Inspiration, Education and Freedom

Pentecost Sunday

It’s been 50 days since Easter, 49 days since the passing of Pope Francis and exactly one month since the election of a new Pope, Pope Leo XIV. Yes, I’ve been keeping count. Some can’t contain their exhilaration. Others are a little more cautious, observing a “wait-and-see” attitude. Still others remain disappointed that their preferred candidate wasn’t elected, though mostly hiding their disappointment publicly for fear of retribution or judgment. The question that was being floated before, during and even after the short conclave which elected the new pontiff has been this: what role did the Holy Spirit play in all this? Was it purely politics and human machinations or was this the result of divine intervention, the Holy Spirit at work in the Church?

It is not hard to come to such an assumption because if there is an implicit assumption that the Pope can be infallible (in whatever way that is claimed), then surely the election of the Pope must be equally infallible? It must be stated from the very beginning that we should not conflate the doctrine of infallibility with the election of the pope. The cardinals are not guaranteed infallibility. Furthermore, although secrecy is imposed on the participating cardinals under an oath that could lead to one’s excommunication, it doesn’t take much to assume that the entire conclave was conducted under a highly charged politicised atmosphere where much energy is spent on canvassing, persuading, negotiating, dissembling and organising. Is there even room for the Spirit to work?

On this feast of Pentecost, a feast that is specifically focused on the Holy Spirit, it would be good to understand how the Spirit works within the Church. Back to the question of the Holy Spirit’s role in the election of a pope, Pope Benedict XVI, while still Cardinal Ratzinger (and so cannot technically make any infallible pronouncement at this stage of his life), was asked by the Bavarian television: “Is the Holy Spirit responsible for the election of a pope?” Though not having the character of being infallible, his answer is perhaps the best answer we can have on the issue: “I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the Pope… I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather, like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense—not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined… There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit obviously would not have picked!”

Then, Cardinal Ratzinger, provided us with three important points which apply to an election of a Pope, but I would also like to propose that these same principles can apply to how the Holy Spirit works within the Church in general, outside a conclave tasked with electing a pope. These three principles are control, education and elasticity.

The first principle is “control” or the lack of it. Although the word “inspiration”, used to speak of the source for both sacred Scripture and Tradition, suggests that it is the Holy Spirit who is the author and mover, He does so not in the manner of spirit possessions which the mediums of some non-Christian religions believe in. When the Holy Spirit “inspires” us, He does not take full control of our minds or wills as if we have to abdicate both and lose all consciousness or our freedom.

It is here that we need to make a clear distinction between prayer and magic and not confuse the two. It is all too easy to confuse prayer with magic. Magic is all about control – whether it is controlling our fate or our environment or even the gods. But prayer is not about control—it is the opposite. It is an act of surrender. It requires the surrender of our own will to the will of the Father. Discerning the will of God is not easy. We pray “Thy will be done” several times each day, but it never becomes easier to engage in the effort of discernment—of telling the difference between my will and Thy will.

This leads us to the second principle, which pretty much describes the mission of the Holy Spirit in today’s gospel - educator. Our Lord assures us that “the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you.” The educator offers to teach, show, provide insight and wisdom. But, just as you can lead a horse to water but cannot make it drink, so the Holy Spirit offers H imself to the Church—but with preconditions. The first is that one prays. Prayer in practice is much harder than talking about it. It involves the sacrifice of time, the surrender of will, an abandonment of control, and the preferring of the slow, still, small voice. It also involves triangulation with the prayers of others.

Lastly, the answer of Cardinal Ratzinger helps us see that the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the Church is often elastic. It is not one where the Holy Spirit is the puppeteer and we are mere puppets in His hands. His direction, guidance and inspiration does not compromise our freedom. He gives us room to grow, to stretch, to discern the path that we must follow for our sanctification. We too must learn to give room to the unexpected, to spontaneity, to the Holy Spirit. Benedict’s notion of elasticity is wise and compelling. It combines the light touch of love with the firm grip of connection.

God will never let us go, never abandon us—but nor will He control us if we choose to wander. Benedict reassures us that God will not allow the Church to be utterly ruined. But He will allow us the scope to spoil it by our own wilfulness if we insist. How else do we explain the existence of some very poor popes who did great damage to the Church? As St Paul reminds us, where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. It is the nature of God’s rescue mission that He can take the mess we make and reconfigure it into material for renewal, forgiveness and hope. That’s the “happy fault” sung by the priest during the Easter Proclamation, the Exsultet.

So, we rejoice that the Holy Spirit, the gift of our Lord to the Church, continues to inspire us, educate us and free us. The Holy Spirit will always act with Christ, from Christ, and conform Christians to Christ. It is the Holy Spirit who carries out Christ’s promise to Peter that evil would not prevail against His Church. Not that it could not spoil, corrupt, confuse or disturb. The history of the Church has been marked by many dark episodes when her shepherds and flock have given in to sin, sometimes to the most depraved kind of sin. But history shows that whenever the Church slips into corruption, God raises up saints and renews it afresh by enabling “the Church to grow young, perpetually renews it, and leads it to complete union with its Bridegroom.”

Come Holy Spirit and fill the hearts of Thy faithful and enkindle in them the fire of Thy love!

Soul Quenching Spirit

Pentecost Vigil

Last week, the indigenous communities of Sabah and Sarawak celebrated their respective harvest festivals. This week the Jews do so with the Festival of Weeks or Pentecost, which is its Greek name. The words of our Lord in today’s gospel were not spoken on Pentecost. In fact, the Feast of Pentecost, which is a harvest festival and one of the great pilgrimage festivals of the Jews, is never once mentioned in any of the gospels. The first time we hear of it in the New Testament is found in the Acts of the Apostles, in the scene which is identified with today - the descent of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Church.

The words of our Lord in today’s passage is spoken on another Jewish festival - the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles. This feast, Sukkoth, is most well-known for the little huts or “booths” (from which the feast derives its name) that the Jewish people would construct and live in throughout the week of the Feast. The feast, like all the other major festivals, was a throwback to the time of the Exodus. It was a celebration of God’s gracious provision for the Israelites in the wilderness before they could even plant or harvest crops. But when they had arrived in the Promised Land, the feast took on an additional significance – it marked the completion of the year’s harvest, for Sukkoth was the last of the three great pilgrimage festivals (the other two being Passover and Pentecost) for the year.

Sukkoth was observed over a week, seven days. On these seven days, the priest will undertake a water drawing ceremony - he would go to the pool of Siloam, fill up golden pitchers with water from the pool and make a grand processional back to the Temple, trumpets would resound, there would be great rejoicing, and singing praises from Scripture like Isaiah 12, “Let us draw water from the wells of salvation,” and along with the singing of Psalms. Thousands and thousands of people from all over Israel would throng the streets of Jerusalem waving palm branches, much like what happened when our Lord entered Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives at the start of Holy Week.

Excitement and jubilation filled the air, as the priest would pour out the water beside the altar. And then they would all fall silent as the priest poured water over the altar. This takes place on the last day of the Feast (described by John as “the last and greatest day of the Festival”), and it’s at the end of all this ceremonial pomp and circumstance that Jesus stood up and shouted, “If any man is thirsty, let him come to me! Let the man come and drink who believes in me.” Can you imagine the shock and utter annoyance of the priestly caste and religious leaders at these words? While all eyes were focused on the golden pitcher of water being poured out over the altar, the Lord Himself is declaring – “Look at me! I am the true source of that water!”

