Pentecost Sunday Homily
Bishop Donald Bolen
A great joy burst forth in the early Church at Pentecost. It was not enough that God should take flesh, to come to where we are as one of us; not enough that the Incarnate Word should give himself fully to us on the cross, revealing a boundless love; not enough that he should be raised from the tomb, a lasting sign of God’s power to bring life from death; not enough that we should experience his Risen presence, summoning us to a future with hope. At Pentecost the Church learned that God wanted to be with us always, through the Holy Spirit, a guide, an indwelling presence, a bearer of unity and peace, love and joy.
Since that Spirit dwells not only in the early Church but is also active in us in our day, we should by all rights be filled with a deep paschal joy. And we are, but I think, like most Christians, there is significant room for growth in our coming to live in joy. Part of the challenge comes from the way in which the early Church experienced the Holy Spirit, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. The presence of the Spirit was tangible, palpable, in their lives, as they were guided by the Spirit, given words to speak, courage to endure hardship, and the grace to share themselves fully in strengthening and building up the community in the name of Christ. We often sense a gap between our experience of the Holy Spirit and theirs.
And so we ask: Where do we sense the Spirit? What are signs of the Spirit’s presence? What gives us the courage to believe that the Holy Spirit is operative in our lives, and allows us to rejoice this day with full hearts, not feeling like half disciples, but like a community fully empowered by the Spirit? Here are ten ways in which we might look for the presence of the Spirit. There are many many other ways that the Spirit is present in our lives and communities, and you might do well to come up with your own lists too....
1. Prayer. We have many different ways in which we, as Catholics, turn to God in prayer. But some part of our prayer should be (and is) the experience of being in a lifelong conversation with God. Blessed Oscar Romero put it this way: “Inside the heart of every person there is something like a small intimate cell to which God comes down for a private conversation.” I have always appreciated the invitation to prayer of St. Anselm: “Come now, little one, turn aside for a while from your daily employment, escape for a moment from the tumult of your thoughts.... Enter the inner chamber of your soul, shut everything out except God and that which can help you in seeking him, and when you have shut the door, seek him. Now, my whole heart, say to God, ‘I seek your face, Lord, it is your face I seek.’” I trust you have had the sense and intuition that in speaking with God, you are not involved in a monologue, you are not talking to yourself, but rather, God is present, listening, speaking to you too, often in silence, and that you are part of a conversation. That sense that your life is an ongoing conversation with God, that’s a strong sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit.
2. Every new birth, every new beginning, is a sign of God’s renewed commitment to being in relationship with us. The psalm (104) beautifully proclaims about all created things: “If you take away their breath, O Lord, they die and return to their dust. When you send forth your spirit, they live, you renew the face of the earth.” How often do we go to bed at the end of a long day exhausted, spent, deeply weary. But by the grace of God, a new day dawns, and we are renewed, and ready to face what life brings. When I lived in Rome, the clergy residence where I stayed was just a block from the Piazza Navona, a great gathering place where tens of thousands of people come each day. At the end of the day, it is heaped with mess, grime, all that accompanies thousands of people. Sometimes I would get up and go for an early morning walk and see the cleaners and sweepers out in the Piazza, making it all new again, fresh, welcoming, ready for a new day. In a similar way, the Holy Spirit renews the earth, and renews us, each day; a true daily sign of the working of the Spirit.
3. Forgiveness. Those times when we mess up badly, and think we’ve ended a relationship or deeply wounded someone, but find ourselves instead being looked upon with compassion, forgiven, embraced - that is an experience of the Holy Spirit. And in those parts of our lives where we are stuck, or broken, and caught in a recurring pattern of stubborn repeated sinfulness, yet in the sacrament of reconciliation or in real relationships, find ourselves forgiven again and again - not told that it doesn’t matter, still summoned to maturity and responsibility, but truly forgiven all the same - that is truly the work of the Spirit of Jesus. In his life, passion and death, and in the resurrection, we learn definitively that God doesn’t shut the door on us human beings, God doesn’t say “ok, that’s it, you’ve crossed the line, I’m through with you.” Rather, the Spirit brings healing, the offer of reconciliation, unity, and forgiveness, with the relentlessness of One who never wants to let us go. What hope there is in that, and what life!
4. The spontaneous experience of love and joy which rise from the heart. Sometimes it’s the experience of walking on a prairie road, or being with another, or before the blessed sacrament, or almost anywhere, and you suddenly feel a love rising from within you - a love for others, for the world as it is, and for the author who made all things, and filled with joy, you want to say, “I love you so much....” Often it is the experience of beauty, of creation, or the experience of being invited into God’s own creative work, that evokes that sense that love really is at the heart of things, is the driving force beneath all existence. That’s an experience of the Holy Spirit.
