ease. Many of us in the past year will have become more aware of the gift of being able to breathe freely. The masks we wear remind us of every breath we take, especially if you wear glasses like I do. And of course, if you’ve watched the news, seen documentaries about the pandemic, or if you’ve read about the situation facing people in our hospitals or in India, then you’ll know that the coronavirus that we’re fighting affects our breathing. And so, something so vital, so essential that we often take it for granted is taken away from us. So, too, in the past year, various social restrictions have taken ‘normal’ things away from us, which is why we find ourselves in May 2021 confirming our young adults who were meant to have been confirmed in the summer of 2020.
Last week I was at a meeting with the parish priests of our local area, our Deanery, and it had been some time since we had seen each other in person. One priest, from Swiss Cottage, had been hospitalised twice because of the coronavirus, and he spoke very movingly about the novel experience of not being able to catch his breath, and of having to be given oxygen for six days. As I listened, we wept for those in India and other places where oxygen has not been available for them, where people have struggled and died for want of something as basic as breathing – which rather puts into perspective all the other basic normal things that we complain has been taken away from us.
Now, the Holy Spirit who is given to us today – given to the Church at Pentecost, and given to each of us individually through the Sacraments – is in fact the Breath of God: ruah, pneuma, spiritus. And in the Creed we refer to the Holy Spirit as the “Giver of Life”, because without the Breath of God, our Christian life, our spiritual life, our hope of eternal life with God in heaven is dead as a fish out of water –we’re just left gasping for air. And so, just like the breath we need but often take for granted, so too, but in a far deeper and more important way, we human beings need God the Holy Spirit; we need to remain connected to him through the Sacraments of the Church, through regular prayer and coming to Mass week after week. We need God even more than we need the air that we breath because he is the Giver of Life itself.
So when the Holy Spirit is given on this day and he descends upon the apostles, the friends of Christ hear the sound of a “powerful wind from heaven” that fills their whole house. This means that God breathes out his Holy Breath, his Life, his Spirit, and it fills the whole Church. And now, today, when you are anointed and you receive the Sacrament of Confirmation, so too the Breath of God is poured out, given by Christ who is acting in his Church, and the Spirit fills you – each of you are the house in which God dwells – and God in you gives you life.
Those who cannot breathe, in our hospitals, are helped by ventilators and given oxygen. Because we are all born into a state of original sin, each of us have also, from birth, been struggling to breathe, spiritually speaking. Sin chokes the life from us, and leaves us gasping for air. Hence St Paul, in our second reading, talks about the effects of sin on a society and on our relationships. He says: “When self-indulgence is at work the results are obvious: fornication, gross indecency and sexual irresponsibility; idolatry and sorcery; feuds and wrangling, jealousy, bad temper and quarrels; disagreements, factions, envy; drunkenness, orgies and similar things.” If we have experienced such things in our lives, in our societies, our schools, our homes, then we know that our world, and indeed our own selves are in fact gasping for breath because of the deadly effects of sin, a far more terrifying and invisible disease than the coronavirus!
When you and I were baptised, then, it is like being given ventilators, again spiritually speaking, so that we could breathe more easily and receive life. For God’s Holy Spirit was given to us then, and working within us, giving us his grace, his life, his energy, we were empowered to live Christian lives. The effects of our Baptism, therefore, as St Paul says to the Galatians, are “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control.” The reason why I say that we’re still on ventilators, spiritually speaking, and we’re not able to breathe easily by ourselves, is because sin continues to influence us and have a hold over us. Hence, every day, we need the Breath of God, we need to receive God’s grace in the Sacraments of the Church, through regular prayer and coming to Mass week after week. Pope Francis has referred to the Church as a “field hospital” because it is here that wounded souls are healed, and so it is here that those who are left breathless and asphyxiated by sin can receive the Breath of Life, the ‘ventilation’ of the Sacraments!
But as with the simple act of breathing, which we can take for granted because it is so essential, so too, the Holy Spirit, and the grace of the Sacraments, and coming to church can all be taken for granted. In part, you were brought here by your parents, and encouraged by them to do so. But also because you were baptised as babies, so Jesus Christ and his Church and her Sacraments have always been part of your lives, and you can end up taking it all for granted. Please don’t. The most important things are often taken for granted, but we now realise how much we need them, and we pray that they will not be taken from us. For as the psalmist says: “You take back your spirit, they die, returning to the dust from which they came.” Hence, our prayer today and everyday is always: “Come Holy Spirit”! Come, give us the Breath of God for without you we are left for dead by sin and the hardships of life and mortally wounded by a godless world; without you we fall!
One young man who knew this was Blessed Carlo Acutis, the first millennial saint, born in London, who died of leukemia in 2006, aged just 15 like you. He once said: “Our soul is like a hot air balloon. If by chance there is a mortal sin, the soul falls to the ground. Confession is like the fire underneath the balloon enabling the soul to rise again… It is important to go to confession often.” Although he was only about your age, Carlo knew what life was ultimately about. He said: “Our goal must be infinite, not the finite. The infinite is our homeland. Heaven has been waiting for us forever.” But he knew that we didn’t just get to heaven automatically. Rather, to reach our goal he knew that we need to stay close to Jesus, and also to love his mother Mary. So he said: “The Eucharist is the highway to heaven” because “The more Eucharist we receive, the more we will become like Jesus, so that on earth we will have a foretaste of heaven.” Listen, then, to this young saint, and to his profound insights, that must have come to him through deep prayer, and through the gift of the Holy Spirit.
That same Holy Spirit, the Breath of God, is going to be given to you today in the Sacrament of Confirmation. As you know, the word ‘confirmation’ means to be strengthened, to be made firmer in your resolve, your commitment, your promise to live as Christians in the world. In our hospitals, those who are breathless are given oxygen to help them breathe more easily. The Holy Spirit is like oxygen, who helps you live the Christian life more easily. Oxygen also causes things to ignite, to burn hotter and brighter. Hence, when the Breath of God comes down upon the apostles on Pentecost day, they see tongues of fire! Because the Holy Spirit, given to you today is, spiritually speaking, like oxygen, who will cause you to burn with greater love for God, and to shine with good works, loving actions, give glory to God your heavenly Father.
My dear young people, our parish here at St Dominic’s, this community, we have great need of you. We need you to help us, as a Christian parish community, to burn hotter and brighter; to contribute to what we do and say here so that we can love God better, and show the world that this is where they need to come to receive “the Lord, the Giver of Life”. So, after your Confirmation today, be sure to come back week after week: remain connected to God, the Breath of Life, through the Sacraments of the Church and regular daily prayer: come to Confession at least once a month, and come to Holy Mass every Sunday. And do come and speak with me, and tell me how I can help you to burn more brightly as a Christian, how I can help you in your friendship with Jesus, and ask the questions that trouble and confuse you about being Catholic in a world that thinks we’re drunk or strange or mad! And please, don’t let me, your parish priest, take you for granted. Because you’re too important to me, and essential to all of us here at St Dominic’s!
Together, we will renew this place, and even this neighbourhood, and indeed, transform our lives through the grace and power and Breath of the Holy Spirit. If I may end by borrow the words of a certain song by ‘Fun’: “Tonight, we are young, So let’s set the world on fire, We can burn brighter than the sun.” Indeed, we shall burn brighter – with the light of Jesus Christ the Son!
anthtan liked this
thatscarletflycatcher liked this
jurakan reblogged this from lawrenceop
nonigurl liked this
lastbloom liked this
lawrenceop posted this
HOMILY for Pentecost Sunday...Acts 2:1-11; Ps 103; Gal 5:16-25; John...