As
well celebrate Pentecost today, think about how we start mass each time we
gather around the table of the Lord. After
we make the sign of the cross, we begin the holy sacrifice of the Mass, commemorating the Passion and Resurrection of
our Lord that Jesus first celebrated with his disciples at the Last Supper and
quoting from St. Paul's second letter to the Corinthians: "The grace of
the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the communion of the Holy Spirit be
with you all." God as
a Trinity, as 3 divine persons that comprise one God, is a central mystery of
our Christian faith. The Holy Spirit is
an essential part of our God.
Today, we celebrate the solemnity of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit
into the world. We
invoke the Holy Spirit today as we celebrate our baccalaureate Mass with our
youth who are graduating from high school. As a
priest this weekend, I am celebrating or con-celebrating 7 different masses,
marking different moments in our lives of faith. Besides our 4 weekend masses at St James, I
am celebrating a baptism and a presentation of a 3-year old with one of the
families in our parish on Saturday evening, I am concelebrating at the
ordination mass of Joseph Le and Jason Johnson of our diocese in the cathedral
in Jackson, and then on Sunday evening, I am celebrating a funeral
liturgy. In
all the diverse moments of our life of faith, the Holy Spirit is there is
celebrate our joys with us, to console us in our sorrows, and to be there in
the ordinary moments that make up our lives to lead us and guide us.
St
Augustine, one of the great theologians and leaders of our Catholic faith, who
was Bishop of Hippo in northern Africa in the early 5th century,
prayed this beautiful prayer to the Holy Spirit:
Breathe
in me, O Holy Spirit, that my thoughts may all be holy.
Act in
me, O Holy Spirit, that my work, too, may be holy.
Draw my
heart, O Holy Spirit, that I love but what is holy.
Strengthen
me, O Holy Spirit, to defend all that is holy.
Guard
me, then, O Holy Spirit, that I always may be holy. Amen.
No
matter what path God calls us to in life, no matter what our accomplishments or
our accolades, no matter what our gifts and talents, we need the Holy Spirit of
God as a beacon of light and guide in our lives just as St Augustine invoked
the Holy Spirit in his prayer.
Of those of you who are graduating this year,
I remember when most of you went through confirmation last year. That sacrament of confirmation is all about
the Holy Spirit as well, of the Holy Spirit entering your lives in a special
way and infusing you with wisdom, faith, and understanding. When
I had the interviews with all of you at the beginning and the end of your
confirmation journey, I remember many of you telling me about the wonderful
experiences you had during your confirmation year and how you had progressed on
your journey of faith. Others told me of struggles you had on your journey of faith, of certain
doctrines of the church that you struggled with, of not wanting to come to mass
or not feeling fulfilled on your journey. As I
think about your confirmation journey a year ago, as I think about all of your
accomplishments this past year and of your hope and dreams that are
accompanying you to college and to the workforce in this new phase of your
lives, I think of all the prayers and best wishes that will be accompanying you
from our parish, your family, and your loved ones. Out
my love and care for you as your pastor, the best advice I can give on the day
of your baccalaureate Mass is to encourage you to not only be a life-long
learner on your journey through life, but specifically to be a life-long
learner on your journey of faith. Our
faith can seem to by a mystery sometimes that is so difficult to understand or
comprehend. In fact, the Danish existentialist
philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once said: “If you think you understand, then, it
is not God.” But
through our faith we seek greater understanding. And through our understanding, we grow in our
faith. And
that faith and understanding can come through different experiences we have on
our journey of faith – when we are praying the Stations of the Cross or the
Rosary, when we are receiving the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist,
when we are contemplating God in front of the Blessed Sacrament, when we are
reading his Holy Word, when we attending a Bible study or prayer group, or when
we are serving one of our brothers and sisters through a work of mercy.
As
Paul tells us today in his first letter to the Corinthians, it is the Holy
Spirit that allows us to call Jesus “Lord”; it is the Holy Spirit that forms us
in the Church, to form one Body out of so many parts and so many diverse gifts. As we
celebrate the Holy Spirit and the end of the Easter Season today, as we
celebrate with all of our graduates, we pray that the Holy Spirit of God come
into our lives, to renew us, to renew our Church, and to renew the face of the
earth.
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