The Miracle of Pentecost (Pentecost Sunday C)

When God closes a door, He opens up another.  Just as the ascension of our Lord practically put a closure to the mission of the historical Jesus, the Pentecost event opened up a new era—the era of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit, of course, has always been active in the life and work of Jesus; but the powerful event of Pentecost announces quite dramatically and distinctively the unique and empowering role of the Holy Spirit in elevating to a new level the same mission of Jesus Christ, this time, through the ministry of the Church.

Pentecost Sunday reminds us of two significant events that transpired as the work of the Holy Spirit: One is the “universalization” of the message of Jesus and, another is the launching of the Church on mission.

The Universalization of Jesus’ Message. Jesus lived and preached in a particular place and time. His message was necessarily couched in the symbolisms and literary styles of a particular culture. Needless to say, his message could have been meaningful only to the locality where he was situated. At Pentecost, however, the Holy Spirit universalized his otherwise localized message.  The power of the Holy Spirit overcame the “limits” of the human condition through which Jesus revealed his Father’s love.

Pentecost was originally one of the greatest feasts in Jewish calendar commemorating the giving of the Law of Moses in Mt. Sinai. Jews and foreigners coming from different countries did their pilgrimage to Jerusalem on this great feast.  So that on Pentecost day, as we have it in the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles 2:1-11, the Spirit moved the apostles to proclaim “the mighty acts of God.”  They spoke in a foreign tongue; but to the astonishment of the hearers who were from different nations, they heard and understood the message in their own language!  As recounted in Acts:  “Full of amazement and wonder, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? How is it that we hear them in our own native language?” (Acts 2:7-8).

Such is the miracle of Pentecost.  Christ’s disciples were understood by people from different nations. Indeed, as promised by Jesus, we should not let our hearts be troubled. The Holy Spirit, sent by the Father as the Paraclete, brings understanding. The Holy Spirit sees to it that Jesus’ message will be understood by many.  The Good News is now actually preached to all the ends of the earth. The Good News of God’s love is for everyone regardless of race, gender, socio-economic status. Thanks to the Holy Spirit.

The Launching of the Church on Mission. The era of the Holy Spirit is also the era of the Church. Jesus Christ has passed on to his followers the baton of responsibility to preach the Good News to all peoples. Pentecost is the moment when the Holy Spirit gave birth to the Church. It is through this community of believers that repentance and forgiveness of sins will be proclaimed. The Church is on mission.

Pentecost Sunday reminds us that the Church’s being and mission is essentially dependent on the enabling power of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that guides the Church to proclaim the truth of God’s love; it is the Holy Spirit that empowers her to forgive sins; it is the Holy Spirit that animates the Church with manifold gifts for various ministries. It is the Holy Spirit that draws together people of diverse cultures and it is the Holy Spirit that incorporates them into the one body of Christ.

Understanding the indispensable role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church brings a sigh of relief to pastoral agents facing great challenges in continuing the mission of the Church.  Pastoral work, after all, is not about the work of the pastor. It is the work of the Holy Spirit. Those who are working in the Church should not commit the mistake of believing that the Church’s work is their own personal project. If they do, they’ll be impoverishing the community, reducing the ministry to a pathetic display of their self-proclaimed expertise, oblivious of the manifold gifts of the Holy Spirit present in all the members of the community.

Today is Pentecost Sunday.  Let us pray for the miracle of Pentecost:  May the Holy Spirit once again embolden and inspire the Church  to preach the gospel of Christ with a renewed conviction and enthusiasm; and may through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Church proclaim effectively the grace of repentance and forgiveness of sins and welcome into her warm embrace those who enter the Holy Door of God's mercy. 

God’s Two Hands (6th Sunday Easter C)

The Father works with his two hands: the Word and the Spirit. It was Irenaeus of Lyons, one of the early Fathers of the Church, who expressed this Trinitarian understanding of God’s activity in salvation history. This Trinitarian outlook can help us approach the gospel reading today (Jn 14:23-29) with a keen awareness of the complimentary roles of Jesus, the Word of God, and of the Spirit, the Advocate, in making God present in our Christian living.

God is made present in our lives through the Word and the Spirit. Today’s gospel stresses this truth: God lives in us when we keep his Word and as we allow the Holy Spirit to empower us in our Christian witnessing. Let us have a word for each of these two agents of God’s indwelling in us.

