HOMILIES PREACHED BY FATHER ALTIER ON PENTECOST SUNDAY FROM 2001-2005

Today the Church celebrates the feast of Pentecost, the feast of the Holy Spirit. The word 'Pentecost' actually means fifty days. It was fifty days after our Lord had risen from the dead that the Holy Spirit came down upon the disciples as they were gathered around Our Blessed Lady. There, the Holy Spirit descended upon them as tongues of fire, which is why we wear red when we have Mass in honor of the Holy Spirit. We wear red because Our Lord reminded us that the disciples would be baptized with water and fire, with water and the Holy Spirit.

We see that the Holy Spirit is the outpouring of the love of God. God is love, so we can say the same thing of Jesus: He is the love of God in human form. He came down to teach us how to love and He gave us a new commandment: We must love. He gave us the ability to do it as well because He sent the Holy Spirit into our hearts. In fact, to demonstrate this most clearly, Saint John says simply in his first letter: "God is love."

Sunday June 3, 2001

Pentecost Sunday

Reading I (Acts 2:1-11)

Reading II (Romans 8:8-17)

Gospel (St. John 20:19-23)

It is the Holy Spirit who provides for us within our hearts the fire of love, because the Holy Spirit is the love of the Father and the Son. He is the One who unites the Two to make the Trinity. It is said that the Father is the Lover, the Son is the Beloved, and the Holy Spirit is the love which unites Them. We see that the Holy Spirit is the outpouring of the love of God. God is love, so we can say the same thing of Jesus: He is the love of God in human form. He came down to teach us how to love and He gave us a new commandment: We must love. He gave us the ability to do it as well because He sent the Holy Spirit into our hearts. In fact, to demonstrate this most clearly, Saint John says simply in his first letter: "God is love." In creation, we are told that we are made in the image and likeness of God. If God is love and we are made in His image and likeness, that means we are made to love and be loved. Jesus commands us to love and then He gives us the Holy Spirit so we can call God "Father." We share in the divine nature, we share in the divine life. The Holy Trinity dwells within and the Holy Spirit, the love of God, is poured forth into our hearts so we can call God "Father" - so that we can love. We could not call Him "Father" if we did not share in His nature; we could only call Him "God." We could call Him "Almighty" or we could call Him by any generic term, but to call God "Father" means that we share the life God has given us. Not natural life, but supernatural life. Not human life, but divine life. That is the reality that every one of us shares. We have been raised, elevated, from a natural level of thinking, being, and acting to a supernatural level and a divine level so that we can act as sons and daughters of God Himself.

To call God "Father" is not merely a privilege we have, it is the reality of who we are. We need to allow that to sink in, to sink in very deeply. Most of us tend to keep this at an arm's distance because we do not really want to make the changes that will be required if we accept it. But to reject it is to reject who we are. Saint Paul makes it clear that if we are children of God, we are members of Christ; and, as members of Christ, we are heirs of God and heirs of Heaven. But he said, "Only if we suffer with Him, so as to be glorified with Him." We like the glory part, we like the idea of going to Heaven, we like the idea of all the beauty, all the joy, and all the glory of Heaven. But if we are members of Jesus Christ, we have to remember that He went to the Cross. Saint Peter says that He left us an example so that we will follow in His footsteps. It is the Holy Spirit who does that for us. In fact, Saint Peter even makes it clear that when we suffer for doing what is right, then the Holy Spirit, in His fullness, has descended upon us. If we are pushing away the sufferings that the Lord sends into our lives, we are pushing away the Holy Spirit. If we are saying, "I do not want a part in Calvary," we are saying, "I do not want a part in Christ." And if I do not want a part of Christ in this world, then I do not have a part of Him in the next, either. It all works together.

What we have to understand is that we must be incorporated fully into Christ. On one level, we can say that has already happened in Baptism. But what happened in Baptism must be lived in our day-to-day lives. We are called to lives of holiness.

We are called to imitate Christ in all things. The only way that this is possible is in the Holy Spirit. Saint Paul tells us: "No one can say that Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit." If we profess that Jesus Christ is Lord, that means we are His servants. It means He is the master and we will be obedient. We are not to be blindly obedient because Jesus told us that He would give us the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth and He will teach us all truth. Even the things of God that lie hidden, the Holy Spirit will teach us. It means we are being obedient to the truth. If we consider the fact that God is truth and we are made in the image and likeness of God, then we are made also for the truth, just as we are made for love. So, the truth is our dignity. "The truth will set you free," Jesus said.

Americans think that the truth will set you back. But the truth will set you free. We want real freedom, not this false freedom that our society gives to us. That is the freedom they would consider license: "I have the freedom to do anything I want." That is not freedom. Jesus said, "Whoever sins becomes a slave to sin." Sin is the opposite of truth; therefore, sin is the opposite of freedom. It is the opposite of love because it is the opposite of God. If we are children of God, made for truth and made for love, we are to act in truth and in love. That means we are to embrace the truth. Jesus is the truth.

We have been given all truth - it is found in the Church. The Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church, just as each one of us has a soul that is within and the two faculties of the soul are the mind and the will so that we can think and choose.

The Church is Jesus Christ and it is the Holy Spirit who possessed Christ. Christ has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts, but also to be the Spirit within the Church, to be the soul of the Church so the Church thinks with the mind of Christ, and wills with the will of Christ. Every single thing the Church teaches is truth. We are not talking about the things that individuals within the Church do, because some of those things are not truth. Just because someone has the position of a bishop or a priest or a sister or even a baptized Catholic, it does not mean everything that person will do is truth. It does not mean that everything you hear preached from a pulpit is truth. But every single thing the Church teaches, objectively, for the belief of the faithful, is absolute truth. That is something you can trust unswervingly, no questions asked, because that is inspired by the Holy Spirit, who is given to us to lead us into all truth.

