Today we celebrate Pentecost, the big communal outpouring of the Holy Spirit after the Ascension of Jesus into Heaven, and in our responsorial psalm we had the refrain, “Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.”
We need a renewal, it seems as much now as ever as far as faith in our world is concerned, and I am convinced that this is the only way it is going to happen is through God sending us more and more of the Holy Spirit.
I just celebrated my five year anniversary on Friday, which means I am no longer a baby priest. I often said that, “Oh I’m just a baby priest,” kind of jokingly, kind of not, I mean it would always get a laugh, but it’s really true, I’m still a baby trying to figure things out.
At the beginning of my priesthood, well really all through seminary, I was very much all about teaching, Catechesis, thinking if everyone just knew the bible better, understood the Scripture and Tradition that the Mass and all of the doctrines and dogmas come from, really appreciating the Sacraments, that would renew the Church.
Then I moved more into an evangelization phase, we just have to have small groups with bible studies and people witnessing, sharing their faith with each other. If we just had better evangelization, that would renew the Church.
After Covid I moved into more of a Liturgy phase, believing if we could have beautiful liturgies, doing things the way Vatican II really envisioned, that would renew the Church.
But now, over the last couple of years, I’ve become convinced that the only thing that’s going to renew the Church is God Himself, through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Now don’t hear what I’m not saying, all that other stuff is still important, but the primary thing that will renew the Church is the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is what began the Church. After Jesus appeared to the Apostles for the first time after the Resurrection He said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Then 50 days later was Pentecost where the Spirit was poured out on the Disciples to effectively begin the Church. Paul said “No one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.”
Which is exactly what the Church is all about doing, the Holy Spirit has always been the answer, we can’t even do the smallest thing in the Christian life, we can’t even give the smallest praise to Jesus Christ without the Holy Spirit.
The difficulty about the Holy Spirit is that it appears in different ways, it’s unpredictable, uncontrollable. In our second reading we heard it manifests in different ways… “different kinds… different forms… different workings. To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.”
About the only thing we control is that we call on the Holy Spirit to come down, but then, we just don’t know what will happen. That’s hard for us, as people, we like to be in control. It’s hard for us as priests, we like the control of the Sacraments, we say these certain words and these certain things happen. When we call on the Holy Spirit, we don’t always know, it isn’t always what we expect.
So one of the things we have to do to overcome control is to surrender. Two weeks ago I encouraged people to come on Wednesday night and received a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The way that looks is the prayer leader asks the person to repeat after them saying, “Jesus, I surrender. Come Holy Spirit.” 3 times. And then they just sit there and receive, hands open on their lap, receiving.
When we surrender to God and allow the Holy Spirit to work, amazing things happen. A very recent example, a week and a half ago a lady from Cathedral decided to come up to our family Holy Hour on Wednesday night. She is about 70 years old and just had a friend die that morning. When she came in the door here she saw a sign for Healing Prayer so she asked someone and they directed her to the Adoration Room.
The prayer team prayed some healing prayers with her, not a lot, and then she began to pray with the prayers I described for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. She started to receive and “rested in the Spirit” for over an hour.
When she told me about this she was so excited, I saw her after the ordination, she still barely had the words to describe what had happened. She told me that her hands got really hot and it felt like someone was holding her hands, but she kept checking and nobody was. But for a long time she has been having these heart palpitations that just went away. She called it a miracle, and she is bringing a friend with her this Wednesday to receive prayer.
This is how it worked in times of Jesus, He healed someone, they would go tell others, then more people would come. This is the Original Evangelization. And it makes sense that if it happened then, it will happen now.
God is in control of His church. I have to remember that, we all have to remember that. The real problem with all of my first solutions was that it depended on me, it focused on me, but this focuses on God and allows Him to work.
I believe this is so important that I don’t just want to ask once a year on Pentecost, I want people to be able to ask every week, if they want.