Pentecost, 2010

My brothers and sisters, Pentecost is the annual celebration of the birthday of the Church.  So, happy birthday, Church!  This is the day the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles who were gathered in fear in the upper room, after 9 days of intense prayer. 

Jesus had for 3 years taught about the Kingdom of God, worked miracles, and selected followers who would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, who would change the world.  But then Jesus seemed like a failure as he was tried, found guilty and executed by the most humiliating form of capital punishment: crucifixion. 

Failure, however, was only the prelude to the victory of the cross.  He rose from the dead, assuring the apostles that all that he said and did and promised was true.  Then after 40 days of this reassurance, he ascended to the right hand of the Father “from whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.”  He told the apostles to go to Jerusalem and await the gift of God, soon to come upon them.  Nine days they waited and prayed and then came the Holy Spirit, empowering them and transforming them.  They had been fearful, doubtful, unsure of what was happening, distrustful, and insecure.  They were transformed by the power of the Spirit to be courageous, firm in faith, trusting in God, and boldly proclaiming Jesus as Lord – eventually even to the point, in the end, of dying themselves as martyrs, ie.e witnesses to this Lord.

Courage, fidelity, and willingness to boldly profess the faith, while totally trusting in Divine Providence, do not seem to be hallmarks of the Church today, do they? 

This is not a time in the Church’s history when we feel strong.  It’s more like the time in the Upper Room, a time of fear and feeling lost.  Secular forces are increasingly making us feel that we have lost our way.  We seem weak and unable to articulate the Gospel message in a way that can be heard in the world today.  We feel marginalized.  We read headline news of scandals that thrill the culture, humiliating us in the process.  In these days it is fashionable to ridicule the Church even to the point of hating the Church, finding countless examples, it seems, to invalidate our vocation to be holy and to call others to holiness.  As a result, there are times when even we feel that everything is collapsing.

It is time, better late than never, to implore the Holy Spirit to come upon us once again to enliven us, strengthen us, embolden us to be what we are called to be: the Church of Jesus Christ whose Holy Spirit animates us as the soul of the Church.

Enough then of timidity!  We have caved under the pressure of political correctness.  We have silently watched and stood by as vice and sin have made steady progress in winning souls while virtue is not even allowed to be whispered.  Who today is espousing chastity?  Who is encouraging fidelity to the Commandments?  Who today is encouraging our children to grow into bearing witness to Christ by a holy life?  Who even sees holiness as something to be desired? 

Instead of living up to what the Second Vatican Council called “the universal call to holiness”, we have slowly watched all that we value and espouse as a life of holiness slowly slide off a cliff and out of mind and sight for those who are coming after us.

Today licentiousness is the religion of the day.  The entitled attitude of “it’s all about me” has degraded any sense of self-restraint, simplicity and consciousness of understanding how one’s own moral choices impact the rest of society.

But there is hope!  The Spirit is alive and well, evident in the Church and outside of the Church.  In the world we see the beginnings of a widespread sense of how each person’s choices are impacting the environment.  And in the Church, we see a period of purification that is helping us all come to terms with realizing how each person’s sins or scandals can impact the entire Church.

As Jesus told St. Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness."   So, Church, on this our birthday, let us ask the Lord Jesus to intercede with our Father in Heaven to send the Holy Spirit upon us in a new outpouring of grace, that we may be strong and live up to our calling, the universal call to holiness.

O Mary, Queen of the Apostles, you were present at the first Pentecost, pray for us today that we, in our nothingness, may be empowered by the Holy Spirit to be Christ's presence in the world today.