We have the Holy Spirit given to us. The truth, then, is not far from us; rather, it is within us. That is a promise that was made in the Old Testament: God would write His law in our hearts and on our minds. It is no longer the law written on stone, but rather it is the law written in the heart because it is the law of love. "Love," as Saint Augustine says, "never wrongs the neighbor." The love of God and the love of neighbor are the two greatest commandments because love never does anything wrong.

Love is not selfish. This, again, is what the Holy Spirit leads us to: to be selfless, to be holy, to be filled with charity. That is what each one of us truly desires. The problem is doing it, acting on it, making the choices to actually live what we profess. That is the hard part. But as the psalmist said and as we repeated in the responsorial psalm today: "Lord, sent out Your spirit and renew the face of the earth." That is what we each pray, that the Holy Spirit will fill our hearts to renew us, to fill us with the love of God so that we will be overflowing with God's love. That is what is held out for us today. I should also point out (because of what is in the Gospel) that when Saint Paul reminds us that we are heirs of Heaven and heirs of God, and we are children of God, and we call God "Our Father," all of this is possible because we are in the state of grace. If we are in the state of grace, then the Holy Trinity dwells within us. The only way we can be in the state of grace is precisely what we see in the Gospel when Jesus said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins you hold bound, they are held bound." When all mortal sins are forgiven we are in the state of grace, which is a consolation beyond all our wildest imagination. If you know that you have confessed your sins to the best of your ability, you are living the life of prayer, and you are trying to follow the commandments and live a holy life, then you can have relative certitude that you are in the state of grace and that you are heading toward Heaven. What a beautiful gift! That, too, is the work of the Holy Spirit.

We live, now, in the age of the Holy Spirit. If you look at Scripture (it is a wonderful thing) right in the very first verse of Scripture we see the Holy Spirit hovering over the waters, right at the time of creation. The Old Testament beyond that is really about the revelation of the Father. Then, the Gospels are the revelation of Christ. Now, in the Epistles and in the life of the Church, we have the revelation of the Holy Spirit. We see the Trinitarian life in the Scriptures. We must live that in our own lives. So we pray: 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.

Note: Father Altier does not prepare his homilies in advance, but relies solely upon the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

Choose to be a Saint

May 19, 2002

Solemnity of Pentecost

Reading I (Acts 2:1-11)

Reading II (1 Cor 12:3b-7, 12-13)

Gospel (St. John 20:19-23)

Today we celebrate the great Solemnity of Pentecost, the day that the Lord had promised to His disciples. It is the day that He had spoken of when He said to them: "It will be better for you if I leave, because if I do not the Holy Spirit will not come upon you." He had told them numerous times that the Holy Spirit would descend upon them, that He would fill them, that He would lead them into all truth, that He would be with them always - and He is. The Holy Spirit, poured out upon the Apostles, has also been given to each person in Baptism. In His fullness, He is present because of Confirmation.

What happens in many lives is that we do not see the working of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes we think it needs to be the way that it was 2,000 years ago. We need to hear strong, driving wind; we need to see flames depart and descend upon each person; we need to see extraordinary charismata at work: we should be speaking in tongues and doing all kinds of other things. That is not necessarily the case. As God is apt to do the first few times that He does something in order to demonstrate that it is real, He has to do something a little bit more extraordinary, or else people would not believe. But as time goes along, it just simply becomes more ordinary. For instance, look back to what happened the first time the people came to Mount Sinai. There were all kinds of phenomenon that they witnessed. There was the smoke; there was the lightening and the thunder, the trumpet blasts and God speaking, all of the earth shaking and all the other things that happened. By the time Elijah went to the same mountain, all of those things occurred, but God was not there. Rather, Elijah heard God in the tiniest little whisper on the same mountain. In other words, God first had to show himself to be powerful, to be the Almighty God, the God who was with His people, so that they would believe He was there. Once He had demonstrated all of that, it was no longer necessary to continue to do the extraordinary things; but rather, His presence among the people was ordinary. He was there in all of His power, in all of His majesty, but He did not need to demonstrate it.

The same thing happens for us. Initially, when the Holy Spirit was given to the Church, there were extraordinary things. Now for the last couple of thousand years, it has been a much more ordinary means. The Holy Spirit is there in each one of us who is in the state of grace. Part of the reason why we have not seen the working of the Holy Spirit the way we think that we should is simply because of sin. What has happened is that the Lord has allowed the Holy Spirit to be there directing each of our lives in a way that is extraordinary in itself. We spoke a couple of weeks ago about how the Lord has allowed each of us to be plunged into this world that is filled with sin. Yet it was the Holy Spirit who guided us through all of that. All you need to do is ask yourself: If you have been living out in the world your whole life in this society, how is it that you are here on a Sunday morning? This is not something that our society upholds in the least. If you were living a worldly life, you certainly would not be here this morning. You would either be in bed, or watching TV, or you would be out running around having fun, the way that the world suggests Sundays ought to be. Everything is about the weekend. The Holy Spirit who is with you when you go out into the world is the One who leads you back here. He is not just at work on Sunday morning. The Holy Spirit is at work 24 hours a day within each one of us, helping us out there to be able to resist the ways of the world, lifting us up out of our sinfulness and bringing us to Confession when we do fall. It is the power of the Holy Spirit that allows the bread and wine, at Mass, to be changed into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. It is the power of the Holy Spirit that forgives sins in the confessional through the power of the priesthood. The priesthood is a charismatic gift; it is a gift of the Holy Spirit so that the Sacraments would be available to the people of God. The Holy Spirit is at work constantly. He is at work in each one of us. As we heard in the second reading today, St. Paul said, "No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit." If you want to know if the Holy Spirit is present and working within you, all you need to do is ask if you can acknowledge if Jesus Christ is Lord. If that is possible, then you know that the Holy Spirit is there.