5. The experience of mercy. Closely related to forgiveness, but not identical, is the experience of receiving mercy, and also of finding it in ourselves at times to show mercy. Mercy is that love which reaches out to us when we are broken or in great need, miserable or in misery, and which bends towards us with a caress. It is precisely the kind of love that human beings need from God, and that God loves to bestow upon us. Pope Francis, whose ministry itself is a celebration and extension of mercy, has said that the name of God is mercy. In this year of mercy, we have focused on how mercy takes us to the very heart of God, of our faith, and of Christian life. Pope Francis’s way of leading has had the effect of humanizing the Church, making us more honest, admitting our failings, and more trusting in God's mercy. In this, Pope Francis points us to Jesus himself, and his leadership is a strong sign of the working of the Holy Spirit. It is equally a sign of the Holy Spirit when we experience mercy from others. I have the privilege of working with a staff at the Pastoral Centre, and with leadership in our parishes, who often show great mercy, to me and to the rest of us in the diocese. Finally, I would mention the people I’m privileged to work with on the board of a new organization called Sanctum. It is a hospice and centre of care for homeless people living with HIV/AIDS. It isn't a Catholic organization, but the values the board and staff embody are utterly inspiring to me. Two days after the first homeless person was taken into Sanctum last November, a second resident arrived; the first greeted him saying “welcome to paradise.” Sanctum is a work of mercy and a secular sign of the working of the Holy Spirit in the world.
6. We are sons and daughters of God. In Romans 8, St. Paul notes that “all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ....” The felt experience that we are beloved of God, that we have an identity which is deeper than all the ways we define ourselves or others define us, that we really are sons and daughters of God at the deepest and truest level of our being: that is a pristine experience of the Holy Spirit.
7. A time for every purpose under heaven. I trust you have had the experience of something which really isn’t on your radar suddenly coming up in conversations, in prayer, in external ways. You might chalk all that up to coincidence, but sometimes it is the Holy Spirit at work, saying now is the time for a particular step to be taken, a particular challenge to be addressed, a door to be opened. People sometimes experience that in their vocational discernment. And it also happens regarding more ordinary matters, or within communities. I believe, for example, that the Holy Spirit is summoning the churches and people in Canada to address the wounds of our relationship with Indigenous Peoples. It is time for us to tell the story of our country, our province, in a radically different way: respectful of the richness and length of their history before settlers arrived; attentive to the suffering and alienation which resulted from the Indian Act, the residential school system, and other governmental decisions; and to see more clearly the relationship between that experience of injustice and the challenges faced by Indigenous people in our society. Honesty demands it, integrity seeks it, compassion calls for it. The Holy Spirit summons us to it. We have a number of initiatives in the Diocese at present that seek to respond to the Spirit’s blowing: we have a diocesan council for truth and reconciliation which is shaping our decision-making; we are initiating a series of evenings in our churches where Indigenous Elders are invited to share some of their spiritual traditions; St. Thomas More has just launched a Chair in Indigenous Spirituality. Our Cathedral will host a celebration on June 13th during which a plaque will be installed indicating that it is built on Treaty Six Territory and that we are all treaty people. It is right and good to see these and other similar initiatives as an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
8. Being given what we need. Mick Jagger famously sang, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try some time you just might find you get what you need.” The Lord says, ask, seek and knock; and we will get what we need. Over and over again in life, I have found I’ve received what I needed. But, as Annie Dillard notes, there’s a catch: “not as the world gives do I give unto you” (Jn 14:27). The Lord does indeed give us what we need, in order to be his disciples, in order to live in such a way that we’re drawn into the paschal mystery, in such a way that we can have a share in his mission. Sometimes - indeed, often - we only see or understand it in retrospect. But if we live in trust that we have indeed been given what we need, and will be given what we need - and we actually live that way - well, then we enter into a strange kind of logic which only makes sense if there is something larger going on than ourselves, if there is something unfolding in the universe. And indeed there is. And it is being driven by the Holy Spirit. And we are given what we need. Believe it or not!
9. Transformation in human life. Human life is structured in such a way that people are actually transformed. There is a growth that happens in human life. It doesn’t always happen, and we can turn away from the opportunities to grow. But it happens a lot. Parents are best situated to see growth, change, development in the lives of their children. We see it in young people when they fall in love, and suddenly a world centred on themselves is turned upside down. We see it when young couples have children, and suddenly their lives centre around these little ones, and they make untold sacrifices, and are transformed by love. We also see it when young people fall in love with God, and are transformed in the process. In this parish, we are in a privileged position to see something of that transformation in people like Michael Yaremko, who will be ordained a deacon in a few weeks, and who has grown in confidence and grace through his internship year. And we see it in the young priests who come to serve here fresh after ordination, as they learn what it is to be a priest, what it is to set aside their own priorities and preferences in order to serve, and to reach out to people where they are at, as Jesus himself did. We see transformation in older people who live with grace the experience of diminishment that comes with age, and cope perseveringly with suffering, trusting that God will do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. All of these kinds of transformation are gifts of the Holy Spirit, the creative work of God in the rough and tumble of daily human living.
10. The transformation of communities. As individual people grow and are changed, so too with communities. I think we have seen that kind of change in this community, the parish of the Cathedral of the Holy Family. In just over 4 years, the parish has over doubled in size. You have become a place of welcome, of hospitality, of fine liturgies; a place where the people of Saskatoon have increasingly found a home for a wide range of events. The Holy Spirit was much in evidence when this parish welcomed the Holocaust memorial speaker and over 2,200 students from across the city to witness a moving speaker and an event which itself spoke of reconciliation and a better future.
This is not an exhaustive list, but simply a few of the ways in which the Holy Spirit’s presence is being felt in our day. I encourage you to open your hearts ever more to the transformative, unifying Spirit, and to open your eyes to see that Spirit active and at work in our world and in our lives.
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. And us too.
