Peace be with you - Living in the Spirit

Pentecost Sunday Homily

May 24, 2015

Pentecost, the great Feast of the Holy Spirit, is sometimes referred to as the birthday of the Church.  I always had an easy time picturing the first two Persons of the Holy Trinity.  God the Father looked like everyone's very old grandfather. Bearded, kindly.  Jesus, due to the last two thousand years of artistic tradition, is a piece of cake. The hard one, in my mind at least, has been the Holy Spirit. At least we can always fall back on the white dove.  

During the three years of his public ministry, Jesus traveled, slept, ate, and taught his Apostles.  He showed them, in various manners, what sharing in God’s grace would mean in their lives.  He gave them the power to work great wonders, healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, casting demons out of the possessed.   Inevitably, though, as weak humans, they misunderstood, doubted, and argued amongst themselves.  This process of preparing them for their own public ministry continued throughout this time. Eventually, things came to a head during the passion, death.  After their triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, to the shouts of Hosana, our Lord’s instruction was at its most clear.  He explained to them that the Christ, the Messiah, was not to be, as some expected, a warrior king, but was, rather, to be seen as a suffering servant, to be seen as one who was willing to lay down his life for his friends.

Well and good, right?  No.  Instead of understanding his instruction, the apostles missed the point entirely.  At Jesus’ moment of greatest need, they deserted him, ran from him, denied they knew him.

As we all know, Jesus broke the bonds of death, and rose from the dead.  The apostles were huddled together, behind locked doors, in the upper room, fearful, paralyzed, afraid that they might share the same fate as he had. He appeared to the apostles, and very first words that the resurrected Lord spoke to them were “Peace be with you.” 

Peace be with you.  Don’t be afraid. It’s me.  I’m not a ghost.  Touch me.  See the wounds in my hands and feet.  Eat with me.  His first concern is to put them at ease, because all has been forgiven.  Many times before, Jesus had spoken about justice, about cutting the weeds and burning them, about the foolish being thrown into the street in the middle of the night to wail and gnash their teeth.  But now, he speaks to them words of peace.  Then he breaths on them.  This is not any random description.  The Greek word used here, pneuma, is a word of action, meaning Spirit and also wind or breath.  In giving them his Holy Spirit, he breathed new life into them, the very life of God.  This power transformed the apostles.  Instead of hiding, frozen with fear, they became fearless and powerful preachers.  Instead of being ruled, as Paul says in our second reading by works of the flesh: immorality, impurity, lust, idolatry, fury, selfishness, dissension, envy and orgies, they manifested the fruit of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Now, in our own lives, just as Jesus feeds us with his very Body and Blood, he enlivens us with his Spirit.  With this Spirit, we are no longer slaves to our flesh and our passions.  Now, with this Spirit, we can be strong, fearless, resolute.  Our lives will still have trials and tribulations. We are still beset with weakness and fear.  We will still be challenged by an ever increasingly secular society, a society that tries to tell us that black is white, that evil is good, that the unnatural is natural.  Now, instead of giving into those fears, we can, with the help of the Holy Spirit, respond that Right is still Right, that wrong is still wrong, that there is no such thing as your truth which is different from my truth, that truth is absolute, and real.  Now, we, who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified our flesh with its passions and desires. 

As Paul said to the Galatians, “If we live in the Spirit, let us also follow the Spirit.”

Failure. Disappointment. Guilt. Shame.

Homily – Third Sunday of Easter – April 19, 2015

Failure.  Disappointment.  Guilt.  Shame.

Strong emotions, all of them.  We’ve all felt them at one time or another.  We’ve felt them when we’ve let down a friend, failed to challenge an inappropriate comment or joke, told a convenient lie instead of an inconvenient truth, or broken a solemn oath.  Most of the time, we are our own harshest critics.

In today’s gospel, the apostles are in a funk.  For three years now, they have been following Jesus, eating with him, listening to him, watching in amazement as he heals the sick, gives sight to the blind, raises the dead back to life.  They see him ride into Jerusalem on a donkey to the shouts of Hosanna, fronds of palms thrown down ahead of him, covering the dusty road up into the Holy City.  All of their hopes are rising.  Then the unthinkable happens!  Jesus is betrayed, arrested, scourged, and crucified.  He dies on the cross, and is hurriedly buried.  As their master is laying down his life, they abandon him, run away from him, deny they ever knew him.

Now, they are together in the Cenacle, the upper room where they shared their last meal together three days ago, hiding, afraid.  There is talk of some women having seen the risen Lord, but, perhaps because of their own self-recriminations, they are still fearful, worried that the authorities will choose to similarly end their lives, feeling guilt and shame.

Then, two of the disciples, Cleophas, a cousin of Jesus, and an unnamed companion rush into the room.. They have seen Jesus alive, spoken to him, broken bread with him. The eleven are puzzled, not sure what to think.  Then Jesus is there in their midst.  “Peace be with you!”  He sees the frightened look on their faces, reads the doubts in their hearts, and assures them that they are not seeing a ghost.  He shows them the holes in his feet and hands, and eats with them. 

Just as he did with the companions on the road, he breaks open the Law and the Prophets, opens their eyes to all that was foretold about him, and explains that what had happened was not a failure but a triumph.  He ends his appearance by telling them of their new mission, preaching to all of the world of repentance, for the forgiveness of sins.

  

In light of all of this, how are we to proceed?  What are we to make of our failures, our disappointments, our guilt, our shame?  We are to be disciples of the Lord.  Although they were sinners, they were forgiven by Jesus.  Although they ran from him in his great need, he ate with them, taught them, allayed their fears.  And in the end, emboldened by the Holy Spirit, they spread his message to the world, laying down their lives as a testimony to their beliefs.

We, like them, are forgiven by the Lord for our failures, not in person, but in Persona Christi.   By confessing our sins to the priest, it is Jesus himself, through the priest, who forgives us with the words of absolution.

We, like the disciples, are fed by the Lord.  Not by mere food, which a persons eats and hungers again.  We are fed by Jesus with his very Body and Blood, in the Eucharist.  Just as they saw the resurrected Lord, and still doubted, some of us still walk to the altar, thinking that what they are about to receive is mere bread and wine, when in truth, it is Jesus himself.  When we feel the doubts rising in our hearts, we can sit before Him, in adoration.  We can feel his warm embrace, experience his calming presence, hear his words in our hearts, “Be not afraid”.

We, like the disciples, must spread the Good News, proclaiming the Mercy shown by the Lord in our own lives.