It is also possible that what has happened in many of our lives is that we have tried to push the Holy Spirit as far back into the corner as we can. He is still there; it is just that most of us really do not want Him to do a whole lot of work because if He did, we would not be like the people out in the world anymore. We would not be able to fit in. Just think how crazy people would think we were if we were really living according to the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who filled Jesus Christ; it is the Holy Spirit who was the Spouse of our Blessed Lady; it is the Holy Spirit who is the soul of the Church. When we look at the life of Christ, the life of Our Lady, and for 2000 years now, the life of the Church, it is a life which is contrary to that of the world. It is a life which stands apart. It is a life which is rejected and hated and despised by the world. We know fully well that if we are going to live according to the Holy Spirit, we will follow that same life. We will live the same life, and we too will be hated and rejected and despised by the people who are worldly. Now I challenge you, are you willing to do that?

We live in a time, as I have been telling you, where we have to make a decision. We need to make a choice which spirit we are going to follow; ultimately, there are only two. There is a Holy Spirit and an unholy spirit - lots of unholy spirits - but ultimately there is the one who leads them all and we have to make a choice. Which do we want to follow? In our day, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are going to see the greatest saints the world has ever known, with the exception of Our Lady and St. Joseph. We will see the greatest saints the world has ever known. Now you need to make a choice. Do you want to be one of them? Now by that I do not mean sitting back and saying, "Wow! Wouldn’t it be neat to be doing all the things that the saints did?" We are going to do greater things than the saints did, but that is not what being a saint is all about - doing extraordinary things. Being a saint is about loving Jesus Christ is an extraordinary manner. It is giving our entire being, our entire self, our whole life over to Jesus Christ. It is allowing Jesus Christ to live in us and through us. It is to be so transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit that there will be no difference between our will and the will of Jesus Christ. Now let me challenge you again. Do you want to be a part of that? That means having to change. That means having to allow yourself to be formed, conformed, and transformed into Jesus Christ. Is that what you want for your life? Or do you want Jesus to be simply at an arm’s distance? He is nice on a Sunday morning, but forget it the rest of the week.

Jesus wants everything. Every part of who you are, Jesus Christ wants - not in a selfish way, but rather, out of perfect love. Jesus Christ commanded us - He did not give us a suggestion - He commanded us to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. He has given to us the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth. In other words, it is the work and the power of the Holy Spirit to perfect us. Do we want it? The Holy Spirit will be given to each one of us in accordance with the personality that God has given so that He will work in each one of us in the way that will give God the greatest glory and will be the most perfect for each one of us. Are we willing to allow Him to do that? In other words, not to tell the Holy Spirit how He ought to work in our lives; but rather, to allow Him to tell us the work of God that He has chosen for us. "There are different gifts but the same Spirit," St. Paul told us in the second reading. The Holy Spirit is given to each one as God chooses, if we are willing to open our hearts and allow the Holy Spirit to take over our lives, to lead us according to the way of Jesus Christ. We will see extraordinary things. Not just extraordinary things out there in some saint, extraordinary things right here, and in here, in each one of us. In your own life, you will see the working and the power of the Holy Spirit and that is a guarantee, if you are willing. The problem is, for most people it sounds like a neat romantic idea, like a fairy tale existence, and wouldn’t that be fun? That is not what I am talking about here. I am talking about the power of the Holy Spirit conforming you to the will of Almighty God. Most people in this world do not want that to happen.

I ask you to enter into your heart today, and to pray and to really do some soul searching and ask yourself, "Do I want that? Am I willing to do the will of God in all things? Am I willing to profess my faith even if it means that I will have to die for that faith? Am I willing to do whatever God wants me to do? Am I willing to be thought to be a nut out in the world? Am I willing to be rejected because I am following Jesus Christ?" We are not asking for a fairy tale existence here. We are asking for saints. Jesus Christ is asking for saints. My question to you is - Through the power of the Holy Spirit, do you want to be a saint? And the follow-up question now is not - Do you want it? - but - Do you will it? Do you choose to be a saint?

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

Our Lady Will Lead Us to the Holy Spirit

June 8, 2003

Feast of Pentecost

Reading I (Acts 2:1-11)

Reading II (1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13)

Gospel (St. John 20:19-23)

In the second reading today, Saint Paul tells us that all of us have been baptized into the same body and all of us have been given to drink of the same Spirit. And he tells us in regard to the Holy Spirit that there is one Spirit but there are many different gifts of the Holy Spirit. We need to consider the work of the Holy Spirit. It always fascinates me to see the utter humility of God. When we stop to think about the patience of God and His humility, at the very beginning when Adam and Eve walked with God and over the generations that people forgot Who God even was, they began worshiping pagan gods. And so God had to choose for Himself one people from the face of the earth when initially all people were intended to know God and to know Him very intimately. Now the Lord had to choose one people and He had to show Himself all-powerful.

