Homily @ Eastertide: Gathering and Connecting

 

Year C / Eastertide / Solemnity of Pentecost

Readings: Acts 2.1-11/ Psalm 103.1, 24, 29-31, 34 (R/v 4) / Romans 8.8-17 / John 20.19-23

There is a longing in our hearts — a longing  to be together.

Isn’t this why children reach out and make friends in the playground? Why we look for love until we find the right one? Isn’t this why we hope work colleagues can become friends? Why we cherish our family and friends? Indeed, we do all this because we long to belong; even more, to remain one together. 

Last Sunday Jesus prayed for this kind of unity for his disciples. He said: “that they may be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us” (John 17.21). 

It is the Holy Spirit who enables us to become one with Jesus and God. He connects us to God, through Jesus. This is how the Spirit adopts us into God’s life and love. And in Jesus, He connects us to one another. This is how the Spirit draws us into relationship with everyone. 

Our gospel reading describes how the disciples lock themselves in a room, fearful that Jesus’ fate would soon be their own. They are disconnected from Jesus and from others. Suddenly Jesus enters. His very presence connects. “Peace be with you,” Jesus greets them. His peace reconciles him and his disciples again in friendship. Peace is how they experience Jesus’ mercy, compassion and forgiveness. Then, he sends them forth to share his peace and reconcile the world with God. To help them do this, Jesus breathes the Spirit upon them. This connection nourishes Christian life.

Don’t we want this Spirit? To energise our faith, help us contemplate the mystery of God’s love and fill us with God’s life? St Paul teaches that it is the “Spirit of adoption” who allows us to live in confidence, not fear, as God’s own and to call God “Abba, Father.”

This Spirit also connects the disciples more closely to Jesus’ compassion for all, especially, those hurting, grieving and despairing. He enables them to embody God’s mercy and healing for everyone. This connection fuels the Christian mission.

Don’t we want this Spirit? To crack open our hardheartedness so that our self-giving will be generous and our fellowship gracious to all who need our charity, our presence, our readiness to dialogue and our love?

Today is Pentecost. We believe and we celebrate that what began at Pentecost with great signs and wonders will continue in our own lives and the world. So, we pray, “Come, Holy Spirit!”

Come and connect us to God and one another. Connect us also to our world that is unjust, broken and divided. Connect us again to family and friends who have hurt us and whom we have hurt. Connect us honestly to our deepest, truest selves – sometimes bad and sinful so that we can turn away from sin and save our souls. 

Yes, come Holy Spirit and help us to love and be one, to forgive and to be reconciled, to be healed and uplifted as persons, families, communities, the world, even as our Church. 

The Holy Spirit can do more, and He will. Our first reading describes the Spirit as a mighty force. He emboldened the disciples to be brave and break free from the locked room so they can proclaim God’s mighty works of loving, forgiving and saving to the crowds. The Spirit inspired them to speak different languages to connect to everyone. Yes, the Spirit empowered them for mission.

So, let us pray, “Come, Holy Spirit!” To push us out of our fears, doubts and hesitancy into the world. To unite us with all kinds of people. To expand our small-minded, self-righteous and prideful hearts to welcome and include those we fear and hate, disagree with and push aside. To live and serve as Jesus did, and so build the kingdom of God.

At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit reversed the sin of Babel and the division and confusion it caused. The Spirit gathered many different tongues into one chorus praising God. Indeed, the Spirit connects and unites the diverse and the different. The Spirit’s work of gathering and connecting encourages the richness of everyone’s gifts to flourish as a community and a commonwealth. This witnesses to possibilities in our lives and the life of the Church the Holy Spirit can bring about.

Some might say, “This is all talk, church talk, Fr A. When has this happened again after the Pentecost? Where has it happened? Who has really enjoyed the unity and hope you speak about? Look around: we’re a broken society, a divided Church?”

But we have in fact seen this unity and heard its goodness. When we did that togetherness, a genuine one-ness that mirrors the one-ness of the Father and Jesus before us was very powerful and inspiring. And when we especially experienced it, I think it was very hard to notice that it was indeed "not of this world.”  

That one-ness and unity I am speaking about happened here, at Papal Mass last September. Weren’t we all there, as one church? Whether we were from a small or a big parish, an “out there and about” Church organisation like OYP or a quiet, behind the scene organisation like CARE that looks after HIV and AIDs patient; whether we call ourselves Pope Benedict Catholics or Pope Francis Catholics; whether we have traditional or progressive views about the Church — truly whatever our differences, the Holy Spirit gathered us together to plan, organise and worship together as one Church.

Even more remarkable was that with us at that Mass were non-Catholic police force, food vendors, stadium staff, medical teams, and many others helping and supporting us, as one kingdom of God, regardless of race, language or religion? 

Didn’t we see this? Didn’t we recognise the Holy Spirit working overtime to gather and connect, to unify and give hope? 

The Papal Mass, like Pentecost, could only have happened when the disciples really heard and obeyed what Jesus once instructed the deaf-mute man he cured (Mark 7.32-37). He did not say "be healed" or "be well" or "be restored, or "be saved." Instead, he simply uttered to this man “ephphatha,” "Be opened”—be open to God who through the Spirit heals and reconciles, unites and renews.

Indeed, only when we ourselves are open to this same Spirit, God’s gift at Pentecost, can our deepest longing to be with one another and with God, and remain together, be fulfilled. So let’s ask, “Come, Holy Spirit!” Let us do this by opening not just our mouths but our hearts.  Shall we?

Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart
Photo by CNS photo/Tyler Orsburn