Happy Birthday, Church! Pentecost 2014

Happy Birthday, Church.

If you think about it, there are other occasions that we could very well pick as the “birth of the Church.” Like when Jesus taught us to pray the Our Father, we could say that a community gathered to pray in Jesus’ name is the Church, so that’s where it began. Or Holy Thursday, when he washed their feet and instituted the Eucharist: we could very well say that those comprise the essence of our mission and identity, and that the Church was born that day. Or all the way back to the Annunciation, when the Word became Flesh, because the Church is the Body of Christ, and the Body of Christ began to exist in Mary’s womb that day. But instead of any of these very good choices, the Church claims as her birthday this day: Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit.


Have you ever seen the moment that wind fills a sail? A moment before, the sail is dangling and swaying chaotically, hanging limp or flapping around a little. And then suddenly, and invisibly, the sail is filled with wind. There’s a “whump” sound and a jolt and you’re underway. 

Pentecost is the moment that wind fills the sails, the moment we dump the clutch, the moment we yell “outside” and the gates swing out, four…three…two…one… Ignition. Before Pentecost, Jesus had disciples. After, he had a Church.

We call the Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church. And what’s a soul? It’s the difference between a body and a corpse. It’s the difference between a living thing and a dead one. Without the Holy Spirit we aren’t the living Body of Christ, but a dead thing where it used to be. Without the Holy Spirit, we aren’t the Church. We’re just a club. We might be quite a good club, might have growing numbers and sound finances and a long list of good works to be proud of, but we aren’t the Church. There are a lot of good clubs around, and they do a lot of good. But there’s only one Church. If the Elks start to slack off, the Lions can pick up the slack. If the Church slacks off, there’s nothing else. For how many Catholics, how many Christians, has the spark of life gone out of religion? For how many has the sail fallen limp? For how many has membership in the Body of Christ given way to something more like membership in a club?

We have to pray for the Holy Spirit, every day. We can’t be the Church without Him. Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and enkindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your spirit and they shall be created. And you shall renew the face of the earth.

That’s exactly what we need, and that’s all that we need.

Around our diocese, parishes are merging and restructuring because where there were once hundreds of practicing Catholics, there are now fewer than fifty. Sometimes there are perfectly natural reasons for that, like that we have smaller families on bigger farms, fewer jobs, and decreasing populations. Things change. Much more tragic, though, is when someone shows me an old First Communion photo in black and white, and starts pointing people out, and it’s a broken record of “well, they don’t come to Church anymore, and here’s so-and-so, they stopped coming to Church, and….” Everybody’s got opinions, but we have to begin and end with this pleas: Come, Holy Spirit, and fill the hearts of your faithful, and enkindle in them the fire of your love.

The clergy have managed to bring our credibility to an all-time low, which, if you study Church history, is really saying something. And that’s only part of the reason why our diocese has been so barren of priestly vocations. People who haven’t had a priest in their family for three or four generations will loudly complain that their parish is served by an international missionary. Thank God for the missionaries, without whom a dozen or more parishes would shut down tomorrow. Where are our vocations? Our goal should be to be a Church that sends missionaries! Everybody’s got opinions, but we begin and end with this plea: Come, Holy Spirit, and raise up workers for the harvest, shepherds after the Father’s own heart.

All around us, the Spirit is at work and moving and changing lives. I see it all the time and it gives me hope. Young people who want their lives to be about something, who want to find their way to their hearts’ deepest longing, who want to find their way to God. They’re discovering the beauty of teachings their parents discarded long ago as old-fashioned or out-of-touch. They’re falling in love with the beauty of Catholicism, like a lost treasure found in the corner of the attic. They are inspiring and heroic, and trying to hang on in the midst of a culture that provides so little support for anything like holiness, purity, virtue. But they are holding on, and they are the hope of the Church in southern Illinois. Come, Holy Spirit, and fill young hearts with your fire, and we shall be Created.

There are things going well and things going badly, signs of decay and signs of hope. Some people see a picture that is overall quite bright, others quite gloomy. But we can all begin and end with this plea, this prayer: Come, Holy Spirit.

Young and old, married and single, rich and poor, enkindle in us the fire of your love, and we shall be created. And the parish of St. Kateri Tekakwitha, Lily of the Mohawks, the Catholic Church in Gallatin County, won’t just be another club. We’ll be the Body of Christ. We’ll burst out of that locked upper room and change the world. We’ll make disciples. We’ll set this land on fire with the Gospel. The Holy Spirit can do that, and only the Holy Spirit can do that! And it can only happen in your homes and in your hearts. Your priest can’t make it happen. Our parish council can’t make it happen. The Bishop can’t make it happen. Building a new church can’t make it happen. It happens in Catholic homes, or it doesn’t happen. It happens when you decide to pray a daily rosary, or start attending Bible Study, or listen to some Catholic CD’s, or read good spiritual books, or come for a First Friday Holy Hour, or if you actually are the busiest person in the universe, if there’s literally no time for anything else, at least pray the Sunday Mass with all the devotion you can muster. It happens when we start living our Faith radically, including in the ways that are demanding and countercultural, and don’t just toss it aside when it asks something difficult. It happens when we take back Sunday as a Holy Day and as a family day, and woe to anybody who tries to infringe on that sacred day! I’m just rattling off a list of things, but for today just pick one thing. Nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something to grow in faith. Don’t be discouraged by an insurmountable list of deficiencies; nobody can work on everything at once. Think of one thing, maybe something I’ve just mentioned, maybe something the Holy Spirit is laying on your heart personally, think of one thing you can do to invite more of His power into your life. 

Think of it as our job to raise the sails. The Spirit is blowing, there’s no question about that. But does He find your sail raised and ready, or just an empty mast? Is your sail pointed and trimmed to receive God’s Spirit, or are you looking for power some other direction? Are you anchored by fear or laziness, or free and ready to move? Are you tethered to all kinds of sinful obstacles, or just to boredom and routine? 

I’d like to leave you with a long quote from Pope Francis: 

“Newness always makes us a bit fearful, because we feel more secure if we have everything under control, if we are the ones who build, program and plan our lives in accordance with our own ideas, our own comfort, our own preferences. This is also the case when it comes to God. Often we follow him, we accept him, but only up to a certain point. It is hard to abandon ourselves to him with complete trust, allowing the Holy Spirit to be the soul and guide of our lives in our every decision. We fear that God may force us to strike out on new paths and leave behind our all too narrow, closed and selfish horizons in order to become open to his own. Yet throughout the history of salvation, whenever God reveals himself, he brings newness and change, and demands our complete trust: Noah, mocked by all, builds an ark and is saved; Abram leaves his land with only a promise in hand; Moses stands up to the might of Pharaoh and leads his people to freedom; the apostles, huddled fearfully in the Upper Room, go forth with courage to proclaim the Gospel. This is not a question of novelty for novelty’s sake, the search for something new to relieve our boredom, as is so often the case in our own day. The newness which God brings into our life is something that actually brings fulfilment, that gives true joy, true serenity, because God loves us and desires only our good. Let us ask ourselves: Are we open to Gods surprises?”

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