We recall the events on Mount Sinai, how God had to prove Himself to the people through signs and wonders. We recall, then, some thousand or fifteen hundred years later, when the prophet Elijah went to the exact same mountain and the same sorts of signs and wonders were occurring but God was not in any of them. But Elijah found God in the tiniest little breeze. God had made Himself known, and now He had pulled back as far as the extraordinary things go. He was present to His people always, but in a very hidden way. And when God chose to come into this world, one would think that it would be with trumpet blasts and all kinds of extraordinary events. But instead, God comes into this world clothed in our human nature, looking just like one of us, being born in a stable. The only ones who recognized Him initially were the most humble people on the face of the earth: the little shepherds and, of course, Our Blessed Lady and Saint Joseph.

God also sent His Holy Spirit into the world. Jesus told us in the Gospel that it is better for us if He leaves because if He does not leave the promised Paraclete would never come. We hear in the Acts of the Apostles in the first reading from today’s Mass that there was the sound of a strong driving wind, and suddenly tongues of fire descended upon the apostles and they began to speak as the Spirit gave them. The Holy Spirit spoke through them so that each person heard them speaking in their own language, even though they themselves were speaking in their own native language. And in the Gospel, Jesus breathed on His disciples and He told them to receive the Holy Spirit with the power to forgive sin. He tells us elsewhere in Saint John’s Gospel that the Holy Spirit will come to lead us into all truth. Jesus, of course, is the truth. And so the Holy Spirit is given to lead us to union with Jesus Christ. Saint Paul reminds us that we are temples of the Holy Spirit, that He dwells within each one of us.

Now when we look back at what happened on Pentecost day, that first Pentecost Sunday, we see the extraordinary events. There are little plays on words here that we would not recognize in English, but the word “wind” in Greek and the word “spirit” in Greek are one and the same; for instance, when Jesus says, “You hear the wind but you neither know where it comes from nor where it goes, so it is with the Holy Spirit Who blows where He wills and you know neither from where He comes nor where He goes.” In the Acts of the Apostles, we heard about the strong driving wind. It is the Greek word pneuma from where we get our English word “pneumonia” and words like that. “Wind” and “spirit” are the same. When Jesus breathed on His disciples, that again is the exact same word; even in English we have it as the same word. If a person expires, that means to breathe out. To inspire is to breathe in.

And so we have the Spirit Who is the breath. We see that right in the Book of Genesis. At the moment of creation, God created Adam from the dust of the earth but he did not have life. Then it says, “God breathed into him His Spirit.” So the Holy Spirit is that breath of God Who on the day of Pentecost was more like a strong driving wind, sort of the way things were on Mount Sinai when the Israelites first got there. He showed Himself in extraordinary ways so the people would believe and they would understand. But once He was clearly demonstrated, there was no longer any need for Him to show Himself in extraordinary ways. And so in time, just as it was with God at the beginning, the Holy Spirit receded into the background where He became merely a breath, something almost imperceptible. Yet we all know that without that breath we would have no life. So we recognize the absolute importance of the Holy Spirit for everything.

The Holy Spirit is the Spouse of Our Lady. It is the Holy Spirit Who overshadowed her so that the Incarnation of Christ could occur within her virginal womb. It is the same Holy Spirit Whom we call down upon the bread and the wine to change them into the very Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, something akin once again to the Incarnation where Christ becomes present among us in the fullness of His being. The Holy Spirit is given to us in His sevenfold gifts, and the fruits of the Holy Spirit are abundant within our lives. Yet we so often do not recognize Him because, like Elijah on Mount Sinai, He is just the tiniest little whisper, a breath.

The day is coming when there is going to be a New Pentecost and we are going to see things that have never been seen in the history of the world, extraordinary outpourings of the Holy Spirit that are going to make the greatest saints that the world has ever known with exception, I think, to Our Lady, Saint Joseph, and Saint John the Baptist. Beyond that, we are going to see the greatest saints that have ever been known in the history of the world.

Now whenever there is truth, there is going to be falsehood. The devil is the great imitator and he does everything he can to mock Christ and everything that the Lord does. So we need to be very careful because we have all kinds of people running around claiming all sorts of things for the Holy Spirit these days, really for the last forty years. We need to be very cautious about this because initially what appeared to be an extraordinary outpouring of the Holy Spirit back in the 1960’s has proven to be anything but. The Holy Spirit is given to lead us into all truth, and what has happened is that we live now in a society where the second largest Christian body are fallen-away Catholics. The largest Christian body is Catholics. The second largest body of Christian people are fallen-away Catholics, all because the Holy Spirit supposedly descended upon them and led them right out of the Church. That was not the Holy Spirit. There are numerous unholy spirits that are given to mock the true Spirit. We need to be very cautious.

When we look for signs and wonders and extraordinary things, the devil is always more than happy to provide them. God too can provide them without any problem, but that is not always the way He works. In fact, most often it is not. Recall the tiny whispering breeze, the little breath. That is not God manifesting Himself in extraordinary ways. What He is doing is asking us for extraordinary faith. When we cannot see the working of the Holy Spirit in clear manifestations, we have to believe and trust that He is there working in our hearts and leading us to Christ. What would indeed be easier is if there were great signs and flashing lights and bells and whistles and everything else. It would be obvious what we were supposed to do, but that would not require a lot of faith. To listen intently to a tiny whisper, to believe that your sins are forgiven when you do not feel anything different, to believe that Jesus Christ is truly present in the forms of bread and wine when you do not see any change requires much more faith than if there were extraordinary signs and wonders being worked.

