A Homily for the Feast of Pentecost
In the old days of the Baltimore Catechism, some of you might remember, Catholics were taught that God made us to know Him, love Him, and serve Him.
In the old days the Catholic Church focused a lot on short concise definitions, statements about our faith. The Nicene Creed, which we recite together each Sunday is one of the first of these statements. These statements of Faith are what we mean when we talk about doctrine and dogma. It’s important to remember where these definitions come from and what they lead us to, in order to realize how very important they are to the salvation of our soul.
Doctrine and Dogma, come from reality, from history, more precisely, from the history of God’s actions in the created world as recorded in Sacred Scriptures and Tradition. The most important and most difficult doctrines and dogmas come from the reality of the life of Jesus—recorded by the Church in the New Testament. When we talk about:
the Dogma of the Incarnation the belief that God became true man in the person of Jesus Christ without becoming less God
or
the Dogma of the Blessed Trinity, the belief that there is one God who is none-the-less three persons
or
the Immaculate Conception, the belief that Mary by a singular gift was preserved from the damage of original sin so that she could be a fitting mother of our Lord
we are expressing the realities that we read about in Sacred Scriptures, realities that although God doesn’t reveal explicitly, giving us a textbook or an in depth lecture on, He reveal in the richest way possible—through human experience. These experiences and the Spirit of God prompts people to record them, prompts the Church, the people of God, to recognize them as Revelation, as God’s dialogue with humanity, and prompts the Church to reflect on them until at last still guided by the spirit the Church formulates them into a definition, a doctrine.
The Church does this to protect the truth, the gift of truth we receive when the Word of God became man. Christ came as the Truth into the world to help the blind see, and the blindness that He came to heal was not the physical blindness that affects a few but the spiritual blindness that affects everyone here.
WE ARE ALL BLIND TO THE REALITY OF GOD BECAUSE OF SIN! BECAUSE OF OUR SINS AND THE SINS OF HUMANITY
Christ is the Truth about man and God that came into the world so that we might have life and have it more abundantly! The Truth of Jesus Christ is the only way for us to approach the Father, to enter Heaven and be welcomed there as a child of God. And so protect the integrity of the Truth is of supreme importance. That is why Christ says that it is better that I go, so that I might send the Spirit, Because the Spirit of God does three things in the world and in the Church that are essential to our eternal life and happiness.
First it is given to the Church to protect the deposit of Faith to protect the Church from ever loosing the key to heaven, the truth of Jesus Christ. As Catholics we believe that because Christ created the Church and gave the Church His Spirit, no matter how often we Christians fail, the Church cannot fail.
Second, the Spirit teaches us. As Jesus says “the Spirit will teach you all things and reminds us of what I [Christ] taught.” It’s not enough just to know God or to know Christ, in a superficial way. The Spirit helps us to truly love God. When we love someone we want to know more about them, The Spirit assists the Church to reflect on the FACTS of history that reveal God working in creation so that we can know more about him through his actions, just as we learned about our parents love for us each time they held us, fed us, comforted us in sorrow or sickness and rejoice in our successes.
Finally, loving God means wanting to know God, but also to serve God, and so the Spirit gives us the power of God, the power of Faith, Hope and Love, so that we might Love God by serving Him, primarilyby loving and serving His other Children. The Church is Holy not because of its members but primarily because it is filled with the Holy Spirit, and with so many holy men and women who filled with the Holy Spirit of God have taken the doctrines of the Church and put them into practice.
Our Faith is DEAD is it is only a notional thing, if its only an idea and a series of meaningless ceremonies. Friends REMEMBER the devil and all his fallen angels believe in God, they know the truth at least as well as the Church does, and yet they have chosen to ignore the truth. Hopefully at the end our lives none of us will be in that situation. Each of us received the Spirit in Baptism and the Spirit gives life to our souls, if only we will open our heart up to God.
If you are here, sitting in the back row of the Church ready to make a bolt for the door once you’ve received communion, or sitting in the front row, ready to wait until the end of closing hymn but still essentially take God for granted for the rest of the week until next week you come back to fulfill your obligation, I ask you to think about whether you really have the Love of God in my heart? It’s a question I ask myself every day. A question that we all need to consider.
Are we doing what we were created for, and what God promises will make us happy: knowing, loving, and serving God each day with the help of the Holy Spirit?
The Spirit makes it possible for us to encounter God today and to begin to know Him, and to serve Him. That’s what the gifts of the Spirit: Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Courage, Knowledge, Piety, and Wonder and Awe, are all about. These gifts that were given to the young people of the Parish this past Thursday at Confirmation aren’t just for them, but for all of us, that we might have Life. Lets make the prayer to the Holy Spirit our own today:
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