The water poured out by the priest on the altar symbolised the blessings that would come with the future Messiah, and his spiritual life-giving water would stream out over all the earth, just as the water flowed from the rock in the wilderness. Amid this great liturgical ceremony, rich with Biblical allusions and symbolism, the Lord Jesus points people to Himself and says, “the Promised one is here!” The offer of salvation goes out to all people because it’s only through Jesus Christ that your soul’s thirstiness can be quenched. “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” But what exactly is this “water” which the Lord is offering?

Should anyone misunderstand the words of the Lord, St John the Evangelist then segues into giving a definitive interpretation to the nature of that water which flows from the Lord: “He was speaking of the Spirit which those who believed in him were to receive; for there was no Spirit as yet because Jesus had not yet been glorified”. He provides this interpretation by citing a quotation from scripture: “From his breast shall flow fountains of living water.” Here’s the problem - there is no exact quotation from the Old Testament which can be found in the Old Testament. There are, however, two references to living, flowing water: Ezekiel 47:1ff and Zechariah 14:8. Both references are speaking of the future temple in the Millennial kingdom and pictures water flowing from the temple. However, neither of these references show that the source of that water comes from “the breast” of the Messiah nor do they point to the Holy Spirit in the way that John does in his gospel.

In Hebrew, the word used to speak of the spirit is “ruah,” which could also translate as wind or breathe. The wind represents the Holy Spirit’s share in the creation of the world (Gen 1:2), and the breath or wind of God represents the Holy Spirit’s participation in the creation of human beings (Gen 2:7). On the day of Pentecost, before the appearance of tongues of fire, there was the sound of a powerful wind which filled the entire room.

But water is also another symbol of the Holy Spirit and this is why when our Lord invites His listeners to come to Him and drink, He is inviting them to partake of the gift of the Holy Spirit. Water cleanses, quenches, refreshes, and gives life. Wherever the rivers flow and rain falls, there is life. Water represents the Holy Spirit’s ability to refresh us, quench our spiritual thirst, cleanse us, and bring forth life wherever He flows. He is the rain of Heaven, and He is the living river that flows from within.

The message which the Spirit inspires us to proclaim is a message of hope. It is a message the world needs especially at this moment. Hope at a time when divisions between peoples are being actively promoted. Hope at this time when our prayers may seem fruitless. Hope at a time when our spiritual lives seem tired and drained. The demands of living, paired with a waning prayer life, can produce a dryness of the soul. In this spiritual desert, you become tired, frustrated, weak, and apathetic. Responsibilities and needs, like the intense heat from the beaming sun, drain you of vitality. Life can sometimes be like a desert, but the Holy Spirit is that ever-flowing living water that quenches the thirst of our souls.

Be assured of this, the Spirit is at work even when we may not see it, when we may be tempted to be discouraged. Tonight, as we begin the celebration of Pentecost, we ask the Holy Spirit to come on us anew as He came on the disciples. To come on us to enable us to be that source of hope for the world, to work in us so we can play our part in bringing creation to its fulfilment, to work in us so that we can share the message that all people are united in Christ, to refresh our dry and withered souls, to work in us so that we can offer people the hope of the new life Christ brings. 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.

 

Life in the Spirit

Pentecost Sunday Year B

The Catholic Charismatic Renewal has undoubtedly been a great gift to the Catholic Church in recent times as it has brought about a revival and renewed enthusiasm of faith among Catholics, often going against the mainstream trend of declining church attendees and vocations, cooling of devotional fervour among the faithful and over rationalisation of the clergy. Many a priestly or religious vocation and person deeply committed to lay apostolate would have attributed the seeds of their call to the renewal and the work of the Holy Spirit.

However, there is a danger of confining the work of the Holy Spirit to mere external signs in the vein of what took place at Pentecost which is recounted in the first reading - visible and tangible manifestation of the power of the Holy Spirit and the display of the charismata - the charismatic gifts of speaking in tongues and miracles. A deeper look at the work of the Holy Spirit will necessitate looking at the long-term fruits of the Spirit working in the life of a Christian. St Paul gives us this invaluable tool of discernment in the second reading. As we were reminded in a recent course on exorcism and spiritual warfare, the devil and his minions can imitate the charisms in that they can suspend and bend the laws of nature and our hunger for the spectacular, but only God and His Holy Spirit can plant the hidden fruits of spiritual grace in our lives and bring about our sanctification.

St Paul gives a full list of works of the Spirit and their opposites, the works of the flesh, that is, the works of natural, unreformed and selfish behaviour. Christ has sent His Spirit so that our behaviour may be completely changed, and so that we may live with His life. The works of the flesh are not merely the gross, ‘fleshly’ distortions of greed, avarice and sexual licence, but include also such failings as envy and quarrels. Paul’s list is a useful little checklist to apply to our own way of life. The desires of self-indulgence are always in opposition to the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are in opposition to self-indulgence: they are opposites, one against the other; that is how you are prevented from doing the things that you want to.

What is self-indulgence and why is it the greatest threat to a life in the Spirit? Self-indulgence, simply put, is desire for pleasure. If we look carefully at people today and modern society in general, we see immediately that they are dominated by the passion of love of pleasure or self-indulgence. Our age is pleasure-seeking to the highest degree. Even in spirituality, so many seek to experience an emotional high in prayer rather than do the hard work of building virtue. Human beings have a constant tendency towards this terrible passion, which destroys their whole life and deprives them of the possibility of communion with God. The passion of self-indulgence wrecks the work of salvation.

According to the Fathers of the Church, self-indulgence is one of the main causes of every abnormality in man’s spiritual and bodily organism. It is the source of all the vices and all the passions that assault both soul and body. St Theodore, Bishop of Edessa, teaches that there are three general passions which give rise to all the others: love of pleasure, love of money and love of praise. Other evil spirits originate from these three, and subsequently “from these arise a great swarm of passions and all manner of evil.” St John of Damascus makes the same point. “The roots or primary causes of all these passions are love of sensual pleasure, love of praise and love of material wealth. Every evil has its origin in these.” Since love of money and praise include the intense sensual pleasure derived from wealth and glory, we can say that self-indulgence gives birth to all the other passions.

The antidote and cure to this predilection to sin is living a vibrant life in the Spirit. St Paul assured us that “If you are guided by the Spirit you will be in no danger of yielding to self-indulgence, since self-indulgence is the opposite of the Spirit, the Spirit is totally against such a thing.” Paul does not only list down the bad fruits which come from the spirit of self-indulgence but also provides us with a list of nine fruits of the Holy Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control”. Notice how self-control is listed last instead of first even though we may assume that self-control is the clearest antidote to self-indulgence. And yet, love is listed first. The reason is that love always seeks the well-being of the other rather than oneself, and if there is no love even in the ascetic practices of our faith, we are merely empty gongs and everything we do, even if it has the appearance of a virtue, is self-serving.

