May 18 2013

The Holy Spirit: The life of the Church

Homily for Pentecost Sunday year C 2013

When I was in the seminary in Melbourne, I was once appointed as the Chapel Convenor, which means I had to look after the day to day celebrations of the Liturgy, making Rosters for liturgical celebrations and setting up for big religious events. Part of it was to prepare for the Stations of the Cross every Friday evening in lent. Sorry to disappoint you but Friday evening was a bit of a thing for us- seminarians- then. Friday evening was always a time to look forward to not only because it means we have a break from studies among other things, but also because Saturday is day off. And usually we then would start our day off after dinner on Friday by going on a movie marathon until dawn, etc. One Friday in Lent, I said to myself: “I need to do something different that would make me focus more on the Stations of the Cross than thinking on what movie I might be watching for the whole night.” So I invited seminarians of different nationalities and language to lead in each one of the stations, in their own language. It was done in English of course, in Italian, Vietnamese, Filipino, Croatian, Maltese, even in Kiwi, would you believe. That went well. That really kept me focused on the Stations of the Cross. That was one of my favourite things I did in the seminary. That was a Pentecost experience for me when we were reflecting on one devotion of our Christian faith through different languages reflecting different cultural backgrounds too. I might not have understood what they were saying but I know we were united in our reflection on the Stations of the Cross. That was really an experience to attest that the Holy Spirit is really at work.

Friends, my dear brothers and sisters, I’m sharing my experience of Pentecost this is what we celebrate today as a Church. We are celebrating this day as the birthday of the Church, the moment when the Church is being enflamed by the Holy Spirit and empowered to proclaim the Gospel to all the world, to all peoples, regardless of skin, nationalities and social status. Because of the gift of the Holy Spirit, we are one in Christ. We are one in faith, and here we are expressing that oneness in faith through this Eucharistic celebration. We may not have the same opinion. We may not have many things in common. In short, we may be different from one another, as we are all unique like everyone else so they say, yet we are one in Christ by virtue of our baptism. Thank you all for making a statement (by coming here) to the world that God is real, that the Holy Spirit is at work, and that Jesus is still alive among us and in each one of us.

And this is my prayer for you: That the event of Pentecost would happen again in all of us right here today. I pray that we would have the courage to go out and proclaim the ‘marvels of God’ to all people, starting from our families, friends and neighbours. One way I do this is through Facebook and Twitter.

I urged you too, to pray with me, together with the Psalmist: “Lord send out your Spirit and renew the face the earth.” Let us pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit to give us life, to sustain our faith and to give meaning to our hope.

We need the Spirit of God in our lives. We need the Holy Spirit because as one priest said the other night: ‘The Holy Spirit is the life of the Church.’ If the Holy Spirit is out of the picture, there is no point in everything we do as a Church now.

We need the Holy Spirit for many reasons. One reason is that like the disciples’ experience, it is the Holy Spirit that takes our fear away and gives us courage to proclaim the good news of Jesus despite threats of death, persecutions or even indifference. Our First Reading today is just a beautiful piece of evidence for this work of the Holy Spirit. The disciples were hiding in the upper room. The doors were locked. They were afraid of the authorities now that Jesus has left them on their own. He has ascended into heaven. But as God would have it, he fulfils his promise. He sent them the Holy Spirit as Jesus has promised them. Because of that, they went out of their comfort zones and went to the streets, preaching about God, telling others of Jesus Christ. This same Spirit is still at work even in our time and will always be. Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador would be one witness for this. He was so vocal against the injustices and corruption in his time on the 80’s, that he was threatened many times of death. One time he was asked: ‘Archbishop, with all these death threats around you, are you not scared?’ The good Archbishop answered: ‘I am. But even if my knees are shaking, I know I am standing on the right and firm ground.’ That was a Spirit at work in him.

Another reason we need the Holy Spirit today is because of the Mission that Jesus left for us to do. As Christians we are called to be the enduring and the living presence of the Risen Lord in the world. And this is possible if the Spirit of Christ is really in us. It is a big call because of the many options people now have to face and to take, including God for that matter. Our time is characterized by commercialism and materialism- wherein the name of the game is: ‘If it doesn’t benefit me, or if it doesn’t suit me, or if I wouldn’t get anything out of it, why bother?’ As Christians we are to counter-act this prevailing attitude by allowing the Holy Spirit to work in us and through us. How we might do this? We don’t have to Google for answers. Let us just look around us. God has offered us many ways, many channels of his graces, for us to know and understand that he is there, that his Spirit is at work. One example of this is what Pope Francis has been doing so far as the Pope. He is, as I have heard from many people “a breath of a fresh air for the Church.” His gestures are revealing to us some of the ways of the Spirit reminding us that real service is not knowing all, or being a jack of all trades to everyone, but by fidelity to the message of the gospel and by loving selflessly and unconditionally. In a way the Pope is really carrying out what Jesus said in our gospel today: ‘If anyone loves me, he will keep my commandments.’ He is inflamed by the Spirit.

St Paul would also offer us another way to be the enduring presence of Christ in the world today, and that is: Our interests and ambitions must be deeper than just fulfilling our worldly ambitions and yearnings. It must be different from what the world’s expectations (glory, fame, honour, wealth, influence, etc). It must be a longing for heaven, a longing for eternal happiness, a longing for God. And this can be possible only if we allow the Holy Spirit to work in us, and to allow the Spirit of Jesus to be our motive, our goal and our reason to believe, to live and love.

So let us pray: Come Holy Spirit and renew the face of the earth.

