|
|
From Archbishop Donoghue|
Pentecost Sunday |
Dear Friends in Christ, On this feast of Pentecost, we bring to an end, the most joyful time in the Church's year, the Easter Season. For some weeks, we have celebrated the rising of Our Lord from the dead - we have heard in our readings the stories of His appearances to the Apostles and to many of His friends - we have heard the words whereby He entrusted His mission, the mission of justice and of love, to His followers - we have seen Jesus sit down and celebrate what were essentially the first Eucharistic celebrations, the beginning of our holy rites that persist until this day, and will persist until the end of time - and finally, we have remembered this past Thursday, the day of Christ's glorious Ascension - the final sign that there is true hope for human nature, the hope of ascending, at the end of our days, into the everlasting presence of God, the Father, who gave us perfect life in the beginning, and who restored it to us in the person of Jesus Christ, His Son. But for now, the man Jesus has left us, and will not come again in person until the Last Judgement. We often wonder why Jesus did leave - we ask ourselves, if He had accomplished His mission on earth, then why didn't things just end - certainly, some of the Apostles and disciples felt that they were living in the last days, and that Jesus' ascent to the Father was but the opening act of what would be the conclusion of the whole salvation saga - the actual end of time itself. But centuries have passed, and we realize now, that the length and measure of the Christian era is a mystery known only to the all-seeing Father. And we must also conclude that Jesus Himself was aware of the broad strokes of time, used by the Father to paint the immense canvas that we call reality - that we call creation. He knew that what God the Father had brought about, through the birth and death and rising of the Son, was a miracle that must stretch out over time and find its fitting end in the nature of how things are, and how things will come to be. In the immensity of this divine drama, we are not left alone by the departure of Christ's human self. Soon after the Ascension, the living Spirit of God came upon the Apostles and upon Mary, the Mother of God - and since that initial encounter, down through the centuries, the Spirit of God has always been present to the Faithful - always breathing endurance, inspiration, and wisdom into the Church - always being the Force which calls us together, and tells us to rise above earthly limitations and to aspire to the Perfect, the True, the Divine. But how do we see this Holy Spirit - how do we know Him, the Paraclete, sent from the Father to guide us through life? For as men and women of faith have always believed, spiritual beings are invisible to earthly beings, and live on another plane of reality from us. Yet, we DO want to see Him - the Church prays every day, as we have prayed this morning - "Come, Holy Spirit, Come. Shed your light on us, shine within us." If we look for Him to sit among us, as Christ sat among His Apostles, we will not see Him. If we search for Him in the splendor of nature and nature's law, where so much of the presence of God is felt, we will see but a shadow, a reflected glimpse of the Holy Spirit. Even the Fathers of the Church saw Him only indistinctly - as a dove, as tongues of fire, as the roaring wind, which comes from nowhere, yet stirs up all in its path. No - we cannot look with the eyes of the body and expect to see the Source of all goodness - rather we must look with the eyes of the soul. And if look with the eyes of our soul - if we pray together as a Church, and if we seek to surrender ourselves to His love through the Sacraments, than eventually, we do see - and hear- and feel - and know the presence and the goodness of the Holy Spirit. Here in the Church - where we listen to the Word of God, where we learn the teachings of our Faith, where we raise our voices in prayer and song, where we feast upon the Body and Blood of the Lord, and where we take our fill of grace, our fill of the love of God. Here in the Church - is the first place where we see the Holy Spirit, if such a splendid vision can be called seeing at all - here with our brothers and sisters of like faith, here in the heart of our soul's home - the Church - the one, the holy, the catholic and apostolic Church, where the Spirit is ever present in the prayer and praise and supplications, of the Priests and the People of God. Dear friends, let us bless the Spirit of God on this Feast of Pentecost, on this day of the birth of our Church - and let us ask the Father, to shed upon us the gifts of the Holy Spirit - to fill our souls with all blessing - and to bring us steadfastly, through the life and death we must suffer, into the eternal peace of heaven and the everlasting love of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen. + |