St Paul understood that the early Church whom he was writing to is made up of baptised Christians, who have died and been reborn with Christ and have received the Holy Spirit who descended on the day of Pentecost and is still a battleground of spiritual warfare between the spirit of indulgence and that of the Holy Spirit. If that were not the case, he wouldn’t have warned his audience about this nor would our Lord give us the power of the Spirit to forgive sins if every member of the Church was a perfect living saint devoid of sin. It is precisely, because we continue to struggle with self-indulgence that we have to constantly allow the Spirit to fortify us and strengthen our resolve to be holy and faithful to the Lord.

When our Lord appeared to the disciples in the Upper Room after His resurrection and greeted them with the gift of peace, it did not mean that their lives would now be secured and immune from trouble, conflict or even sin. Peace is not the absence of something but rather the presence of someone, our Lord Jesus Christ, who continues to work through His Church by the power of the Holy Spirit, forgiving sins, healing wounds, regenerating persons, and redeeming them from the world and the life of sin. The Church, as the third-century theologian St Hippolytus affirmed, is “the place where the Spirit flourishes”. The Church is the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit animating and bringing to life and holiness its members through the Word and sacraments, the ministry of the ordained (our bishops, priests and deacons), the various gifts and charisms of the faithful of every rank, the varieties of religious orders and ecclesial movements that express the Spirit’s power and anointing.

Today, we remember how the Risen Lord had breathed His Spirit on the apostles and on all of us: “Receive the Holy Spirit!” The Spirit comes to each one of us as a gift but also as a challenge to the ongoing conversion of our heart and mind. As the source and giver of all holiness, we implore the Spirit to keep us in grace and remove those artificial obstacles, habits and ways of thinking that prevent us from living fully in and for Christ. As St Paul writes in the Letter to the Romans, our baptism in Christ calls us to live no longer by the flesh, by the material things or selfish desires of this world, but to live according to the Spirit (Rom 8:5).

The Birth of the New Israel

Pentecost Vigil Mass

Many of you may be disappointed with the readings for this Vigil Mass. You were expecting to hear the story from the Acts of the Apostles of how the Holy Spirit descended upon them in the form of tongues of fire and how they burst out in glossolalia, speech which miraculously could be understood by pilgrims from various nations in their own mother tongue. But none of that in today’s readings. In fact, the first reading gives us an account of the theophany at Mount Sinai, which surprisingly sounds similar to our familiar story of the Pentecost.

But these two events are not entirely unconnected. To understand their close connexion, one needs to understand that Pentecost was first and foremost a Jewish Feast before it entered into the Christian calendar. Initially, Pentecost was the feast of seven weeks. Pentecost, or Shavuot in Hebrew, means fifty and is basically the sum total of seven weeks of seven days with an additional day added to the multiple of seven as how one would calculate a jubilee year. The Israelites left Egypt on the fifteenth day of the first month, the morning after the sacrifice of the Passover Lamb. They arrived at the foot of Mt. Sinai on the first day of the third month, which would have been approximately forty days. Moses then went up Mt Sinai and stayed there for several days and then brought back down the two tablets written on stone by the finger of God. This total timeline closely approximated the fifty days after Passover that the Feast of Shavuot was supposed to be held on.

Shavuot was, like the other two pilgrimage festivals of Pesach (Passover) and Sukkoth (Tabernacles or Booths), a harvest feast (cf. Ex 23:16), when the new grain was offered to God (cf. Nm 28:26; Dt 16:9). Later on, the feast acquired a new meaning: it became the feast of the Covenant God had made with His people on Sinai, when He gave Israel His law. The event which is narrated in today’s first reading. We still have one last piece of the puzzle. How is this feast significant for us Christians and why would God choose to pour out the Holy Spirit on the apostles on this day? The same day that the Jews were celebrating God’s giving of His Torah on tablets of stone, the Holy Spirit came and wrote His Torah on people’s hearts!

St Luke describes the Pentecost event as a theophany, a manifestation of God similar to the one on Mt Sinai: a roaring sound, a mighty wind, tongues of fire. But there is more. Both events occurred on a mountain (Mt. Sinai and Mt. Zion). Both events happened to a newly redeemed people. The Exodus marked the birth of the Israelite nation while the Pentecost event marked the birth of the Church.

The message is clear: Pentecost is the new Sinai; the Holy Spirit is the New Covenant; and once again there is the gift of the new Law to the Church, the New Israel. But the parallels are not just meant to be equivalent. The Christian Pentecost is meant to be the fulfilment of what was merely foreshadowed in the Old Testament - a definite upgrade. At Sinai the people were kept away from the fire on the mountain because they had not purified themselves. But at Pentecost, the fire comes into their midst through the Apostles. At Sinai, God gave the Law written by His finger on tablets of stone. At Pentecost, He gave the Law written on Tablets of the Heart. The Torah attempted to change people from the outside. The Holy Spirit changes from within.

The promise made to the prophets is thus fulfilled. We read in the prophet Jeremiah: “This is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts” (Jer 31:33). And in the prophet Ezekiel: “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances” (Ez 36:26-27).

The law of Moses pointed out obligations but could not change the human heart. A new heart was needed, and that is precisely what God offers us by virtue of the redemption accomplished by Jesus. The Father removes our heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh like Christ’s, enlivened by the Holy Spirit who enables us to act out of love (cf. Rom 5:5). On the basis of this gift, a new Covenant is established between God and humanity. St Thomas Aquinas says with keen insight that the Holy Spirit Himself is the New Covenant, producing love in us, the fullness of the law.

This is the last and perhaps the most important of the parallels. At Sinai, after the people receive the law of the Lord, they swear a covenant with God. A covenant is how families are created. That’s the purpose of a covenant. When God swears His covenant with us, it’s to make us His family. The whole story of the Bible is a story of covenants as God is reuniting us with His family, which Adam got kicked out of. So God makes covenants with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and David. The Old Covenant sealed at Sinai is now replaced by the New at Pentecost. These Old Testament covenants are finally fulfilled in the New Covenant of Jesus Christ where finally the family of God isn’t only dictated by natural bloodlines, but through the blood of Jesus Christ.

The covenant of Sinai was broken by the people’s apostasy and rebellion when they demanded that Aaron make a golden calf as an object of worship, Moses ordered the Levites to slaughter the idolaters. It was said that 3,000 were killed. If you recall from the account of Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles, how many were baptised and added to the Church on that day? 3,000. In other words, the 3,000 lost through the broken covenant at the foot of Sinai in the old Israel is restored to the New Israel – the Church - because of the New Covenant of Jesus Christ. This is the birth of the new people of God. What was dead has been brought back to life through the power of the Holy Spirit – through the sacraments.

So, there you have it. The backstory of Pentecost in the book of Acts is the scene at Sinai way back at the birth of Israel as the people of God. We are the new people of God. We are the New Israel, the restored and transformed kingdom of God in the New Covenant of Jesus Christ! Thanks be to God for the Holy Spirit! He brings us life. He manifests God in our presence. He continues the power of the resurrected and ascended Christ in our lives. It is the Spirit that gives life. The Holy Spirit brings Christ to us through the sacraments. He guides in the life of prayer. He draws us closer to our Lord so that we can fulfill our destiny as children of God. Don’t ever stop asking for the Holy Spirit.

Put our faith in God's love

Seventh Sunday of Easter Year B

Suspicion always surrounds someone who comes late to the game. There is even an expression coined for this person: “Johnny come lately.” His success and speed in getting promoted is often envied and resented by others who have been longer and more experienced in the game. His ability to lead and perform is doubted by those placed under his care. He lacks the respect of those who should have confidence in his ability.

