HAPPY BLESSED BIRTHDAY TO YOU!
Today marks the end of the Easter season and the birth of the Church that Jesus established, fifty days after His resurrection. He’d requested of the Father that Their other self – the Holy Spirit – be given to his apostles, and the Father obliged. The mighty wind and the tongues of fire that rested on their heads filled them with strength, gifted them with multilingual abilities, and caused them to convert 3,000 Jews that day to faith in Christ.
So was born the Church. So, happy birthday, all you who journey in the fellowship of the Spirit!
In the Old Testament Pentecost is called the Feast of Weeks or the Feast of First-fruits. It took place 50 days after Passover, which was also connected with the barley harvest. Pentecost also coincided with the giving of the law at Mount Sinai, which was 50 days after the very first Passover when the Israelites left Egypt. So this was a festival tied to several things for the Israelites, and celebrating this festival helped them remember the Passover, the exodus, and how God gave them commandments to live blessed lives.
Today’s Scripture readings remind us that Pentecost is an event of both the past and the present. And it includes our entreaty in the Sequence: that pleading, passionate prayer to the Holy Spirit that gives us pause to meditate on what God’s Spirit is in our lives, as the medieval Church first designed it and set it to music, extending the Alleluia verse, from 9AD.
We see the Holy Spirit throughout both Old and New Testaments: in the act of creation (Gen 1:2) divinely inspiring prophecies, in Jesus’ baptism, in His guidance of Jesus throughout the Son’s ministry, in Acts where He continues to guide the apostles.
Active since before the world was formed, the Spirit continues to act in us today. But in what ways?
· Dwelling in us, He makes us living temples of God. That is, of course, if we cooperate by focusing on ‘the spiritual life’ and let Him feed our desire to live as children and heirs of the Father.
· Sanctifying us through each one of the Sacraments, He makes us holy, deepens our relationship with the Father and the Son, makes us into family and community, feeds and nourishes us.
· Teaching and guiding us, He clarifies and constantly reminds us of what Jesus taught.
· Listening to and speaking with us, He helps us pray and helps us to find God in His Word, and in our communion with the Church.
· Giving all who ask gifts of the soul, He showers us with His fruits and charisms, and enriches the Church when we use these as He inspires.
Even the forgiveness of sins comes through the Holy Spirit (John 20:21-23). The Holy Spirit both confirmed the apostles in Holy Orders as priests and empowered them to forgive sins by His power – a work He continues in our clergy.
Jesus kept His promise to never leave His followers. He sent them, and us, a permanent Companion, a Companion that’s also a Helper, a Teacher, a Guide, a Comforter, an Advocate.
The Holy Spirit is there in all His fullness wherever we worship and pray in Jesus’ name. His is the prompting, the quiet insistent voice urging us to turn away from our sinfulness, reassuring us that we are still loved in spite of our sin, and that Jesus died on a cross particularly for times when we rebel against God's way. He confronts us, makes us take a good look at ourselves and our direction, and reminds us to trust in Jesus’ way and turn around again.
He can change our lives, helping us to be more patient and forgiving, to seek new beginnings in our relationships with one another. If we ask Him, He can show us how to let the power of God's love have the final say over our sins, our troubles, our fears. At every moment of every day He is available, and He can help us fight to make the choice between being self-centred or God-centred.
If – and only if – we make the daily effort to speak with Him as He lives in us, and ask for His help.
The Spirit of God has made His home in you
The first Pentecost ignited on a global scale the fire that started burning a long, long time ago: when Yahweh appeared to Moses in the burning bush and told him he was standing on holy ground. It blazed on Sinai, marking the mountain as a symbolic temple where God was giving His commandments for a life of holiness; and when the tabernacle was built and God hovered over it in a huge column of fire. Again, the fire burned steadily when Israel built a permanent temple, an indication of God’s presence among His people.
Now in the room where the apostles were, that fire made a temple out of each of them: no longer was God in one geographical place, in a fixed temple, inaccessible to the rest of the world. He would forever be present in His very own people who put their faith in Jesus, chose to follow Him, and bound themselves to Him.
The Pentecostal fire isn’t just in the candle. It’s burning inside us. We are the temple now!
‘The Spirit of God has made His home in you,’ Paul tells the Romans. ‘…there is no necessity for us to obey our unspiritual selves…’. In fact, far from following the dictates of our own desires and urges, Jesus says that we love Him, we will keep His commandments, keep His word.