Keeping the Word of God. Jesus is the Word of the Father. We can only come to know God through his Word, his self-revelation. No wonder, Jesus stresses, as part of his leave-taking discourse, the principle of the concurrence of the indwelling of God with the observance of his word. As we have it in the gospel today: “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him” (v. 23).

To Keep the Word of God means getting to know Jesus, listening to him, and obeying his commandments. It means living out in our daily lives everything he has taught us. When we do this, God lives in us. Negatively expressed, today’s gospel reminds us of the incompatibility between living in God and disregarding his Word. No one can honestly claim loving God and living in him when one does not observe God’s will.

All too often, our Christian living suffers this incompatibility. We easily claim God being with us but we fail to show it in actual witnessing. How, for instance, can we claim to be followers of Jesus and at the same time be comfortably part of a culture of corruption that gnaws at every fibre of our social life like a silent cancer?

Today’s gospel then allows us to see the indispensability of knowing Jesus, the Word, and living by his precepts in order to enjoy the peace of God’s abiding presence. Without the Word becoming incarnate in our own lives, how then can we have God dwell in us?

Invoking the Holy Spirit. The Spirit works hand in hand with the Word. The Spirit, the Advocate, teaches and reminds us of everything Jesus, the Word, has told us (v. 26). The Spirit helps us understand God’s Word, shedding light on the salvific meaning of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It is the Spirit that emboldens us to become fearless witnesses of Jesus. The Spirit empowers us to keep the word of God, hence, the Spirit ensures God’s abiding presence in us.

As a Christian, am I aware of this crucial role of the Spirit in my everyday witnessing? Do I invoke his empowering presence especially in moments when courage and conviction are called for in order to keep God’s word amidst a culture that jeers at the very core of the gospel values?

Left on our own devices, we always end up insecure and fearful about what we can do in terms of witnessing to the Word of God. My own feeling is that a great number of Christians have remained insecure as they honesty doubt their human capacity to keep the word of Jesus. They have forgotten to allow the Spirit to work through them, to embolden them, to assure them that, no matter what, it is God who is always in charge.

In the final analysis, God works with his two hands—the Word and the Spirit—in order to make sure that his love is effectively communicated and his Word kept that we may live in him and God may live in us now and forever.

We have just done our national and local elections, let us continue to invoke the power of the Holy Spirit to guide our nation into the path that God wills for us his people. We dream of a better nation, then let us listen to the Word in our consciences and allow the Spirit of God, the God who acts in history, to work through each of us and collectively, in our effort for nation-building. God does not leave us in the inadequacies of our own device. After all, He is the God of history; He acts in history, gently, mightily, with his two hands.

Three Lovely Moments with God (Trinity Sunday)

An atheist was walking through the woods. 'What majestic trees! 'What powerful rivers! 'What beautiful animals! He said to himself. Suddenly, he heard a rustling in the bushes behind him. He turned to look... and saw a 7-foot grizzly bear charge towards him! He ran as fast as he could along the path. He looked over his shoulder & saw that the bear was closing on him... He looked over his shoulder again, and the bear was even closer... and then ... He tripped and fell. Rolling over to pick himself up, he found the bear was right on top of him reaching towards him with its left paw and raising the right paw to strike! At that instant the Atheist cried out, 'Oh my God!'

Time Stopped ... The bear froze ... The forest was silent ...

A bright light shone upon the man, and a voice came out of the sky ... "You deny my existence for all these years, you teach others I don't exist and even credit creation to cosmic accident. Do you expect me to help you out of this predicament?" "Am I to count you as a believer?"

The atheist looked directly into the light. "It would be hypocritical of me to suddenly ask you to treat me as a Christian now... but perhaps you could make the BEAR a Christian?"

A pause ...

"Very well," said the voice. The light went out. The sounds of the forest resumed. And the bear dropped his right arm, bowed his head and made the sign of the cross... “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Bless, O Lord, this food which I am about to receive...”

To be a Christian believer is to accept as a central mystery of faith God’s self-revelation as a Triune God. Our God, as revealed through Jesus Christ, is Trinity. Or as the17th century English poet, John Donne, would have it in his Holy Sonnet XIV, “Three-Personed God.” Or better still, as any newly-converted-Christian bear would have it, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

Today is Trinity Sunday. The most dreaded Sunday by preachers… because of the daunting task of illuminating the people about this central mystery of Christian faith and because such a task somehow brings the preacher back to those confusing days of classical and metaphysical discussions on the subject from which he managed quite triumphantly a barely passing grade after all the migraine attacks!