Today, we hear how a Johnny-come-lately candidate in the person of Matthias was elected to join the ranks of the Twelve Apostles after the defection and the suicide of Judas Iscariot. It’s always a challenge to fill the shoes of a towering great man. I would imagine that it is so much more difficult to fill the shoes of a scoundrel, a great failure, he will always be compared to the man who betrayed the Lord and be subjected to constant scrutiny so as to not repeat the same “mistake” as the earlier candidate. The early Christian community could not risk another disastrous pick. The first time it happened, it cost the life of the Master. If there should be a second time, God forbid, it would cost them the future of the Church.

It was important that the Twelve chosen by Jesus should remain at Twelve, even after the defection of Judas, for this is the number of the tribes of Israel, and the Church is the new Israel, the new People of God. What criteria should be required of Judas’ replacement? It would certainly not be impeccability, as all the Twelve had fallen and made mistakes, and not just Judas. St Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, set out one simple criterion for the candidate to fill the vacancy: “We must therefore choose someone who has been with us the whole time that the Lord Jesus was travelling round with us … and he can act with us as a witness to his resurrection.”

So, this was the sole criterion for choosing Matthias to fill the vacancy left by Judas’ exit. But there was also another candidate who fulfilled the criterion - Barsabbas. Before they drew lots to pick the candidate, the group prayed for guidance, proclaimed their trust in God and went on to cast lots and the lot fell on Matthias who became one of the Apostles. Despite, the commendation to God in prayer, it is important to note that the method of choice of the twelfth member is itself significantly deficient - drawing lots does appear to leave everything to chance just as one would seek direction from God by flipping the pages of the Bible and allowing your eyes to fall on the first words of the text that is presented to you. This has less to do with faith than it is to believing in some form of divination. We need to remember that the Holy Spirit has not yet come upon the members of the community at Pentecost to fill their minds and hearts and so enable them to select the twelfth member in a way that is both human and inspired.

Now, does this mean that after Pentecost the election of a bishop or even a Pope, who are successors of the Apostles, is always a candidate chosen directly by the Holy Spirit? This is a common question asked by many especially when they have doubts over the choice of the successful candidate. The answer, of course, is that the Holy Spirit was doing what He is always doing, prompting all involved to cast their votes for the good of the Church. But the Holy Spirit does not choose the pope; that is left to the vagaries of men, and the vagaries of their response to grace. Sometimes His grace is accepted and sometimes it is rejected. God does not impose His will on our freedom to choose.

What does this mean? The Holy Spirit does not arrange the votes so that the best possible candidate is elected. In other words, it is not divinely rigged! The Holy Spirit does not guarantee that the best candidate would be elected bishop or pope. To believe that there is such a guarantee is simply naive and chooses to ignore factual history that we’ve had many deficient candidates and scandalously bad bishops and popes. Although there is no guarantee whatsoever that the choice will reflect God’s active will, the choice of a particular man as pope obviously fits within God’s permissive will.

Happily, the Catholic Church enjoys some Divine guarantees. Christ promised to be with the Church to the end of time, and that the gates of hell would not prevail against her. This means essentially that the Holy Spirit will not permit the Church’s Divine constitution to be lost, that the fullness of all the means of salvation will always be available in the Church, that the Church’s sacraments will always be powerful sources of grace, that the Church’s Magisterial teachings will be free from error, and that the Church will remain the mystical body of Christ under the headship of our Lord Himself, as represented by His Vicar, Peter’s successor.

In the gospel, we see our Lord interceding on behalf of His disciples and the Church, praying that her members will remain united, that they will remain true to God’s name which is His will, that they would be consecrated to the truth, and none be lost. Though our Lord assures us and guarantees that He would be interceding on our behalf as the perfect High Priest, there is no guarantee that what He prayed for would always be realised because of man’s free will. Our rebellion against His divine will is evidenced by centuries of schism, apostasy and heresy, where many including Church leaders have worked against the unity of the Church and distorted her teachings by substituting it with erroneous interpretations.

With Pope Francis’ recent revelation that there were human machinations and lobbying among the cardinals during the conclave which elected his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, where does that leave us? Scandalised or disillusioned? Has the Holy Spirit taken a backseat? Never. We must remember and believe that the Holy Spirit is continuously active and certainly knows what He is doing—even when His graces are refused and His plans thwarted by ambitious sinful men. We must humbly acknowledge that none of us can see the future or the whole picture but God can, and God does! We must be assured and find consolation in knowing that the Holy Spirit does not tire, nor does Christian hope disappoint. Our job is to pray, work and trust in Divine Providence!

Although we may sometimes doubt the wisdom of our leaders and why they were chosen, we must never ever doubt God’s wisdom in allowing these men to be elected and chosen. As St John in the second reading exhorts us, let us “put our faith in God’s love towards ourselves. God is love and anyone who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him.” (1 John 15-16)

They heard ... They saw ... They spoke

Solemnity of Pentecost

Although the descent and gift of the Holy Spirit is commonly associated with today’s feast, which takes place 50 days after the feast of the Passover, St John in today’s gospel reading provides us with another version of the story. In John 20, the gift of the Holy Spirit takes place earlier, on the evening of Easter Sunday. The Risen Lord invites His disciples to carry on the mission given Him by His Heavenly Father and empowers them to do so by breathing upon them and saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

St Luke’s version of the first Pentecost, which we heard in the first reading, is the biblical account that has most captured the Christian imagination. Fifty days after Easter, the disciples of Jesus gather for prayer in Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit comes upon them in dramatic fashion, with a strong wind and “tongues of fire.” They begin to speak in different languages, and miraculously their proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is heard and understood by Jewish pilgrims from different countries of the diaspora in their own native languages.

The revelation of the Holy Spirit to the Apostles on Pentecost took place in a series of sensible experiences: they heard… they saw … they spoke. First, they heard. They heard a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind. This sound was so vast it filled the whole house. A sound that could only come from heaven. Next, they saw. They saw tongues as of fire, one sat on each of them. The fire of God’s presence was revealed. Finally, they spoke. As a result of the outpouring of God’s Spirit, His presence in such a distinctive way on each individual, they began to speak in languages known to those gathered outside.

These three movements could also be seen at the time of the Exodus when the Israelites were gathered at Mount Sinai and Moses received the Law directly from God. The account of this event is found in the first reading of the Vigil Mass. In fact, Pentecost or in Hebrew, Shavuot or the Feast of Weeks, commemorated this event. On this mountain, the Israelites heard the rumbling of thunder and saw the clouds covering the top of this holy mountain. Then God spoke His law which is embodied in the tablets of the commandments. But instead of hearing thunder, and seeing a cloudy theophany or hearing God speak His law, the apostles and first Christians heard, saw and spoke what was clearly the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, whose law is now written on the hearts of believers instead of stone.