And We shall come to him and make Our home in him
How beautiful is the thought that the Holy Spirit lives within us! Like Jesus and the Father who made the same promise.
If the full Trinity lives within us, what can we do to realise a God-centred life that unites itself with His will in our everyday activities?
We have to allow the Holy Spirit, the manifestation of the Father and the Son, to direct all our moments. We can do this by:
· strengthening ourselves with the Holy Spirit’s help against every sin and temptation
· acknowledging our weaknesses, asking for the Holy Spirit’s strength and guidance of the Holy Spirit every morning, asking His forgiveness every night, and giving that forgiveness to others
· asking the Holy Spirit to cleanse our thoughts, words, and deeds
· intently listening to the Holy Spirit’s voice coming to us through the Gospel and our faith community;
· fervently praying for the Holy Spirit’s gifts, fruits and charisms
· renewing our lives through the anointing of the Holy Spirit, offering ourselves as a holy, living sacrifice.
That last one was recently taught me by a friend, a deep spiritual influence, who’s dedicated herself to the Holy Spirit and offers her life to Him through a novena this third Person of God. While there are many who find joy in the presence of the Holy Spirit in healing sessions, some search in other ways to understand and draw closer to Him. And this renewal, re-dedication, is a comforting way to have quiet communion with God’s very Spirit and grow in intimacy with Him.
Because what does it mean to live in the Spirit? Why would we want to?
You send forth Your Spirit, they are created…
Pastor and author John Stott says, ‘Without the Holy Spirit, Christian discipleship would be inconceivable, even impossible. There can be no life without the life-giver, no understanding without the Spirit of truth, no fellowship without the unity of the Spirit, no Christlikeness of character apart from his fruit, and no effective witness without his power. As a body without breath is a corpse, so the church without the Spirit is dead.’
We want to live in the Spirit and have Him permeate our lives, because otherwise our faith is empty, filled only with platitudes, blocked from a true conversion to Jesus, hampered along our faith journey by sin and temptation with no way to fight against them. Keeping Jesus’ commandments requires more than our human will. We need the Advocate.
And not just to deepen our relationship with God. No, we have a broader role to play.
Together, this weekend’s texts nudge us to an important truth: as the apostles rushed out of that room bursting to share the Good News, so the gift of the Holy Spirit is something we’re supposed to share with others, joyfully, confidently.
Not necessarily by speaking in other languages, though.
God’s Holy Spirit gifts us each differently. For the apostles, it was a good thing He gifted them with the miracle of tongues. Think about it: the Jews in the crowd came from 16 different geographical regions. Unlike the situation at the Tower of Babel (Gen 11), Pentecost reversed the confusion of tongues and enabled the crowd to immediately understand the message of salvation. Later on in Acts, we also see how the Holy Spirit empowered the early Christians to bear witness to Christ in foreign lands, and strengthened the early martyrs during the time of brutal persecution.
The Holy Spirit calls us ministry. He calls us to continue Jesus’ mission on Earth, to make disciples of all the nations. It may not be going off into the world to proclaim the Gospel. It could be in the small things of our daily work and recreation, family life, parish and community participation. It could be heeding the Holy Spirit’s nudging to call on someone who might be drifting or searching for truth. It could be leading a ministry, or praying for someone who has no one to turn to. It might be stepping out of our comfort zone and obeying that quiet voice telling us to share our testimony of faith, serve someone with meals, volunteer with dedication through all discomfort, showing by the example of word or deed that we believe in the life of goodness and God-centered values.
There are many ways that the call to discipleship may be accomplished, but the Holy Spirit is the power for all of it.
Today, make it your own petition to ask the Holy Spirit to rekindle in you the fire of God’s love. As pilgrims of hope, and still Beacons of the East, we want to honour and respect the power of God’s Spirit, as we adore the Father and love the Son. Do the novena, as I’ve begun, to entreat His presence into every moment of your life and to walk it with you. And if all you have us a few short minutes a day, pray with earnest hope, this favourite little prayer of Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, who was beatified on 19 Sep 2010 by Pope St. John Paul II:
Come Holy Spirit
Make our ears to hear
Make our eyes to see
Make our mouths to speak
Make our hearts to seek
Make our hands to reach out
And touch the world with your love.
Amen.
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit!
Article by Joyce Norma, HFC Blog Contributor