Today need not be a migraine day for us. What I would like us to have is an enjoyable way of approaching the mystery of the Trinity and allowing God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to become a vital force that animates and directs our Christian living and prayer. Allow me then to share with you a way of praying that weaves the fabric of our daily lives into the matrix of our relationship with the Three-Personed God. I call this method “The Three Lovely Moments with God,” a method I’ve learned from my Jesuit spiritual directors. This is fundamentally an Ignatian examen of consciousness with a Trinitarian twist.

Granting that we have found a sacred space where we can enjoy peace and quiet for a few moments, and granting we have assumed a comfortable posture for praying, we begin by asking the grace of God’s presence and enlightenment in the three lovely moments with Him. Then we enter into the three moments.

The first moment is the moment with the Loving Father. In the silence, we go over our lives and, with God’s enlightenment, seek to see where we have experienced the loving presence and action of the Father. To the Father we attribute the beauty and bounty of creation. He is the source of every being and their sustenance. He is our Abba and from him overflows goodness on which we totally depend for our well-being as his children. How have we experienced this goodness and love? Acknowledgment of the significant moments of God’s goodness in our lives leads to a grateful heart. This first moment then is a moment of thanksgiving and praise to a loving God whose Fatherly (for some, Motherly) love sustains us.

The second moment is the moment with the Son. Much as we want to see our lives filled with nothing else but God’s grace, we do see traces of sin that sadly mars our beautiful relationship with God. Sin lurks and strikes like a poisonous scorpion in our most vulnerable moments. But the sting of sin and death has been vanquished by the Son, Jesus Christ, through his passion, death, and resurrection! We can courageously face, then, our moments of weakness and, with tremendous sorrow for having rejected God’s love, turn to Jesus, our Saviour, for the grace of forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing. This second moment therefore is a moment of true repentance and celebration of God’s mercy through the Son, Jesus Christ our Saviour.

The third moment is the moment with the Holy Spirit. The presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives as individual and as a Church is the fulfilment of the Easter promise. The Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit to abide with us as the Paraclete, our Advocate. He is the Spirit of Truth who guides us to all truth (Jn 16:12). At Pentecost, the Spirit emboldened Jesus’ disciples to preach without fear the Good News to the ends of the earth. The Spirit empowers us and enables us to do what God wills us to do and accomplish that which brings greater glory to God’s name. This third moment then is a time for us to listen to God’s directions. What is God’s invitation for me to do? Do I have plans and projects? Are they mine or God’s? How am I to proceed? In this third moment, we then let the Holy Spirit guide us to the path where God wants us to take. This is the moment of empowerment and direction.

What a lovely life it is that we have as Christians! Baptized “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19), we share in the life of the Trinity. In the second reading (Rom. 8:14-17), Paul explains this sharing in the life of the Trinity as our spiritual adoption by the Father by which we become sons and daughters of God whom we call Abba! This makes us co-heirs with Christ as the Spirit united in our spirit bears witness that we are God’s children. 

Hence our life is a life of intimate relationship with the Triune God. A life dependent on a love that never fails, a life that tends towards perfection through the grace of forgiveness, a life that is directed and empowered to share in God’s creative activity.

This Trinity Sunday then, far from being a dreadful day, is a lovely day... a day to remind us to enjoy the three lovely moments with God as often as we can. Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit!

The Empowering Spirit (Pentecost Sunday)

I recall an anecdote about the Holy Spirit: A Christian missionary was struggling to explain to a new-found Japanese friend the mystery of the Trinity, hoping to lead him to embrace the Christian life. After long hours of exchange, the Japanese was nodding... He declared, “The Father... makes sense!” He paused and continued to nod and finally pronounced, “The Son... makes sense!” Then he took a long while and, with a quizzical look, said, “What does not make sense...” He paused and quite tentatively continued as if whispering, “...is the dove.”

Among the persons of the Trinity, the representation of the Holy Spirit is the least clear to many of us. Of course, the nature of the third person, as Spirit, poses a great difficulty for representation. Thus, in contrast to the personal images of the Father and Jesus Christ, we are forced to represent the Holy Spirit through impersonal symbols like fire, wind, breath, water, and the “favoured” dove. This difficulty might contribute to the uncertainty, if not ignorance, among many of us Christians about recognizing the activity of the Spirit in our lives.