But the correlation between the Jewish significance of this feast and its Christian counterpart goes back further, in fact to the beginning of the Bible. God breathed His Spirit into earthly clay, like how Jewish mystics would attempt to do in the legend of the Golem, and brought it to life. Likewise, God now breathes His Spirit upon this motley group of believers and brought the Church to life. Jesus, risen and ascended into Heaven, sent His Spirit to the Church so that every Christian might participate in his own divine life and become His valid witness in the world. The Holy Spirit, breaking into history, defeats aridity, opens hearts to hope, stimulates and fosters in us an interior maturity in our relationship with God and with our neighbour.

But there remains one final connexion between the Pentecost of the New Testament and another event in the Old Testament. The miracle of Pentecost reverses the episode of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. In that story of the tower, in response to human arrogance, God “confused” the languages of humankind and scattered them over the face of the earth. Instead, of hearing, seeing and speaking God’s Word present through His Spirit, the builders of the Tower of Babel were planning to have their own voices heard, their monumental feat seen and finally spoke in the languages which no longer could be understood nor did they communicate God’s Word. After Pentecost, the division of Babel wrought by man’s pride will be undone and the Good News of Jesus Christ is the language that unites all these different peoples.

The building of the first Babel was an act of pride. Like Adam and Eve, the builders didn’t want to receive from God; they wanted to obtain things on their own. They sought to construct a tower “with its top in the heavens” and to make a name for themselves, lest they be “scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” They desired to raise themselves to God’s level – to be self-sufficient – and to establish unity on their own terms. The lesson of Babel is clear: it is human pride that has produced confusion and division in the world. God’s act in confusing their language and means of communication was not an act of vengeance and punishment. In fact, it was an act of mercy that would set them on a long journey to discover the true source of sanctification and unification - the work of the Holy Spirit.

According to Fr Paul Scalia, “we are witnessing the construction of a new Babel. Ours is a post-Christian society, an anti-culture that has rejected the Word of God. In our pride, we want on our own terms and by our own accomplishments what creatures can only receive from God. We have thrown off His reality – about gender, sex, life, etc. – and tried to construct our own. As a result, our language is increasingly disconnected from truth, our words unintelligible, and our ability to communicate crippled.”

The crippling of language divides us. We can easily witness this in our own country and parish situation, where language no longer unites but divides. Once language is no longer a vehicle for truth, for building communities and set apart for worship, it becomes an instrument for control and domination. That is why we can recognise that Pentecost is the undoing of Babel. The Apostles, filled with the Holy Spirit, speak in a way that all hearers can understand. Redeemed by the Word, man can now speak intelligibly about God and about himself. And because he can communicate the truth to others, this intelligibility leads to unity.

The memory of Jesus has been kept alive, and the movement He began has been carried on by the Church, who has preached the gospel to all nations and cultures through various languages. Nevertheless, Pentecost challenges the Church today to find even more effective ways of communicating the Gospel to peoples in every land on earth. The challenge, that faced the first Christians gathered in Jerusalem at the birth of the Church, still faces the Church today. Would culture and language be an obstacle to the gospel or would it be the vehicle by which the gospel is heard, seen and spoken? Would pride get in the way once again or docility to the Spirit bring about authentic conversion? For this reason, we need the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit. And so, on this Pentecost we must pray, “Come, Holy Spirit, come!”

Wait and Pray

Seventh Sunday of Easter Year A

The first reading situates us within this week that lies between the Ascension of the Lord and the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Nine days of waiting. Nine days of continuous prayer - the first novena of the Church (the word “novena” is actually derived from the Latin root which simply means nine). After the rigours of the Lenten fast and penance and the feasting of Easter, these nine days seem to be a most welcomed respite from all the liturgical hustle and bustle for those who have been engaged but it can also be annoying for those who feel an itch for more activity and hate the idleness which they associate with prayer and all things churchy. For the latter, prayer doesn’t seem to count as a fruitful activity. Real Christians should be out on the streets working, not confined to their rooms like cowards praying.

But is prayer a cop out for those who shirk their social responsibilities? Is it idle activity for those who are unable or unwilling to take responsibility to resolve their own issues? Why would our Lord ask these disciples to wait and pray? Let’s go back to that first novena between our Lord’s Ascension and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Put yourself in the middle of this frightened and confused band of apostles and disciples. They had seen the Lord suffer and die, but then He rose and appeared to them, demonstrating His power. He commissioned them to carry the message of eternal and abundant life before ascending into heaven, leaving them with marching orders. Icons of this scene show the disciples with their feet and bodies facing outwards, ready to take the gospel beyond the borders of Judea, to Samaria and even to the ends of the earth. But then the Lord also told them to take pause, to not “leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for what the Father had promised.” If some of you may think that novenas are superstitious activities for the simple-minded who still believe in tooth fairies and Santa Claus, remember that the first novena was ordered and instituted by none other than the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. That first novena would be the prototype for all other novenas.

What would have happened if they had given up and left? We can only speculate. If they had left, they would never have been present to experience the Pentecost. And without the Pentecost, the gospel would not have been carried to the ends of the earth. In fact, the entire New Testament may never have been written and the Church would not exist today. Imagine that! But, the persistence of Christ’s followers and His mother to wait for the promise, ended in fulfilment. On the Feast of Pentecost, tongues of fire appeared on each of their heads declaring the coming of the Holy Spirit and the Church was born.

The lesson learnt from the first novena instituted by the Lord is that prayer is about waiting. Prayer requires faith; faith requires patience; and patience requires waiting upon the Lord. To wait patiently for God is to trust in God’s unfailing love for us. To wait upon the Lord is to recognise that He is our Lord and Master. How God does His will is up to Him. We cannot control God or tell Him how to accomplish His plan. He will do His will in His way. Prayer is not a sign of weakness. Prayer is a conscious choice of admitting that we can’t do it alone. It is an act of vulnerability that connects us to God and others. It puts us in a position of strength, not weakness. One of the greatest and most damaging lie we can believe is that we can do it on our own. Prayer dispels that lie and frees us to lean on someone else when it seems unbearable or impossible.

But waiting on God can be the most difficult, and perhaps the most confusing part of the prayer process. We live in a world of instant everything. We value speed. This is true not only in our culture at large, but in our spirituality and prayer. We rush through our prayers because we have other more urgent matters to attend to. We look for the shortest masses. The quicker, the better. Many rush off immediately after communion or before the final blessing and announcements. Yes, waiting in prayer is not an easy kind of prayer to practice. When we pray, we want to see results; and we want to see them now! And if that answer doesn’t seem to be forthcoming, we begin to wonder if God has abandoned us or if He really cares about us at all. We fail to recognise that when you treat prayer as if you have the right to tell God how to do His work, you will be disappointed. God does not take instructions. We wait, He doesn’t. But when you realise that God’s ways are not your ways, that His ways are superior to your ways, you will not be thrown off balance when circumstances seem to be leading you away from God’s will rather than toward it.

Something happens to us in this kind of waiting. There is purpose in waiting. Waiting on God forces us to look to Him. We are brought to attention. The prayer of waiting draws us into a place of stillness and quietness before God where we open our hearts to listen and receive the good gifts of guidance, wisdom and blessing. Waiting in prayer expands our hearts to accept God’s will instead of pushing for our own agenda. When we wait with hope it is like sitting in the dark of night before the first rays of dawn appear. We know that dawn will come, yet we cannot hurry it. We can watch and wait with hope to receive the first lights with joy.