With regard to the false manifestations, let me simply say this: The first person in the modern world to speak in tongues took place in Wichita, Kansas on January 1, 1901, the first day of a new century – a century which I may remind you, from the vision of Pope Leo XIII, was handed over to Satan. Within thirteen years, it had spread like wildfire out into California (where else?!). And by 1917, several churches had come together that were all these Pentecostal groups and they formed what is today called the Assemblies of God, which is the largest-growing Christian body – almost entirely fallen-away Catholics led by the Holy Spirit, supposedly, into the worship of self and away from Jesus Christ and His sacraments. It was not until the 1960’s that this entered into the Catholic Church, and people left in droves supposedly led by the Spirit. Now they were indeed led by a spirit; we need not discuss which one.

Following signs and wonders, following extraordinary things, people started looking not for the ordinary but for the extraordinary. They wanted to see things, they wanted to experience things, rather than doing things in the ordinary way that God has chosen. They wanted to go back to Moses on Mount Sinai with the lightning and the thunder and the earthquake and the wind and all of the extraordinary phenomenon. They forgot about Elijah and the tiny whispering sound. They wanted the strong driving wind and the tongues of fire coming down, and they forgot that Jesus breathed on His disciples. We need to be very careful.

There is indeed a New Pentecost coming. It has not yet occurred. We will see extraordinary things unknown in the history of the world only because they will be absolutely necessary at that time, because it will be a time unparalleled in human history where evil will have run its course and God will then raise up the greatest saints to crush the head of Satan through the power of Our Blessed Lady, the spouse of the Holy Spirit.

What we need is to remember the Holy Spirit Who is present within us in such a hidden way, in such a humble way. The easiest way to do that is to turn to His spouse who is so perfectly united to the Holy Spirit that God could become incarnate within her. Saint Maximilian Kolbe could call her the closest thing to the incarnation of the Holy Spirit. If we unite ourselves with Our Lady, since this is the time given over by Our Lord to His mother, she is truly led by the Holy Spirit and she will obtain for us that Spirit of God to lead us into all truth, to unite us to Jesus Christ, and to help us to live our faith in an extraordinary way rather than looking for extraordinary phenomenon in order to have faith. It is to do as Our Lady did. She never worked any miracles. Well, the greatest miracle was worked in her but she herself was not running around working miracles. She never spoke in tongues. She never did anything that seemed extraordinary, and yet she is the most extraordinary person to have walked the face of the earth led by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit Who is the soul of the Church.

The Church is the Person of Christ, and each one of us is a member of that Church and a member of Jesus Christ through Baptism. So each one of us has been given the Holy Spirit. He is there already in that humble, hidden form. All that remains for us is to recognize Him in that breath of God, in the tiniest little whisper, to listen to His voice and to obey. The easiest way is to look to her who has already done that. She will teach us how to hear His voice, she will teach us to obey, and she will lead us to the New Pentecost where the Holy Spirit will be given to make each one of us into the saints that God desires. The only way that can happen is if we are attentive now to the working of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and we are preparing ourselves by living an extraordinary faith in the love of God poured forth into our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who allows us to cry out, “Abba! Father!” and Who gives to us the grace to say that Jesus Christ is Lord.

* This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

May 30, 2004

Pentecost

Reading I (Acts 2:1-11)

Reading II (Romans 8:8-17 )

Gospel (St. John 14:15-16, 23b-26)

Today the Church celebrates the solemnity of Pentecost. The word Pentecost means “fifty days”, so today is fifty days after the Resurrection of Our Blessed Lord and it is the fulfillment of His work. Not only did He rise from the dead and ascend into glory, but now He has fulfilled the promise to send the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, to give to us everything that we need, to fill us with the truth, to lead us into all truth, to provide us with divine life, and to bring us to the glory of heaven. There is nothing lacking at this point; we have absolutely everything we need. The only question now is on our part: Are we willing to cooperate with the Holy Spirit?

We hear in the Gospel reading, as well as in the second reading today from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans, that God has sent His Spirit into our hearts. In the Gospel reading, we hear about the indwelling of the Holy Trinity. If we are in the state of grace, God Himself dwells within us. Remember that wherever one Person of God happens to be, all Three are present because there is no separating the Persons in God. Therefore, if the Holy Spirit is present within us, so are the Father and the Son. We are temples of the Lord; we are the dwelling place of God. And through the power of the Holy Spirit Who dwells within us, we have all the grace necessary to be able to live according to the fullness of truth.

The gift of the Holy Spirit given to us at Confirmation allows each and every one of us to live an heroic Christian life. In this day and age, that is exactly what is necessary. We have to live heroic lives, lives of heroic virtue. The times that are soon to come upon the world are going to require that we are living our faith to its fullest because that is the only possible way anyone is going to make it. We recall Our Lord speaking about that time and He says, If the time were not shortened, even the elect would fall astray. But it is through the Holy Spirit that we will have the grace necessary to be able to live through that time, that we will be able to maintain our faith, our hope, and our charity.