The Solemnity of Pentecost may be an opportunity for us to “get to know” the dove or the tongues of fire a little deeper and hence to allow his power to operate in our lives. Today’s readings, first, second and the Gospel, lend themselves to our need to recognize the work of the Holy Spirit. The readings, as I will endeavour to show, reveal the Holy Spirit as the principle of empowerment. The Spirit empowers us from deep within, enabling us to live out our Christian calling—as prophet, king, and priest.

The Holy Spirit and our Prophetic Mission. The first reading (Acts 2:1-11), where we are told of the Spirit’s descent upon the Apostles in the form of tongues of fire, recounts how the Holy Spirit emboldened the Apostles to speak of “the mighty acts of God” to all peoples. Hiding because of fear, the nervous apostles were empowered by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost to go out of hiding and confidently proclaim the greatness of God revealed in the person of Christ. The Spirit enabled them to be the prophets that Jesus had called them to become.

The Spirit empowers us to proclaim the truth about God’s work in our lives. There’s something about the charismatic groups that I have brushed elbows with. Their bold testimonies of the work of God in their lives amaze me. In contrast, most Catholics, I observe, are timid about their spiritual lives in general. Many are shy to proclaim what God has done in their lives; or more to the point, many are perhaps not even cognizant of the work of God.

Am I timid, shy, or fearful in proclaiming God’s mighty acts in my life? Let me ask the Holy Spirit to embolden me and turn me into a joyful and fearless herald of the Good News to my family, friends, and to the society.

The Holy Spirit and our Kingly Mission. The call to serve is essential to the concept of Christian kingship. Service or ministry is a gift of the Spirit. The second reading (1 Cor. 12: 3-7, 12-13) shows how St. Paul recognized the diversity of gifts and charisms flowing from the same Spirit. These gifts and charisms are meant to unify and strengthen the one body of Christ, the community of believers , the Church. The Holy Spirit then, with his manifold gifts, empowers us to serve in many and varied capacities.

The parish life is a beautiful illustration of this truth. When a pastor is attuned to the gifts of the Spirit in the community, his leadership brings out the best in all its members even among the poor who become dependable committed community leaders. The parish becomes a community of servant-leaders. Oftentimes I would have goose bumps listening to these small communities singing their hearts out, “Parianong lungsod, harianong lungsod... awit pasalamat tibuok nasud.” Oftentimes, the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit in the community is just too palpable to miss.

What gifts and charisms am I endowed with? This is the Holy Spirit’s way of enabling me to serve the community. In what way do I fulfil my kingly mission? In short, in what way do I serve?

The Holy Spirit and our Priestly Mission. Prayer and forgiveness are at the heart of the priestly mission. Both can only be done authentically in the Spirit. The second reading reminds us: “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:13). Our prayers, if they are to be authentic, have to be inspired by the Spirit. How often we feel that our prayers and liturgical celebrations are mere recitations of formulas and mechanical sequence of gestures born out of habit! Transformative prayers and touching liturgies are way beyond human habits. They are the fruits of the inspiration of the Spirit. They are the expressions of a human heart whose longing is intensified by the Spirit.

Forgiveness too, they say, is a divine activity. But the Spirit empowers the human to forgive. This is crystal clear in today’s gospel (Jn. 20: 19-23): “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them...” It is from here that the Church’s ministry of reconciliation flows. It is from here that I can forgive, to my amazement, an otherwise unforgiveable offense committed against me and the community. It is because of the Spirit that a hardened heart can gradually listen, understand, and finally forgive.

So, as we celebrate Pentecost today, let us recognize the work of the Holy Spirit in us and allow him to empower us to become Christ’s true disciples. Let us allow the Spirit to turn us into bold prophets announcing with joy the greatness of the Lord, into humble kings who serve one another untiringly, into prayerful priests who are agents of peace and forgiveness in this increasingly broken world.

Receive the Holy Spirit (Pentecost Sunday C)

I recall an anecdote about the Holy Spirit: A Christian missionary was struggling to explain to a new-found Japanese friend the mystery of the Trinity, hoping to lead him to embrace the Christian life. After long hours of exchange, the Japanese was nodding... He declared, “The Father... makes sense!” He paused and continued to nod and finally pronounced, “The Son... makes sense!” Then he took a long while and, with a quizzical look, said, “What does not make sense...” He paused and quite tentatively continued as if whispering, “...is the dove.”