Waiting gives God the opportunity to redefine our desires and align our purposes and vision with His. What appears from the earth-perspective to be a delay on God’s part is really the time when God is working behind the scene, beyond our senses. During the waiting time, we are operating by faith. Trials cause us to persevere by deepening our knowledge of God and relying on Him more intentionally. That is why in the midst of our daily frenzied activities, our Christian life needs to include times of contemplation and prayer to simply be with God in the stillness and to wait upon Him in loving anticipation of what He would do with us.

Waiting as an essential element of prayer, helps us not to treat novenas and other special prayers as quick fixes. As Jesus told His disciples, we must pray constantly and never give up (Luke 18:1). Sometimes we have to pray for a long period before we see any results. Why? We don’t know. As much as we grow impatient, we need to recognise that His timing is an astounding thing. What we do know is that Jesus always has our back and He knows what’s best. We mustn’t become disheartened or give up saying novenas because we don’t immediately see the fruits of our labour. The Blessed Virgin Mary and the apostles obeyed the Lord’s instruction to wait and pray, and scripture tells us that their fidelity and vigilance finally paid off.

May our waiting and our praying make us more open to receiving the Holy Spirit and more capable of showing the grace of God in all that we are and all that we do.

Authority - Mission - Presence

Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord Year A

The gospel passage that I’ve just read comes at the end of the Gospel of St Matthew and unlike the Gospel of St Luke and its appendix, the Acts of the Apostles, it does not mention the event of the ascension of our Lord. We have the first reading from Acts to provide us the details of this event. St Matthew ends his gospel by focusing on the action of our Lord commissioning His disciples and records His words in this regard. This passage is popularly known among Protestants (and Catholics, who have also gotten use to the name) as the Great Commission. Though there is nothing essentially wrong with this term, it would appear that its use comes quite late in Christian history, even among the Protestants.

Rather than be distracted by the debate over its proper name, I think it is far more important to look at our lectionary selection for today. The readings for this feast can be summarised in three words - authority, mission and presence.

Authority is one of those words that usually creates an instant emotional reaction—in some folks, fear and distrust, in others safety and order. While the Lord Jesus was the image of love and gentleness, today He claims that “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to” Him. The mention of “heaven and earth” is a short hand which means “everything”, “all.” So, when our Lord told His disciples this, He was claiming something that no other mortal, even the greatest emperor or king, could claim. His authority is absolute.

But our Lord’s claim was not just that He possessed an authority and could exercise a power that was above and beyond every human authority and sovereignty but it was also a divine claim. Authority is attributed to God the Father; it is His very nature. Authority alludes to the Deity’s right to command and enforce obedience. It is God who can rightfully and exclusively claim that He possesses “all authority in heaven and on earth.” Throughout His earthly life and public ministry, our Lord showed that He had authority over demons, sickness, death and the wild forces of nature. But one could question the limits of His authority when He was arrested, sentenced and executed. His authority seemed to have stopped here. But the resurrection proved that even here our Lord’s authority was not circumscribed by human authority.

Today, there is a tension and battle raging between human authority and divine authority. If human authority is subject to divine authority and obeys the dictates of the latter, there is no issue because there is no conflict. For to obey human authority in such an instance would be to obey divine authority. But the problem arises when there is a conflict between human authority and that of God’s - that is when governments, associations, leaders, parents command us to disobey God, which is in essence ordering us to sin - then we must echo the words of St Peter: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). God’s authority must always take priority even if it means we would have to disobey civil and human authority, including going against our own wishes.

The authority which the Lord exercises is the basis of what follows. He has given us a mission: “Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations; baptise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you.” There are three parts to this commission and each part is essential to the mission of the Church and every Christian. These are non-negotiable. We are called to “make disciples of all nations,” in other words, that we have a duty to lead others to Christ and make them His followers. The simplicity of the words betrays their gravity. In today’s multicultural world, many of us ignore or shy away from this commission for fear that we would be regarded as intolerant or even militant in terms of religious convictions. Political correctness demands that we respect others by not imposing our views on them. But the call to evangelise is not one which is coercive. We are not asked to point a gun to the head of the person and force them to believe what we believe. Rather, evangelisation is a call to be attractive, or to be more accurate, to make our faith more attractive. For our faith to be attractive, our public witness of the faith must be consistent with our actions, our words must be credible, and our practice of the faith must be filled with joy and enthusiasm.

But evangelisation does not stop with just preaching the gospel in words and deeds. It must also lead to conversion and baptism, insertion into the Mystical Body of Christ, which is the Church. Baptism is the only first step after evangelisation. What follows must be catechesis: we will need to “teach them to observe all the commands” the Lord has given us, and this is a life-time’s project and not just confined to Sunday School for children and teenagers.

Finally, our Lord Jesus ends the “Great Commission” by assuring the disciples that He will be with them every step of the way as they embark on this journey of declaring and discipling. This is the great paradox of this event. Our Lord’s physical and bodily departure would result in His return in sacramental form - He will continue to be present in, through, and to His Church. Not in a purely symbolic way but in a manner which is true, real and substantial, especially in the Sacraments.

Matthew concludes his gospel in much the same way as he began, by reminding us that God has drawn near to us through Jesus. The child called Immanuel (“God with us,” Matt 1:23) is now the Risen Saviour who has promised that He will never leave or forsake His followers. His Ascension is not a departure where He distances Himself from us, but rather an insertion of His real presence in the Church where He continues to accompany us, lead us, guide us and feed us with His own Body and Blood. And with His Ascension, He inaugurates the next part of His grand plan which involves the Holy Spirit. Through His promised Spirit dwelling in them, they would be filled with both the presence and the power of Christ as they spread the gospel message from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. We’ve been given the sacred privilege of joining Christ in His work of spreading His name and making His disciples all over the world, and because He sends us out in the authority of His Father and in the fellowship of His Spirit, we have all we need to obey Him wherever He leads.

The New completes and fulfils the Old

Pentecost Sunday 2021

Everyone knows that Pentecost is a Christian festival which marks the descent of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Church. But before it became a Christian festival, just like Easter, the day was celebrated as an important festival by the Jews. Pentecost or Shavuot as it was called by the Jews, was one of three important pilgrimage festivals.

When the Temple in Jerusalem was still standing, the Jews were expected to make a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem three times a year. All three festivals were connected to the foundational event of the Exodus. Sukkot, or the Feast of the Booths which was also the autumn harvest festival, commemorated the forty years that Israel journeyed in the wilderness; Pesach or the Passover, commemorated Israel’s exodus from Egypt and their newfound freedom from slavery; and Shavuot, the spring harvest festival, falls fifty days after Passover and commemorates the giving of the Law to Moses at Mount Sinai.

Pentecost being one of the three pilgrimage festivals would explain the crowds which had gathered in that city on that day, and how 3,000 men were present to listen to St Peter’s sermon and be converted. The idea that so many people were drawn to the city of Jerusalem becomes a prefiguration of the pilgrimage of the Church on earth, as she makes her way to heaven. So, notice how St Luke alters the orientation and destination. The earthly Jerusalem which was the destination of this pilgrimage will instead become the launchpad for the Church’s mission. Instead of making our way to the earthly Jerusalem, as Christians we are to heed the call to take the message of Christ to “all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

Although the agricultural aspect of Shavuot concerns mainly the spring harvest, it also marks the beginning of the birth of new fruits of the land, and those fruits were brought to the Temple at Shavuot. The book of Deuteronomy names these first fruits, called bikkurim in Hebrew. In Deut. 8:7–10, seven “fruits of the land” are identified as gifts from God to the people of Israel, which were promised in abundance as a reward for their settling in the land God has given them: wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates. Seven fruits? I know that your Catholic senses are tingling at the familiarity of that number.