We have the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit that have been given to us to enlighten our minds and to strengthen our wills. There is nothing lacking, but the problem is twofold. One, the Holy Spirit has pretty much been ignored or forgotten over the centuries, at least in common practice and devotion, even though in the Church He has been anything but forgotten. We know it is only through the power of the Holy Spirit that forgiveness of sin comes about; that is part of the prayer of absolution in Confession. We know also that it is through the power of the Holy Spirit that the bread and wine at Mass are transformed into the very Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. In the part of the Mass that we call the epiclesis, as the priest places his hands over the chalice and over the bread, he calls upon the Holy Spirit to come down upon these gifts in order to turn them into the very Body and Blood of the Son of God Himself. The Holy Spirit, Who is the Spirit of the Church, is the spirit of Jesus Christ; and the Church is Jesus Christ, so the Holy Spirit animates the Church. The Holy Spirit is the life of the Church. And so the Holy Spirit is not forgotten by the Church, but has been forgotten by the vast majority of people, at least in common devotion.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have those who want to call upon the Holy Spirit; and many are doing so in very good manner, cooperating with the Holy Spirit so that the gifts of the Spirit are very much at work. But then there is another element that is calling on a spirit looking for extraordinary things to happen. In the vast majority of those situations, it is not the Holy Spirit who is at work, but rather a very unholy spirit who can also provide lots of miraculous things. One can look, for instance, at the first reading and ask the question, “If the Holy Spirit was given to the apostles so they went out and spoke in various tongues, why don’t we see that now?” The fact is that we do. The truth is spoken in every single tongue around the world. The apostles needed to be able to speak so that all the people who were there would hear the truth spoken in their own language. Today the Church is spread throughout the world, and therefore the truth is still spoken in every language of humanity, not necessarily by one individual, but rather by the Church. And so the Holy Spirit continues to spread the truth. The Holy Spirit is given to us to lead us into all truth and to remind us of all the things that Our Lord has taught us, and that is done in and through the Church.

One could ask, “Why don’t we see the extraordinary things happening?” But we do. What more extraordinary things do we want when we have the forgiveness of sin, we have the consecration at Mass, and we have the sacraments? The most extraordinary things in the world are happening right within our own souls, but because we do not always see the external manifestations, we begin to doubt the reality that the Holy Spirit is at work, or perhaps we have just simply forgotten. It is true that the Holy Spirit even today continues to pour Himself out in extraordinary ways. There are people who are able to speak in various tongues. There are people who are miracle workers. There are people who can do extraordinary things by the power of the Holy Spirit. That is not going to be everybody; it is those whom God has chosen to do those things. But each and every one of us has the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is going to work within each one of us according to God’s own providence and according to our own states in life. The Holy Spirit is going to lead us into the fullness of truth.

Now if we do not want that fullness of truth, what we have done is to reject the Holy Spirit Whom God has given to us. If we do not want to be perfectly united with Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit is there but we are keeping Him at an arm’s distance and saying, in essence, “No, thank you. It’s nice of You to offer, but I know better. I have a better way of doing things. I don’t need any help; I can do it all by myself.” Good luck. The Holy Spirit was given for a reason – and it is because we cannot do it by ourselves. But the problem for most of us is not that we think we can do it by ourselves; the problem for most of us is that we do not want it. We do not want union with Jesus Christ, because if we did, we would have to change our lives, we would have to be living truly holy lives, we would have to be immersed in prayer, we would have to do things very differently than the way we do in our day-to-day lives. And I think if we were truly honest with ourselves, most of us would have to say, “I don’t want to do that.” What a tragic statement. It is a rejection of the gift of God.

So what we need to find is where that true middle ground is, to seek the Holy Spirit, to ask the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts. That beautiful prayer to the Holy Spirit, part of which we heard in the responsorial psalm and part of which we heard in the alleluia verse – Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Thy faithful and enkindle in them the fire of Thy love; send forth Thy spirit and they shall be created, and Thou shalt renew the face of the earth – we need to pray that prayer. We need to be willing to open our hearts, to let the Holy Spirit fill us with the fire of the love of God, with the zeal for serving God, with a true desire for holiness, and with the willingness to do whatever God wants us to do.

Saint Louis Marie de Montfort, when he talks about the latter times and talks about the apostles of the latter times which are soon to be upon us, says of these apostles that they will be blown by the Holy Spirit wherever He wills just as clouds are blown aloft upon the winds. All you need to do is ask yourself, “Am I willing to do that? Am I willing to do whatever God wants, just to drop everything and go? Am I willing to go wherever He wants me to go, whenever He wants me to go?” It is not an easy thing. Read the prophets and you will find that God would ask them to go different places and do different things that are not easy. Look at the Holy Family. God did not wait until morning to wake up Saint Joseph and tell him that it was time to go to Egypt – it was in the middle of the night! And he got up immediately, inspired by the Holy Spirit, and went. We realize that, if we are going to follow the Holy Spirit, He is going to lead us on the perfect path – but not necessarily on the path we would have chosen if it were up to our own selves. So we really need to ask, “Am I willing? Do I want it?”

We have been baptized into Jesus Christ, and therefore we have already vowed to God that this is what we are going to do. But now the Lord is leaving it up to us to make the act of the will. We are not on our own to do it, but God is not going to force us either. The Holy Spirit has been given to us and we need to cooperate. And God continues to ask the question. It is not going to be enough just to go to prayer one day and say, “Okay, Lord, do with me whatever You want.” That is a very good prayer, and the Lord is going to take you up on it, but because He will never violate your dignity, every time He is going to do something, He is going to ask you, Are you willing to accept this? Are you willing to do this? And we have to continue to respond over and over and over again, “Yes, Lord, be it done unto me according to Thy word,” as Our Blessed Lady said under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

It is beyond us by ourselves; it is not beyond us with the help of the Holy Spirit. But we have to answer the first question: Are we willing? … Are we willing? The only way we are ever going to be able to do it is through prayer. We need to be deeply immersed in prayer because the things that God is going to ask of us have to be first of all discerned, because the unholy spirit is going to present lots of things to you as well. The devil is going to try to keep you very busy so that you do not have time to pray. He is going to give you lots and lots of very good things to do just to keep you from doing what God wants you to do. It is easy, looking on the natural level, to say, “I must be doing God’s Will because everything I’m doing is good. How could God be displeased with what I’m doing, everything is good?” But God could be looking at you, saying, But I’m asking you to do something different, and we respond, “But what I’m doing is good; it must be Your Will.” You see, the only way we are going to know is if we pray. If we seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit in prayer, He will teach us what we need to know. He will help us to be able to discern what is of God and what is not. He will enlighten our minds and our hearts so that we will be drawn into the very love of God Himself and be willing to do whatever God wants us to do. No matter how ordinary or extraordinary it might seem to us, it matters not; the only thing that matters is that we are doing God’s Will, that we are on the path that is going to lead us into the very heart of Jesus Christ and into eternity with Christ.

