Let the Spirit Move You!

May 31, 2009
Pentecost Sunday
Cycle B

Does the spirit move you?! Have you ever felt compelled to stand up and sing? Have you ever felt so moved by something that happened to you that you just couldn’t keep it in, you just had to tell everyone about it? Have you ever had such a deep joy in your heart that you felt you were just going to burst? You probably felt that way when you saw your children being born. Or when you bought that new Escalade. Or when the Red Sox finally won the World Series.

Have you ever had that feeling in church?... Well, no, Deacon Tom, of course not. We’re Catholic. Catholics don’t do joy. We do piety. We do obligation. We do donuts.

You just heard the story of the first Mass, of the birthday of the Church. What do you mean, you say? Well, they were all gathered together in assembly… Check. They had a priest; actually they had a pope and ten bishops…Check. I assume that while they were all there they talked about stuff, and most likely they told Jesus stories… Check. And they also probably ate, and you know what happened when they broke the bread… Check. Yup, just like us here today.

Well, not exactly. They didn’t have a magnificent building, or a piano, and all the fancy furniture and gold plates and cups. They didn’t even have the New Testament or a tabernacle. But what they did have was all they needed. They had the Holy Spirit. And more importantly, they recognized the presence of the Spirit among them, and it moved them deeply. The Spirit moved them. And they found joy.

So, maybe not just like us here today.

The apostles were profoundly changed when they received the Holy Spirit. They were cowering in the upper room, unsure and afraid. When the Spirit came upon them they immediately understood their new role in the world, and they opened wide the doors and began to preach the good news.

The Spirit does that. When we have the Spirit within us we have a deeper understanding of God’s plan for us, and we are then compelled to go out and do something about it. Knowledge by itself is nice, but does not produce fruit. If we are to produce fruit we need to put that knowledge to use in the kingdom. In fact, if we have the Spirit we really have no choice but to spread the good news. We are compelled to get out and tell people about it. When’s the last time you did that? When’s the last time you even talked about God outside this building? When’s the last time you talked about God inside this building?

I have been working with a company in Ogden that designs and builds churches for non-denominational evangelicals. I have been struck by the depth of their joy in their faith. Unlike a lot of Catholics, me included, they are not embarrassed to talk about their faith in public. They are not just trying to proselytize, although they do a lot of that; their faith is integral to who they are, and they cannot keep it in. They have a joy that I rarely feel anymore. I have really felt the Holy Spirit at work in them.

We are being compartmentalized more and more in our society. We have put up all sorts of barriers to spreading the Good News to the world. And we put them up ourselves. They are not forced on us. We do it willingly. We have created great divisions among God’s people. As the world is shrinking through advances in technology we should be able to proclaim that Good News more effectively than at any time in history. But is Jesus growing larger as our world becomes smaller, or is it the other way around?

We claim every Sunday that we are an apostolic church. One, holy, catholic and apostolic. What does it mean to be apostolic? What did the apostles do? They preached and taught, they healed and forgave. They offered their lives up for others. They didn’t just die for their faith, they lived for their faith. They were invaded by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and they had to bring the fruits of that Spirit out into the world. They left that first Mass and brought that Mass out into the world in a spirit of unity. But first they had to leave the comfort and safety of the upper room.

The Holy Spirit gave the apostles the ability to cross language barriers and cultural divides and speak the universal truth of Jesus Christ to all who would listen. Jesus is all about unity, not division. His message of peace is designed to bring us all together. Why does it seem that the greatest divisions are among the very followers of Christ? Forget language differences, forget cultural differences. Christians are the most divided religion in the world. There are more denominations in Christianity than in any other religion. There seem to be more divisions in the Catholic Church than in any other. We have fallen short in our apostolic mission. We have become splintered. We are broken and we are in need of forgiveness.

It’s not by accident that Jesus tied the gift of the Holy Spirit to forgiveness. He could have said anything to the apostles when he appeared to them that night. He is God, he knew what he wanted to say, and he never wasted words. He didn’t tell them to build this huge hierarchical church. He didn’t tell them to go back to school and get degrees in theology. He gave the task to the apostles to forgive sins. He gave them the understanding that God is all about forgiveness. His spirit is a forgiving spirit. And that forgiveness brings peace. All the rest is commentary.

We also have the power to forgive sins, you know. And we have the power to retain them. When someone hurts us, we hold the power of forgiveness. And if we withhold that power, the sins are retained. Not retained in heaven, because God always forgives. We hold them within ourselves, so that they stew and become bitter. When we retain the sins of those who hurt us, we take them upon ourselves, and they become ours. Without forgiveness there can be no peace. Without forgiveness there is no Spirit within us.

We cannot exist without the Holy Spirit. St. Paul says that in Christ we live and move and have our being. We have our very being. We exist because of Christ living within us, whether we acknowledge it or not. And the manifestation of Christ is through the Spirit, because it is a creating Spirit. Just because we do not constantly think about the air we breathe does not mean it isn’t there, giving us life with each passing breath. Just because we don’t acknowledge the love we have for each other every minute of the day doesn’t mean we are not loved. And just because we may not even think God exists doesn’t make it so. The Holy Spirit is a reality, and realities don’t go away just because we don’t believe in them.

But how do we know the Holy Spirit exists? We have seen Jesus, who said to Philip, “If you see me you see the Father”, but we cannot see the Holy Spirit. How can we know the Spirit?

We cannot see air. It is invisible to our eye. It is only when air moves that we experience it. We draw in our breath, moving the air. We feel it moving in the breezes around us. We see the wind’s affect on the things it moves about. It’s the same with the Spirit. We only experience it when it moves things; when it moves us.

How do you know love exists? Show it to me. We can’t see love itself. Instead, we see the manifestations of love. We see the results of love. Love is always fruitful, by definition. Therefore, we know of love by its fruits. So therefore, if God is love and the Holy Spirit is God, we know of the Spirit by His manifestation, by His fruit.

The Jewish feast of Pentecost celebrates the ripening of the Spring grain and the giving of the first fruits back to the Lord. It is fitting that God chose to send the Holy Spirit upon his church at the very time they were celebrating the fruitfulness of the earth. Because the Spirit is all about fruitfulness.

Just as we know the Holy Spirit exists because of the manifestations of the spirit, so also the world knows the Spirit exists because of our actions. Whenever we act with love that’s the spirit working. But we must act or it’s not love.

What did Jesus say first that night in the upper room? “Peace be with you”. The Spirit of Christ always brings peace. His next words are pretty clear. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” So get off your tail and get out the door.

And let the Spirit move you.