For Christians, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, first given to Christians in baptism and strengthened in confirmation—especially, at confirmation, is to prepare the Christian to share the gospel. The Holy Spirit brings gifts and fruits. “The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord…They complete and perfect the virtues of those who receive them. They make the faithful docile in readily obeying divine inspirations. . . . The fruits of the Spirit are perfections that the Holy Spirit forms in us as the first fruits of eternal glory. The tradition of the Church lists twelve of them: charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, chastity” (CCC 1831-1832). So, the first fruits of Shavuot are a prefiguration of the spiritual fruits and gifts which are given to us in order that we may use them in service of God.

Shavuot also commemorates the giving of the Torah to the Israelites after their exodus from Egypt. You may recall that when Moses came down from Mount Sinai into the camp of the Israelites, he had found the people in apostasy. They had given up on him and on God and had created for themselves a new god: a golden calf. God was furious and wanted to wipe them out, but Moses interceded. Moses himself was enraged and exacted punishment on the people. According to Exod. 32:25–28, Moses in his anger ordered the priestly tribe, the sons of Aaron, to massacre those who had committed this abhorrent act of idolatry. Three thousand men were slaughtered on that day. But on Pentecost, three thousand men after having listened to St Peter’s inaugural sermon were struck to the heart and chose to be baptised on that day. Coincidence? No. Providence? Yes. Three thousand were killed at the first Pentecost at Mount Sinai; at the New Pentecost, 3,000 were not only restored but in a real sense, were brought back to life.

But there is one last point where we see how the Christian Pentecost completes the Jewish Shavuot. As God gave His Law to the Israelites at Mount Sinai, at this Pentecost He would give His people His Holy Spirit; in the former event, the Law would be written on stone tablets but in the second event, the Law will now be written in the hearts of the people. Pentecost is the new Sinai; the Holy Spirit is the New Covenant. And so on this day, we see the fulfilment of the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel: “This is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts” (Jer 31:33). And in the prophet Ezekiel: “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances” (Ez 36:26-27).

The New Pentecost completes and fulfils the old. Saint Augustine, the great Doctor of the Church, once observed with uncanny precision: “the New (Testament) lies hidden in the Old and the Old (Testament) is unveiled in the New.” God in His unfathomable wisdom had already prepared His Church for her birth on this special day. What the Israelites and the Jews had celebrated for centuries was merely a pale shadow of what is to come. If once a nation had been born through their experience of the Exodus, commemorated each year by feasts of the Passover, Shavuot and Sukkoth, the Church of Christ now celebrates her birth through the death and resurrection of the Lord at Easter, and the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. And as Israel was called to be a sign to the nations of God’s authority and sovereignty, the Church is now called to make disciples of the Lord of all the nations. Let our revelry be translated into mission!  “Send forth your spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of the earth.”

The Holy Spirit is our exit strategy

Pentecost Sunday

Even though the first reading speaks of the Pentecost event as a breaking out and breaking forth from enclosed spaces, comfort zones, secure safe houses and psychological prisons, the gospel takes us back to the scene on the evening of that first Easter Sunday. It’s a very different picture. The motley crew of survivors are holed up in the Upper Room by their own choice and not because they have been subjected to some draconian lockdown enforced by the authorities.

The juxtaposition of the readings is meant to highlight the radical transformation that has taken place after 50 days. On that first Easter Sunday, we see a group of frightened individuals. Their master, teacher and friend has been brutally killed and they wonder who will be next. They are hiding from an unseen, unpredictable, indiscriminate, deadly threat. For their own good and that of others, they are not stepping outside. They have no idea how long they should isolate like this, and they have no ‘exit strategy’ for ending their self-isolation together.

But the scene of the first Pentecost is so radically different. You would never have imagined that these were the same men who cowered in the safety of that room for 50 days. What happened within the span of those 50 days? Day 1, the Risen Lord appears to them in the flesh and continues to appear to different individuals and groups for the next 40 days. Day 40, our Lord ascends to heaven in their sight, a confirmation that He will now be present to them in a more lasting and vibrant way. Then Day 50 comes. As Jews gather in Jerusalem for one of the great pilgrimage festivals to commemorate the gifting of the Law to Moses; the Holy Spirit, promised by Jesus, is finally given to this community of believers and its effect is utterly staggering. The event sends out ripples to the ends of the earth and this is still felt until today. The gift and descent of the Holy Spirit is a power beyond human imagination. It bestows a strength that is far beyond the contingencies and consequences of any persecution, war, pestilence, or any other threat to the human family. The Pentecost event has no equal except for the Incarnation and the Resurrection. What lesson, then, could Pentecost have for our world in the throes of this COVID-19 pandemic?

Though there is some easing of the lockdown with a few people returning to work; our churches, our cinemas, our stadiums, our schools and colleges and to a large extent, our shopping centres are empty. Where has everyone gone? We are in our homes, fearful of an unseen enemy, wondering when it will end and hoping for some good news. We are worried about ourselves, our loved ones and our future. That is why the gospel story has a special resonance for us this year. Though the reasons differ, we find ourselves in a similar situation behind locked doors this entire season of Easter (which began in Lent). Fear of the disease and charity for one’s neighbour have compelled us, and all people of goodwill, to nobly isolate ourselves and dutifully observe self-quarantine.

Even though staying home, may keep this coronavirus out, nothing could prevent our Lord from breaking into our most secure spaces. On the first Easter Sunday, the locked doors of the Upper Room had no bearing on the Lord’s testimony. We are told that the Risen Christ went to His apostles, passing through locked doors and any presumed barriers, and joyfully announced to them the liberating declaration: “Peace be with you.”  In similar fashion, on this Pentecost Sunday, as individual Christians and families are in their homes, united by livestreamed Masses, but away from the physical gatherings of their regular faith communities, the Lord Jesus passes through any distance, and declares to each and every one of His followers: “Peace be with you.” Our Risen Lord who was killed on Good Friday, buried in the tomb for three days, and rose again on Easter Sunday, shows us that the sufferings and sorrows of this world have no authority over Him or the workings of His grace. The Holy Spirit which He now shares with us will also make us invincible and undefeatable in the face of the greatest threats.

In our world today, COVID-19 appears to be an unassailable enemy that has unrestrained power to provoke fear, anxiety, confusion, and to cause pain and death. And like death itself, COVID-19 seems unstoppable. In this arena, however, our Lord gives us the Holy Spirit and shows us His power. He once again reminds us of the authority that comes from above. The Lord summons us to a life of hope and calls us to be instruments of peace, messengers of His gospel, and witnesses of the power of His Spirit in the world. Nothing, not even COVID-19 has changed that or can change that.