May 12 2013

Ascension: A call to a deepening of Christ’s presence in our lives

Homily for Ascension Sunday year C 2013

Today we celebrate the solemnity of the Ascension of Jesus into heaven. We celebrate today this one significant and important article of our faith which we profess and declare every Sunday when we say the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed. We celebrate this truth of our Christian faith when we pray the Glorious mystery of the Most Holy Rosary. But what does the Ascension of the Lord mean? What does it mean for us?
Christ has ascended into heaven. This is one truth of our faith that we proclaim. However, it doesn’t mean Jesus has left us altogether aboard the heaven-ward rocket. It also doesn’t mean that God has now gone and has left us on our own. One way to understand ascension is that it is a transformation, a deepening of the physical presence of Jesus with us (Immanuel) into a spiritual presence within us. We may no longer see him in person, but we can still see him in persons, in each one of us. This means therefore that he is not gone altogether but rather we are now the bearers of his presence. We are now the reflection of his light to others and to the world. This is what it means when he said in our first reading today: ‘[You] will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and then you will be my witnesses not only in Jerusalem but throughout Judaea and Samaria, and indeed to the ends of the earth.’ (Acts 1:1-11)
If Ascension then is the deepening of the presence of Christ in our lives through His Holy Spirit then it is a call for us to deepen our relationship with him. To deepen this relationship we need to look in ourselves the presence of Christ in our lives. But how can we perceive his presence?
I have already mentioned this before but it’s worth repeating. This is not from me but from the Second Vatican Council. Every time we celebrate the liturgy Jesus Christ is truly present in many ways: as in the Word being read, in the Assembly, in the Minister and in the Eucharistic elements consecrated and received (Vatican Council II- Sacrosanctum Concilium 7 & 8). He is also truly present in the Sacraments we celebrate.
But his presence is not only perceivable in all that I mentioned above. In our daily living and daily lives too, Christ is always present. Sometimes we don’t think of this, or we doubt on this because of some experiences we have that would lead us to believe that God is not really present in our particular situation or circumstances. But he is just always there. He stands true to his promise not to leave us orphans. ‘And now’, he said in our gospel today (Lk 24:46-53), ‘I am sending down to you what the Father has promised- the Holy Spirit. His Holy Spirit, the fulfilment of his promise, is in us, working through us and keeping us alive. Even if at times we feel he is not around, he is there regardless of how we feel about it.
However, we can only perceive this through the eyes of faith. Yes, we need faith to see this. We need to pray for this gift because only with faith that we can say just as my friend shared with me the other day: ‘I thank God for my faith because this keeps me up when I am at the lowest moment of my life.’ Wow! What an amazing statement of faith. What a fantastic way of acknowledging God’s presence in our lives. Through faith this friend of mine has really experienced in himself the beautiful experience of the presence of God in his life.
With faith we can see God’s presence in each aspect of our life and in our experiences. Fr. Pat O’Sullivan, SJ, the spiritual director in the seminary in Melbourne, wrote something about this. In his book Prayer and Relationships: Staying Connected- An Ignatian Perspective, Fr. O’Sullivan noted some signs of the presence of Christ in our daily living. One sign of Christ’s presence, Fr. Pat would say is when: ‘We are of service to others, and keep on serving them in spite of their lack of appreciation and acknowledgement.’ [p.79] And I would add, when we serve without thinking of a reward or a compensation for what we are doing. I give you a beautiful example of this presence of Christ in our lives. In the Philippines there is a wish-granting television program which I loved watching every now and then. In this particular episode, an actor has disguised himself as a victim of a car accident. Part of his face was covered with bandage and he was walking with a pair of crutches. His task was to search for a good Samaritan. His mission place was at the bus terminal or bus station. And just imagine it, it was very busy, people coming and going with all their luggage and baggage, buses and all. He approached several people for help to find his aunt’s place in the city of Cebu. Because of how he looked, many people ignored him including a nun- in her habit for God’s sake. She thought he is just after her money. But then one security guard-on duty arrived at the scene and offered help. The guard went and asked permission from his supervisor that he’d take some hours off from work to accompany the young man to his aunt’s house. While in the cab, the guard said: ‘If your aunt is not in the place where we are going you can live with me in the house where I am.’ Even when the actor indicated he might not have enough money for the fare, the guard offered to pay for the fare of the cab. Such is a moving act that it made me shed a tear. It strengthens my hope and affirms my faith. It energises me to realize that in our world today, despite the apparent materialism, selfishness, greed and violence, there are still people who are empowered by the presence of Christ by loving and caring for one another. This is again what Fr. Pat O’ Sullivan described as another sign of the presence of Christ in our daily lives. He noted that Christ is truly present when ‘There is a feeling of connecting with another person, or a group; or a feeling of belonging as we admire the face of nature, as in a beautiful sunset.’ (P. O’Sullivan- Prayer and Relationships,79-80). This is just what really happens in that beautiful gesture of the security guard in our story above.
In the light of today’s celebration of Mothers’ Day we must not discount the fact that Christ is present in all mothers too and in all good things they do as a mother to a family or as they fulfil their responsibilities as mothers. Christ is present in all mothers in the way they cared, nurtured, nursed, supported and loved their children even if times are hard and challenging. So today, we honour all mothers and thank them for their sacrifices and for being a carrier of the loving care of Jesus Christ to the children, to the weak, to the vulnerable and to the dependent. Thank you all mothers for your love.
So today as we celebrate this Solemnity of the Ascension as well as Mothers’ Day, we thank God for our faith. We thank God for the mystery of the Ascension and for the faith and hope he gives to us, which assure that though Jesus might have gone physically, he is still present with us as he was. Let us also thank God for his gift of the Holy Spirit that prolongs and sustains the presence of Christ in our lives. For our part let this also be our prayers that we would witness our faith in a way that enables others to see Christ in and through us, and thus drawing them to Christ as well. Amen.