Homily
for May 27, 2007
Liturgical Year C - Cycle I
Pentecost Sunday
By Dcn. Ray Alcouffe Topic:
The Gift of the Holy Spirit
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“I will ask the Father,
and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always.”
Today is Pentecost Sunday when we
celebrate the coming of
the Holy Spirit to us. Moreover, because
of this Holy Spirit, we celebrate this day as the birthday of the
church when
the church, the people of God, first became a living organism.
This is then really a celebration of life,
life given as a gift to us as individuals and as a community called by
God to
be God’s presence on earth. All this
done in the Holy Spirit who we confess in the creed by saying: “We
believe in
the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the
Father and
the Son. With the Father and the Son He is worshiped and
glorified.
He has spoken through the prophets.” When we proclaim the creed, we are
confessing that the
Holy Spirit, the other advocate promised by Jesus to be with us always,
is
fully God. It is this Spirit that gives
life; and because the Spirit has spoken through the prophets, the
Spirit is a
separate person, one with whom we can enter into a relationship. The
Spirit is
the love of God entering into our lives. This brings to mind an image of God,
which I think,
expresses who God is for us. That is, we
can envision God the Father as the center of radiation - something like
the
sun. The radiation is itself God filling all space with His presence as
God’s
love - this is the Holy Spirit. In this
way God is both transcendent, far removed from us as Creator of the
universe
and at the same time be present to us in the most intimate of ways. Another, more earth based view, is
that the Holy Spirit
is the answer to the question of God knowing us and entering our
lives.
Does God know me? Does God love me? Does God care about my life -
who I am, what
I do, who I shall become? The Holy Spirit answers through the prophet:
“Can a
mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her
womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget
you.” How do we know and experience this God
who loves us so
and is the ultimate reason for our existence?
There is a multitude of ways. For
example, God the Creator can be disclosed through creation
itself.
All the natural sciences provide us with
knowledge of the universe and its workings.
From this, we get a glimpse of the nature of God even to God’s design
for life itself. God also is disclosed
through human events and human intentions.
Our human strivings and our natural moral code tell us about our
Creator
who gave us these impetuses in our very nature.
All human history, including our personal history, is included in our
knowledge of God. Since we as human beings have a spiritual component,
we can
identify through human events what is from God who is pure
spirit.
Thus, we ‘hear’ God through our spiritual
capacities, those of knowing and loving.
Thus it is through words that our intellect is informed; hence we
know. However, another way is through
love - our love relationships. We come
to know persons through our capacity for love.
Have you had an experience with either a friend or spouse where in
their
presence words would be a hindrance in knowing them? At those moments
you are
enveloped in the experience of just loving one another - kind of like
soaking
up the rays of the sun. These moments
with one another are gifts and we associate these with our
spirits.
In the same way we have those moments with
God, moments where we ‘know’ God loves us and loves us
unconditionally.
These moments of prayer are moments of
experience of the Holy Spirit. As we look back on our lives, if we
look to see where the
Holy Spirit has been present to us, we may be able to see that the
Spirit has
been there at all times, both in the good and the bad times, even when
we were
not aware of it at the time. That brings
us to one of the most important associations of being in the spirit;
that is
joy. Joy, being joyful, is one of the
most profound and healing experiences of having the indwelling of the
Holy
Spirit. Joy is the fruit of gratitude to
God for creating us, knowing us, and loving us - no matter what. I
never tire
of repeating the definition of joy as, “the experience of knowing that
you are
unconditionally loved and that nothing - sickness, failure, emotional
distress,
oppression, war, even death - can take that love away” (H. Nouwen) in
relation
to God, this experience is mediated through the Holy Spirit. If
we are attuned to the workings of the
Spirit, if we accept the Spirit of Jesus into our lives, then every
moment is
one where we experience joy - no matter what else is going on in our
lives. Joan and I recently had a
conversation with our son
Michael that is related to this. As many
of you know, some 23+ years ago Michael suffered a devastating
automobile
accident that resulted in an extremely severe traumatic brain
injury.
We were remarking how much that event changed
his personality. Before the accident,
Michael had been pretty much of an introvert, keeping most everything
to
himself and was very reserved among other people. After his
recovery, Michael became very much
the extrovert and very much the kidder whose sense of humor is
extraordinary -
sometime embarrassing to his parents. He
corrected us and told us that all that was there before the accident
but he
didn’t let it out - that he, Michael had not changed - just that his
inhibitions were eliminated. He would not wish such an accident on
anyone, but
he is grateful for the life he is living since and it brings him
joy.
Being grateful to God is our response to God
the Holy Spirit working in our lives. That being the case, I can testify for
both Joan and I
that we are so grateful for our years being a deacon couple here at
IHM.
It’s hard to believe that it is now 20 years
since that Pentecost Sunday that I was ordained. The journey started
way before
that in our experiencing our deacons here, Chet Kazek, Tony Porto,
Charlie
Pacheco, Chuck Frantz. They helped
Joan and me dispel many of our reservations about entering a service to
the
church that entailed such a commitment.
The main stipulation was that I had to get my priorities straight. It
was to put family first, then the job, and then the church. Once
we agreed in 1983 to start the four year
education and spiritual process, Michael was in his accident.
That was a sign to us that the diaconate was
not to be. But then, as Michael got out
of danger and started his recovery, Joan and I re-evaluated and she
took on the
regimen of rehab while I started classes. The Holy Spirit was
definitely our
comforter and advocate at that time and has continued to be all those
years
since. I feel so blessed by our God, first of all for Joan and our
family (even
with the trials and tribulations), and for this parish. Being a small
part of
your lives is one of the gifts of the spirit for Joan and me - and out
of
gratitude, we hope to continue. God
bless...