In the Upper Room, the Lord concludes His time with the apostles by telling them, “As the Father sent me, so am I sending you.” After giving them this command, He breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Today, this same commission is once again given to every Christian. The Lord affectionately breathes on each of us, as He sends the Holy Spirit upon us. And the Spirit comes as a help and strength to complete our mission of hope and peace. Our task is to break from the inertia, accept the work, and to do it as best we can. With such faith and the power of the Spirit, we can fling wide our doors and share our faith again with those whom we can see and touch. It is important to be able to touch and hold others, their bodily presence is just as important as their emotional and spiritual presence. During a time of pandemic, however, we have been taught to socially distant ourselves, to avoid all physical contact with others. Let us pray for the day that we will have the ability to touch others again and to be touched by them.

When will we get to this point? Do we have to wait for a cure or a vaccine? I can’t predict when this will happen but what I do know is that there is already an exit strategy, it is already happening now. If there is anything which can defeat this pandemic and whatever other crisis which life throws at us, it is this - the gift of the Holy Spirit to sustain us during life’s journey and the promise of the resurrection at our journey’s end. This is truly the Good News for all of us, at home or out and about, inside or out, now and always.

Being Born Again

Pentecost

Being “born again” seems to be within the exclusive domain of evangelical or Pentecostal Protestants. You may be surprised to know that being “born again” is not the sole monopoly of Protestants. But when Catholics use it, they typically mean something quite different. When a Catholic says that he has been “born again,” he refers to the transformation that God’s grace accomplished in him during baptism. Yes, if we have been baptised, we have been “born again.”

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI described the Feast of the Pentecost as the feast of “the Baptism of the Church.” It is the day the Church is “born again.” The Holy Spirit, “who is the Lord and the Giver of Life ... has the power to sanctify, to remove divisions, to dissolve the confusion caused by sin. ... The Spirit distributes divine goodness and supports living beings that they may act in accordance with that goodness. As intelligible Light, it gives meaning to prayer, invigorates the mission of evangelisation, sets aflame the hearts of those who hear the happy message, and inspires Christian art and liturgical music. ... It creates faith within us at the moment of our Baptism and allows us to live as conscious and responsible children of God, in keeping with the image of the Only-begotten Son.”

One very helpful and beautiful way to ponder the Spirit’s transforming work of regeneration and rebirth is found in today’s Sequence, the theological depth of which grows on me year by year. In the Veni, Sancte Spiritus that we sang before the Gospel, we turned to the Holy Spirit under the merciful titles of “father of the poor,” “giver of gifts,” the “greatest consoler,” and invoked Him as the one who brings us to rest in God in the midst of work, refreshment when feverish, solace when we’re mourning. We begged Him to fill our hearts with His most blessed light. And then we asked Him to do six things for us, six different actions of bringing to new birth, six different ways of how each of us and the whole Church can be “born again.”

“Heal our wounds, our strength renew”

“On our dryness pour thy dew”

“Wash the stains of guilt away”

“Bend the stubborn heart and will”

“Melt the frozen, warm the chill”

“Guide the steps that go astray.”

Such eloquent beauty in these ancient words of prayer. Wounded, dry, stained, stubborn, frozen, straying: This is our natural condition. This is why we need to be reborn, remade, re-created. But then the Sequence affirms our belief that the Holy Spirit wants to work in us — to heal, to drench, to wash, to bend, to melt and to guide — and then wants to send and accompany us outward, so that through us, He may carry out His mission of sanctification in the world. In baptism, the Spirit performs a new Pentecost, and we are reborn, where once wounded, we now bring healing; where once dry, we now can quench the thirst of others; where once stained, we now purify and wash; where once stubborn, we now hope to bend others to the will of God; where once frozen, we now melt the hearts of others and warm their chill; where once lost, we now offer guidance leading others to Christ. And all of this is only possible with the help of the Holy Spirit, as all our works will come to naught in His absence. Without the Holy Spirit, we are lost.

O the wonder of the work of the Spirit. As St Basil the Great tells us “through the Holy Spirit comes our restoration to paradise, our ascension into the kingdom of heaven, our return to the status of adopted sons, our liberty to call God our Father, our being made partakers of the grace of Christ, our being called children of light, our sharing in eternal glory – in a word, our being brought into a state of all fullness of blessing, both in this world and in the world to come, of all the good gifts that are in store for us.”

And the Holy Spirit continues to work today in our Church and that work takes place most of all at every Mass. At every mass, the Holy Spirit comes to fill the hearts of the faithful and enkindle in us the fire of His love. The Eucharist, as Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, “is a ‘perpetual Pentecost’ since every time we celebrate Mass, we receive the Holy Spirit who unites us more deeply with Christ and transforms us into Him.” During the epiclesis, when the priest calls down the Holy Spirit — “Veni, Sanctificator!” — He comes and carries out that work of sanctification, transforming mere bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.

The Spirit of the Lord not only brings new birth to the Church, He also seeks to heal and renew the Church. And that is why we constantly need a new Pentecost. Whereas God brings harmony and peace to everything everywhere, sin causes chaos, conflict and division to everything everywhere — in our families, in our neighborhoods, in our workplace, and in our church. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit begins to reverse all this. But, our fallen human nature is still with us, even in the post-Pentecost Church. In the early Church as attested to in the New Testament, we see Christians divided by division, prejudice, rivalry, hostility, and heresy. And as church history unfolds, the Church is afflicted by ongoing divisions and schisms. The ultimate cause of these divisions is not just doctrinal disagreements — any more than the ultimate cause of the breakdown of a marriage that ends in divorce, are irreconcilable differences that are nobody’s fault. Division and conflict are the result of sin, of pride, of lack of love or disordered love separating us from God, the source of harmony and unity. We choose to follow our own human spirit or the spirit of the world, rather than listen and heed the promptings of the Spirit of God. That is why more than ever, our parish, in fact all parishes, require a new Pentecost.

And so we must continue to be “born again.” We had experienced new birth at our baptism and we must continue to experience a regeneration at every Eucharist and whenever we celebrate the sacrament of Penance. The Sacraments, the work of the Holy Spirit, continue to make present the reality of Pentecost in our lives. We must be born again and we cannot allow anything to thwart our continual rebirth into Christ. Christianity is a life of beginnings, of continual renewal. Each Christian participates in his own cycle of failure and repentance, insecurity and confidence, clarity and error, passions that threaten to swamp reason, and so many other apparent opposites which do battle in our souls for the upper hand. We must constantly allow the Spirit to heal, drench, wash, bend, melt and guide us. The moment we cease to do so, not only will inertia and atrophy set in, but our spiritual death is assured. 

Perhaps, we doubt whether we or others in our parish are capable of change or capable of experiencing a new Pentecost. Doubt no longer. Today, we are all given a chance to be “born again.” As St. John Chrysostom once preached on Pentecost: "Today for us, earth is made heaven, not with stars descending to the earth, but with apostles ascending to heaven, because a copious grace of the Holy Spirit is poured out, and the orb of the earth has been turned into heaven, not changing nature, but fixing the will. The Holy Spirit found a publican and turned him into an evangelist; he found a persecutor, and rendered him an apostle; he found a thief, and he guided him into Paradise; He found a prostitute and made her chaste like a virgin; he found wise men and turned them into evangelists; he chased out evil and led in goodness; he ended slavery, and he introduced liberty; he pardoned debt and offered the grace of God.” If the Holy Spirit can do all this, then it is not impossible for Him to change you or renew this parish.