The only way we are going to be led along that path is through the Holy Spirit, Who is the Spouse of our Blessed Lady. With the two of them leading us, we cannot go wrong. But if we choose to do it our own way, then we are like a ship that has lost its compass and is blown around on the winds; it has no direction. The Holy Spirit has been poured forth into our hearts so that we can cry out, “Abba! Father!” If we are going to call God our Father, we also have to live the life that is required of us, to be children of God, members of Christ, heirs of heaven, and all that follows from it. All of those things are given to us through the power of the Holy Spirit, Who has been poured forth into our hearts.

It is time that we let the guard down, that we quit pushing the Holy Spirit out, but rather that we open our hearts and allow Him entrance into the very depths of our being so that we will be able to live according to the ways of God, so that we will know and do the Will of God, and that we will be willing to do anything God asks of us. That is a scary proposition for most of us, but just keep in mind that God only wants the very best. And if God only wants the best for you, there is nothing at all to fear. God loves you perfectly; He is perfectly merciful. He is not going to ask anything of you other than what is the very best. That might be the cross, but if the cross is the perfect way to heaven then that is what He is going to ask. And so, we need to get down on our knees and we need to beg the Holy Spirit to open our hearts and to give us the grace to say “yes” to God, to truly be children of God, to live according to the ways of God, and allow those gifts of the Holy Spirit to work within us. Not necessarily to speak in foreign tongues or to do extraordinary things, but to do the greatest thing of all; that is, to embrace the truth and to live the truth in the love of the Holy Spirit.

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

Sunday May 15, 2005

Pentecost

Reading I (Acts 2:1-11)

Reading II (1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13)

Gospel (St. John 20:19-23)

Today we celebrate the great solemnity of Pentecost. It is a feast that in many ways is forgotten, or at least certainly not understood for what it is. On the day of Pentecost – the word means fifty days, so fifty days after the Lord resurrected from the dead – the Holy Spirit descended upon His apostles as they were gathered in the Upper Room. It is interesting to see what takes place within these men as soon as the Holy Spirit descends upon them. These are men who were gathered, as we are told even in the Gospel today, for fear of the Jews because they were afraid of persecution. After the Holy Spirit descended upon them, they became fearless and they went out and began to preach. Their understanding of the truths that Scripture had revealed and the truths that Our Lord had taught them suddenly became clear to them and they were able to present these truths with persuasive arguments.

Of course, the most persuasive argument of all is the one that came only at the end of their lives, as one after the next they were willing to follow their Divine Master even to the point of death. There is nothing that is more eloquent than anything the apostles did than to lay down their lives for Christ. Clearly, anyone would be able to recognize that what they were doing was not about themselves, because if it were, self-preservation would have been their concern. But their concern was Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit had been given to them to lead them into all truth, as Our Lord had told them. Jesus Himself is that truth. And so they were led then into the fullness of Who Jesus Christ is. They began to understand all the things that He had taught, and suddenly the pieces in their minds were being put together to be able to understand not only Who He is in the fullness of His Person but therefore who each of us is as members of His Mystical Body.

That is what Saint Paul talks about in the second reading today, that unity which is ours in the Mystical Body. So we look at that unity that we have, all of us making up one person in Christ, and we look also at what happened as the apostles went out and began to preach. All of these people from different areas of the world were able to hear them in their own language. Even though they spoke but one language themselves, everyone was able to hear the truth communicated to them and to understand it clearly. And so the Fathers of the Church tell us that Pentecost not only is the birth of the Church, but Pentecost also reverses what happened at Babel. At the time of Babel, they all spoke one language throughout the world and they used that unity to determine that they would topple God. They were going to build a huge tower that would go up into the heavens, and from there they would no longer need God because they would have exalted themselves. So God confused their speech. And when they could no longer communicate with one another, they all dispersed and went their separate ways.

But now, through the power of the Holy Spirit, what we see is unity. We see that there is one truth, that there is one voice and one language. Not that on the human level the whole world speaks one language; but on the Christian level, if we are truly living our faith, we all speak one language. It is a language of truth and a language of love. It matters not what human tongue we speak in because love transcends all of the words. If we practice the faith that we profess, one does not need words to be able to touch the hearts of anyone with whom one would come in touch. We recognize then that this truth which is given to us by the Holy Spirit is the truth that will actually set us free, which, again, is exactly what Our Lord taught. It sets us free from sin and all of its effects. Look back to Babel and there what you see is confusion, chaos, and disunity. You look now at what we see with the Holy Spirit and what we find is order, clarity, and unity.