Among the persons of the Trinity, the representation of the Holy Spirit is the least clear to many of us. Of course, the nature of the third person, as Spirit, poses a great difficulty for representation. Thus, in contrast to the personal images of the Father and Jesus Christ, we are forced to represent the Holy Spirit through impersonal symbols like fire, wind, breath, water, and the “favoured” dove. This difficulty might contribute to the uncertainty, if not ignorance, among many of us Christians about recognizing the activity of the Spirit in our lives.

The Solemnity of Pentecost may be an opportunity for us to “get to know” the dove or the tongues of fire a little deeper and hence to allow his power to operate in our lives. Today’s readings, first, second and the Gospel, lend themselves to our need to recognize the work of the Holy Spirit. The readings, as I will endeavour to show, reveal the Holy Spirit as the principle of empowerment. The Spirit empowers us from deep within, enabling us to live out our Christian calling—as prophet, king, and priest.

The Holy Spirit and our Prophetic Mission. The first reading (Acts 2:1-11), where we are told of the Spirit’s descent upon the Apostles in the form of tongues of fire, recounts how the Holy Spirit emboldened the Apostles to speak of “the mighty acts of God” to all peoples. Hiding because of fear, the nervous apostles were empowered by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost to go out of hiding and confidently proclaim the greatness of God revealed in the person of Christ. The Spirit enabled them to be the prophets that Jesus had called them to become.

The Spirit empowers us to proclaim the truth about God’s work in our lives. There’s something about the charismatic groups that I have brushed elbows with. Their bold testimonies of the work of God in their lives amaze me. In contrast, most Catholics, I observe, are timid about their spiritual lives in general. Many are shy to proclaim what God has done in their lives; or more to the point, many are perhaps not even cognizant of the work of God.

Am I timid, shy, or fearful in proclaiming God’s mighty acts in my life? Let me ask the Holy Spirit to embolden me and turn me into a joyful and fearless herald of the Good News to my family, friends, and to the society.

The Holy Spirit and our Kingly Mission. The call to serve is essential to the concept of Christian kingship. Service or ministry is a gift of the Spirit. The second reading (1 Cor. 12: 3-7, 12-13) shows how St. Paul recognized the diversity of gifts and charisms flowing from the same Spirit. These gifts and charisms are meant to unify and strengthen the one body of Christ, the community of believers , the Church. The Holy Spirit then, with his manifold gifts, empowers us to serve in many and varied capacities.

The parish life is a beautiful illustration of this truth. When a pastor is attuned to the gifts of the Spirit in the community, his leadership brings out the best in all its members even among the poor who become dependable committed community leaders. The parish becomes a community of servant-leaders. Oftentimes I would have goose bumps listening to these small communities singing their hearts out, “Parianong lungsod, harianong lungsod... awit pasalamat tibuok nasud.” Oftentimes, the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit in the community is just too palpable to miss.

What gifts and charisms am I endowed with? This is the Holy Spirit’s way of enabling me to serve the community. In what way do I fulfil my kingly mission? In short, in what way do I serve?

The Holy Spirit and our Priestly Mission. Prayer and forgiveness are at the heart of the priestly mission. Both can only be done authentically in the Spirit. The second reading reminds us: “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:13). Our prayers, if they are to be authentic, have to be inspired by the Spirit. How often we feel that our prayers and liturgical celebrations are mere recitations of formulas and mechanical sequence of gestures born out of habit! Transformative prayers and touching liturgies are way beyond human habits. They are the fruits of the inspiration of the Spirit. They are the expressions of a human heart whose longing is intensified by the Spirit.

Forgiveness too, they say, is a divine activity. But the Spirit empowers the human to forgive. This is crystal clear in today’s gospel (Jn. 20: 19-23): “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them...” It is from here that the Church’s ministry of reconciliation flows. It is from here that I can forgive, to my amazement, an otherwise unforgiveable offense committed against me and the community. It is because of the Spirit that a hardened heart can gradually listen, understand, and finally forgive.

So, as we celebrate Pentecost today, let us recognize the work of the Holy Spirit in us and allow him to empower us to become Christ’s true disciples. Let us allow the Spirit to turn us into bold prophets announcing with joy the greatness of the Lord, into humble kings who serve one another untiringly, into prayerful priests who are agents of peace and forgiveness in this increasingly broken world.