Homily:
Pentecost – Cycle C
As you all
remember, this past week Fr. Neterer and I were at our biennial priest
convocation down in Brown County State Park.
It was a lovely couple of days to be away with our brother priests. At the convocation, there is always a speaker
that speaks on some theme of priestly life and ministry. This year, our speaker was Dr. Ralph Martin,
an author and professor of theology at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit.
I have to say
that Dr. Martin was quite refreshing. He
shared with us his story of how he ended up as an author and seminary professor
and I was edified that his path began in relatively normal circumstances. For example, the Holy Spirit first touched
his heart when he participated in a Cursillo weekend. All of you who are Cursillistas, or who have
been through Christ Renews His Parish or even an Antioch retreat, have had very
similar experiences to the one that opened Dr. Martin’s heart to the grace of a
spiritual awakening. He spoke very
plainly and humbly, and he was a great witness to us. And, after sharing his witness, he spoke to
us about the New Evangelization.
The “New
Evangelization”, if you’ve never heard of it before (or, if you have, but don’t
understand what it is), is something for which our Popes have been calling for
the last 40 years or so. If you think
that it has something to do with going out and finding people who have never
heard of Jesus to tell them about Jesus and the saving news of the Gospel, then
you will have thought well, but you will have thought wrong. The New Evangelization is not about
evangelizing those who have never heard of Jesus Christ (though that work is
still necessary), but rather about evangelizing those who are already in the
Church. Sounds strange, perhaps, but
here’s what it means:
Since the Second
Vatican Council, it seems, there has been a disconnect between the initiation
of men and women to the faith and their evangelization. In other words, we’ve sacramentalized
millions of people (meaning, we’ve given them the sacraments), but we’ve done a
poor job of introducing them to the person of Jesus (that is, the person for
whom and through whom they have been sacramentalized). In the past, this didn’t seem to be so big of
a problem, since the surrounding culture supported and encouraged men and women
to continue the practice of the faith, even if they didn’t always have an
understanding of the relationship with God that their practice maintained. Today, the cultural support for religious
practice has disappeared (in fact, it has become hostile to it); and so, those
who have been sacramentalized but not evangelized fall away from the faith
since they see no underlying reasons to continue to practice it. The New Evangelization calls us to take up
the task of evangelizing the baptized so that the sacramental grace that they
have received may become active in their lives and draw them back into the
practice of the faith.
Perhaps some of
you are thinking to yourselves, “surely it is not I, Father, who hasn’t been
evangelized?” Well, chances are that a
number of you sitting here this morning do fall into this category. If so, don’t worry. It is not a sin to be sacramentalized and not
evangelized, if it happened due to no fault of your own. And most of the people who fall into this
category have already left the practice of the faith, anyway, so they wouldn’t
be here (and certainly not at 7:30 in the morning!). Regardless of whether you’d count yourselves
among the evangelized or the merely sacramentalized, there is a message for us
here today. That message is the
connection between Pentecost and the New Evangelization.
Dr. Martin,
echoing the Popes all the way back to John XXIII, said that the New
Evangelization demands a new Pentecost.
Just as the first evangelization began when the Holy Spirit descended on
the disciples in the Upper Room, so too will the New Evangelization take flight
when the Church, on a large scale, calls for the Holy Spirit to descend upon
her again. This has already begun in a
smaller scale as Ecclesial Movements like the Catholic Charismatic Renewal,
Cursillo (and all its permutations), and the Neo-Catechumenal Way have found a
footing in the Church and are evangelizing the baptized: that is, helping men
and women—long since baptized—to find and establish a personal relationship
with Jesus Christ. We have these
movements here in the Midwest—some right here in Lafayette—and so if something
is stirring in you right now as you hear about these evangelizing groups, let
me know and I’ll be more than happy to connect you to them. All of these groups rely heavily on calling
on the Holy Spirit to enlighten them, to guide them, and to strengthen them in
their efforts to evangelize.
Nonetheless, you
do not have to be a part of an ecclesial movement to participate in the New
Evangelization; our scriptures today show us that. In our second reading, Paul, writing to the
Church in Corinth, says “to each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is
given for some benefit”. Did you hear
that? He said, “to each individual...” That means that each and every one of you
here—if you have been baptized—has been given a manifestation of the Holy
Spirit. And so, there’s no one here
(again, if you’ve been baptized) who can say, “Oh, that Holy Spirit stuff is
for other folks, not me.” Each of us has
been given a manifestation of the Spirit, “for some benefit”. If we don’t know what those spiritual gift or
gifts might be, then our task is to call on the Holy Spirit to enlighten us to
those gifts so that we can begin to manifest them for the benefit of the
kingdom of God, which has, at its root, the evangelization of peoples. If we remember the Gospel parable of the
talents, we remember that the master did not look kindly on the one who hid his
talent instead of trading with it so as to multiply it. So, too, it will be with us who have been given
a manifestation of the Spirit for some benefit, but then failed to discern that
gift and to apply it for the building of the kingdom.
And so, how do we
come to know those spiritual gifts?
Well, the simple way is to call on the Holy Spirit regularly! “Come, Holy Spirit” is a great prayer to the
Holy Spirit that anyone can pray. In our
Gospel, today, however, Jesus shows us another way to open ourselves to the
outpouring of the Holy Spirit. He says:
If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be
with you always... The Advocate, the
Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and
remind you of all that I told you.” In
other words, if we love Jesus and keep his commandments, then Jesus himself
will take care of sending the Spirit to us.
I like this method, because it keeps us focused on fostering our own
relationship with Christ, which will be essential in any evangelizing work that
we are given. It also reminds us,
however, that we cannot expect to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit if we
refuse to turn away from our sins: that is, if we fail to keep the commandments
of the Lord. Thus, it is a constant urging
to turn away from sin and be cleansed of it (especially in Confession) so as to
remove all barriers to the Spirit’s manifestation in us. Thus prayer, in which we communicate with
Jesus daily, and frequent reception of the sacraments, are keys to unlocking
the outpouring of the Spirit in us.
Friends, on this
holy day—and at the end of this holy season—let us be bold in asking for a New
Pentecost so that the work of the New Evangelization might be accomplished
through us: the work of bringing our brothers and sisters to (or back to) the
practice of the faith through a personal relationship with Jesus. For it is this work that will make us saints;
and it is this work that will usher in the day when Christ will return, in all
his glory, to take us home to himself.
Come, Holy Spirit, Come!
Given
at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – June 9th, 2019
No comments:
Post a Comment