Were our Hearts Not Burning? (Lk 24:32)
Fr. Paul Ward                                                                      Home

Homily

Sunday, April 16-17, 2005, St. Paul’s on the Lake, Grosse Pointe

Fourth Week of Easter

The Holy Spirit (1/3)

            Lent ended three weeks ago, full of wonderful hard work – and I am a witness to how generously and deeply so many of our parishioners worked during Lent, for which I say simply, “bravo!” The glory of the resurrection exploded with joy in the midst of all this serious spiritual work. Then we experienced the passing away of our beloved Vicar of Christ, Pope John Paul II, on the eve of Divine Mercy Sunday. God has showered spiritual gift after spiritual gift upon us over the last few weeks. Let’s not forget to say thanks, and repent if we haven’t been collaborating with these graces with the intensity God hopes from us. But you know what? It isn’t over yet.

            Something more is waiting on the horizon for us, something wonderful. It is a gift God has in store for us that is so good, so powerful, so amazing, that there’s no way we could have foreseen it coming until it had been revealed to us. God the Father sent the Son not only to become man in the incarnation, born of the Ever Virgin Mary, not only to die on the cross and pay the price of the sins of the whole world, not only to rise from the dead to call us to new life. He sent the Son to give us something, to give us, in fact, someone. He sent the Son to give us the Holy Spirit.

            Pentecost is coming, and the Church wants us to prepare for this great moment, the celebration of Pentecost, because when we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles, we’re not just remembering a thing that happened thousands of years ago. The descent of the Holy Spirit is made present for us again at Pentecost.

            So we need to get ready. We need to prepare. We need to study, to pray, to meditate and to do spiritual reading. Who is this Holy Spirit? What difference does it make that he has been given to the Church, and to me especially through Confirmation? Why do we pray to him? What do we know about him? What works does he do?

            Most of us Catholics aren’t really equipped to talk long about the Holy Spirit. Oh, if people ask us about Jesus, well, let’s see… he’s the Eternal Word, he came to earth at the Annunciation, virginal conception, the boy in the temple, the walking on water, the Baptism, the preaching, the miracles, the Eucharist, the scourging, the cross, the resurrection, the ascension. We can go on and on about Jesus.

            But are we so equipped to discuss the Holy Spirit? Over the next few Sundays I will expound on the Holy Spirit mainly from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and an encyclical our deceased Holy Father Pope John Paul II wrote on the Holy Spirit called Dominum et vivificantem, three words taken from the creed in Latin, translating into “The Lord and giver of life,” from 1986. There’s a lot in all those writings, so I’ll just go to some of the most important things for us, here and now, and how these truths apply to our lives.

            Many of us have mixed feelings about “all this Holy Spirit stuff,” especially because we’ve met groups or individuals that claim, “Oh, we are charistmatics.” That excites some, turns off others, probably most are still trying to figure out what that means.

Let’s get this clear: a charism is a gift of God for the whole Church. Therefore anyone who is Catholic is charismatic. So if someone says to you, “I’m a charismatic,” respond to them, “So am I.” You are because you have the seven sacraments at your disposition, and the sacraments are gifts from God for the Church, and therefore the sacramental love is incredibly charismatic. You have an Authority and Magisterium, you have faith, hope and charity, the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, the communion of saints, and much more, and all of these things are very charismatic.

By the way, for this same reason, Catholics are the perfect, true and original Pentecostals, because on Pentecost – hence the name Pentecostal – the Holy Spirit established the one Church of Christ, which subsists in the Catholic Church. So nobody leave the Catholic Church to become “Pentecostal,” you’ll really become less Pentecostal in the true meaning of the word.

            The Creed gives us today’s points regarding the Holy Spirit.

            We pray, “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son, he is worshipped an glorified. He has spoken through the prophets.” That’s the synopsis, the snapshot, which the Creed offers us. There are two elements here I wish to underline:

            The Holy Spirit is God. Do you love God? Then love the Holy Spirit. Do you speak with God in prayer? Then speak to the Holy Spirit. Do you have a personal relationship with God? Then cultivate your relationship with the Holy Spirit. Do you pray for favors to God? Then ask the Holy Spirit? Do you need mercy for your sins? Then ask the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Love, for mercy. The Holy Spirit is a person of the Holy Trinity, and needs to be an essential part of your Catholic life. You can’t be Catholic and not have a relationship with the Holy Spirit.

            Second, the Holy Spirit is the “giver of life.” This happens most perfectly in the incarnation, a work that the Holy Spirit brought about when he overshadowed Mary. It happens most frequently God creates a baby in his mother’s womb – I stress this, no two parents create people, God alone creates people, and what a divine privilege it is to be a parent in the flesh! But it happens most properly when the Holy Spirit creates in us the life of grace by baptism, restores it in us by forgiveness in sacramental reconciliation, and makes it grow in us unto the great heights of the spiritual life. Think of him as the one who can bring spiritual change. Do you want to grow in your spiritual life? The Holy Spirit is the one who works that growth in you.

            So in summary:

1.      We will discuss more points about the Holy Spirit in the homilies from now until Pentecost.

2.      All of us, because we’re Catholic, have first claims to the titles charismatic and Pentecostal.

3.      The Holy Spirit is God, pray to him, speak with him, have a deep, loving and personal relationship with him.

4.      The Holy Spirit gives life, so let us thank him for his gifts of grace, and work closely with him if we want to make any form of progress in the spiritual life.

Mary, the Mother of God, was with the twelve apostles when the Holy Spirit came down upon them. She was not a priest nor an apostle, yet she had the most privileged place among all creatures in the whole history of salvation. She received the Spirit of the Father and the Son, and surely no one understood more perfectly what was going on insider her soul at that moment than did she.  Let us ask her to help us know, love, hear and follow the Holy Spirit in our hearts, for the Spirit has been given to us.