So when Our Lord gives the apostles the Holy Spirit and tells them whose sins they forgive are forgiven and whose sins they retain are retained, the forgiveness of sin brings about that peace of soul the Lord was speaking of. And that peace of soul is what brings about the clarity and the order and the unity. If we look around at the world in which we live today, the effects of sin are painfully evident: chaos, confusion, disunity. Everyone is living in their own world. Go anyplace where you have a gathering of young people; each one of them has their own little set of headphones with their own stuff pumping into their ears. And it is not just the young people anymore. You go into the average family home and there are numerous television sets, each blaring out some other variety of filth with various members of the family parked in front of each one. There is no unity, but what you have is non-stop noise, chaos coming from every direction, confusion because people do not even know which way to turn. But in the midst of all of that, if we have the Holy Spirit, we will be able to go inside of ourselves and we will there find peace, silence, clarity, and order.

The choice is entirely ours whether we choose to give in to sin and its effects, with the devil, of course, right there to tell us how fulfilling this is and how exciting it is: “It’s fun to be able to listen and watch and do your own thing.” To what end? The only end is going to be hell because it is all about the self and that is what hell is all about. Everybody in hell is purely selfish. They are all doing their own thing and it is total chaos, noise, complete confusion, no truth. Everything is relative: “My truth is my own and your truth is your own and we’ll all do our own thing.” Doesn’t that sound like America? “There is not truth, it’s all opinion.” Clearly it is the work of Satan because that is what defines hell.

We are not called to that. We are called to order, to peace, to truth, to love. We are called to unity in the Mystical Body. If we are going to be able to have that unity in the Mystical Body, it requires that we first understand who we are. And in order to understand who we are, we first must understand Who Jesus Christ is. And the only way we are going to understand Who Jesus Christ is, is to turn to those by whom Our Lord has come to us, and that is His mother and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit descended upon Our Lady, not on the feast of Pentecost but on the feast of the Annunciation, and filled her with the Holy Spirit. At that moment, possessed by the Holy Spirit, her Divine Spouse, she conceived the Person of Jesus Christ. At that moment, of course, Our Lord was conceived in a very tiny form. But He began to grow and to develop and to take form in the womb of Our Blessed Lady.

So too, the Holy Spirit now descends upon His apostles on the feast of Pentecost. He did not descend upon Our Lady at Pentecost because she was already filled with the Holy Spirit from the Annunciation. This is the reason why the apostles instinctively gathered around Our Lady after Our Lord had ascended into heaven. She taught them. She prepared their souls for the promise that Our Lord had made to them, that the Holy Spirit would come upon them and fill their hearts with His truth and His love. That same Holy Spirit is given to each of us, and what the apostles knew instinctively is the same thing that we need to do, that is, to come to Our Blessed Lady and ask her to teach us and to form us, because Our Lady and the Holy Spirit have formed only one person – and that is the Person of Jesus Christ. If we are going to ask Our Lady to form us and ask the Holy Spirit through the Immaculate Heart of Mary to form us, they will form us according to the only person that they have ever formed together, that is, the Person of Our Lord. They will form us into the Person of Christ.

It is already there within us because each one of us has been given the Holy Spirit at our baptism, and the fullness of the Spirit is given to us in the sacrament of Confirmation. So there is nothing lacking from God’s part; the only thing lacking is on our part, and that is that most of us want to be formed according to our American culture rather than to be formed according to the Person of Jesus Christ. We need to make a choice to be formed according to Christ. If you truly want that, then come and ask the Holy Spirit through the immaculate Heart of Mary to form you. Just as it was with Jesus in the womb of Mary, it starts out in just a tiny form and then begins to develop within us, and we begin to be formed more and more into the likeness of Christ.

As that formation takes place, we will become more like what happened to the apostles. The fear goes away and love replaces it. The chaos goes away and order replaces it. The noise goes away and peace replaces it. We are able to live a truly ordered life, a truly peaceful life. We are able to live according to the truth, and with one voice we speak the truth of love. It is preparation then for heaven, where in heaven everything will be peace, everything will be love, everything will be perfectly ordered, and everything will be one. No one in heaven is selfish. No one in heaven is seeking his own interest. No one in heaven is caught up in anything other than God Himself. It is all about service, the love of God and the love of neighbor.

So we see the two distinctions for eternal life. We can plunge ourselves into what our society is offering and we can prepare ourselves for one branch of eternity. Or we can plunge ourselves into the Holy Spirit in the Immaculate Heart of Mary and we can prepare ourselves for eternity with God. That choice is made in this world, not in the next. It is made before we die, not after. The gift of God is offered to each and every one of us, the gift of God which is the Holy Spirit, Who is willing fully to take possession of us if we are willing to allow ourselves to be possessed by this Holy Spirit. It is not anything that will do violence to us. It is not anything that is going to violate our dignity. Rather, the Spirit of God will perfect our dignity and will help us to live according to that dignity so that the truth and the peace and the order and the unity which the Holy Spirit brings will be ours. In the midst of this world, we will be able to live the life of Christ.

So turn to Our Lady and ask her to intercede for you so that the Holy Spirit will be given to form you in the fullness of the Person of Christ. You will be formed by Our Lady and by the Holy Spirit, and you will become in that way the person God created you to be: a person of love, a person of truth, of peace, of order, of clarity, and all the other things. You will begin living the life of heaven here on earth and prepare yourself perfectly for the unity of the Mystical Body which awaits us, which is the fulfillment of the work of the Holy Spirit, as we prepare ourselves for eternity with Jesus in the Immaculate Heart of His mother, formed into the fullness of the Person of Christ by the working of the Holy Spirit poured out upon each of us as He was on the apostles on the glorious feast of Pentecost.

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

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