Homily: Pentecost 2015 - Wind and Fire

Today is the great Feast of Pentecost, the feast that ranks with Christmas and Easter as the greatest of the Church Year.  It is the Feast of the Holy Spirit who enlivens and animates the Church.

Listen again to the account of the first Pentecost nearly 2000 years ago from the Acts of the Apostles, often called the Gospel of the Holy Spirit by the Early Church Fathers.

When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled,

they were all in one place together.

And suddenly there came from the sky

a noise like a strong driving wind,

and it filled the entire house in which they were.

Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire,

which parted and came to rest on each one of them.

And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit

Wind and fire are two symbols associated with the Holy Spirit, and they tell us a lot about how the Holy Spirit wishes to act in our lives.  First, Acts describes the Holy Spirit as a strong driving wind.  There is something unpredictable about the wind.  You don’t know quite where it comes from or quite where it is going.  Jesus himself in John’s Gospel says, The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.”

That says something about the Holy Spirit, there is something elusive, unpredictable, and wonderfully so, about Him. But that means we can’t control Him, and that makes Him a little daunting, a little scary.  We can’t control Him, we only have two choices, resist or surrender.  And it’s scary to surrender to God.  He might ask me to speak in front of people, he might ask me to go out into the street and feed the homeless, he might ask me to become a priest or a religious sister.  He might upset my applecart, and that’s scary.

But we are called to that sort of trust with God, to give God the blank check, to hand our life over to him and to say, “my life is yours, do with me what you will.” 

One of the great prayers to the Holy Spirit, prayed by Catholics for over a thousand years are the three words: Veni Sancte Spiritus, Come Holy Spirit.  Now, there is a prayer to be prayed every day.  Come Holy Spirit, with your unseen gifts.  Come Holy Spirit, to lead me to become the person God made me to be.

Another thing about the Wind is that it is powerful.  I’ve seen wind knock over trucks.  Tornado winds can devastate villages and cities.  Wind can also turn gigantic wind turbines.  So the Holy Spirit, when you let Him in your life, He will do something powerful in you: He’ll change you, it will definitely uproot some things in you.  But, he might just make you into a powerful instrument for the change God wants in the world. 

I can’t help but think of Saint John Paul II, who during the early 1980s visited his native Poland under the control of the Communists, during a time of martial law.  The Communist Government had put oppressive restrictions on practice of Catholicism.  And Pope John Paul stood up to the Communists and preached the freedom of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; he spoke God’s truth and unleashed the power of the Holy Spirit in that land.  And you know what happened?  It toppled the Communist government in Poland, it toppled Atheist Communism in the entire Eastern Block, and in time it toppled the Mighty Soviet Union.  The Holy Spirit is wind, powerful and mighty; it can knock over the strongest things, it can lift the heaviest things, if we but let it in our lives.  The gates of hell cannot prevail against that wind.

Wind, fresh air, is needed continually for life itself.  If your faith life or prayer life feels stifled, strangled, or stagnate, ask the Holy Spirit to breathe new life, new enthusiasm, new joy into your soul.

The other great symbol of the Holy Spirit is Fire.  Fire, can be devastating and destructive.  Yet, it can also be cleansing.  The Holy Spirit is like a cleansing Fire. 

Often times when people begin to be attracted to the faith, and they begin to pray, and they begin to participate in the liturgy, they often realize, “things have to change in me, all is not well”  God wants to burn away the attitudes and behaviors which are inconsistent with the life of grace.  God wants to burn away our selfishness, so that not an ounce remains, God wants to burn away our envy, our resentments, our lusts.”  If you are struggling with a particular temptation or sin, pray “Come Holy Spirit” burn this temptation away, burn this addiction away.

There is more to the symbol of fire.  Fire is also illuminating, especially for people of biblical times, before electricity.  Fire was light, it was illumination, it was how you could see in night, in the darkness.

So, when the Holy Spirit dwells in you, you come to a deeper understanding of the Scriptures, of the Faith, of the world.  Do you want to understand how to love your unlovable neighbors?  Ask Him! Do you want to draw more inspiration and guidance from the Holy Scriptures?  Ask Him!  Do you want to understand God’s Will for your life, your vocation in life?  Ask Him! 

We should also ask the Holy Spirit to grant understanding and light to all those people who condemn the Catholic Church, and therefore turn their hearts away from Jesus.  The atheists, journalists, the politicians, the fallen away Catholics who speak about the Church as an enemy rather than a mother—they need our prayers.  Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen said there are not a 100 people who hate the Church, but millions who hate what they mistakenly think the Church is.  Those who appear to be our enemies now, may one day become evangelizers and teachers of the truth; think of Saint Paul, who went from stoning Christians to death, to dying for the faith.

Fire also symbolizes the passion and courage God wants us to have for the spreading of the Gospel.  After Jesus’ crucifixion, the Apostles hid in the upper room behind locked doors.  Jesus had sent them outwards, but they hid.  They were more like Apostates, than Apostles.  But when the Holy Spirit came, as Jesus promised, they burst through the locked doors, into the busiest part of town and courageously proclaimed Jesus risen from the dead.  3000 people converted on the spot.

We need this sort of courage! In an era where our modern culture wants Christians to privataze their faith, they want us to hide behind locked doors and keep our faith to ourselves.  For, we aren’t called simply to whisper the faith amongst ourselves, but to proclaim it proudly and courageously outside these Church doors.

In our Second Reading today, St. Paul spoke of the many spiritual gifts to be used in the Lord’s service.  Every baptized person in this church has gifts for spreading the Gospel because at Baptism you received the Holy Spirit.  Baptism is not an empty harmless ritual, but an emersion into the very being of God, and a bestowal of the gifts of God.

Each of us has been given gifts of wisdom to help order our lives according to God’s priorities, understanding to reflect on the deeper meaning of our faith, knowledge to see God working in our life, right counsel to form our consciences in light of Church Teaching, fortitude to remain faithful in times of difficulty, trial, persecution, and temptation, piety to honor God rightly and reverently, and the gift of fear that helps us to root out sin in our life.  All of the baptized have these gifts and are to be enflamed with zeal for the Lord’s work.

The Holy Spirit—wind and flame—is alive in our Church.  Share that wind, that fire, let him animate your life, and illuminate our dark world.  Veni Sancte Spiritus, Come Holy Spirit, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.