The readings of the Easter season have begun to shift. We’ve gone from scriptures detailing the accounts of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances to his disciples to Jesus speaking about what comes next. Last week, he spoke of how even though he prepares to go to the Father, we must not be afraid. And this week, he continues his teaching to speak of the coming of the Holy Spirit. And so the readings have begun to focus on the two glorious events of Jesus’ Ascension and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
For many centuries, Ascension Thursday, 40 days after Easter Sunday was a holy day of obligation. So, we would have been meeting again this Thursday, had the bishops not commuted the celebration of the Ascension to the following Sunday, which will be next Sunday.
Right before Jesus ascended to the Father, he commanded his disciples to gather together and wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit. And we know they were faithful to that command: they gathered together in the upper room, and devoted themselves to constant prayer, with the Blessed Mother.
They prayed for nine days before receiving the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. These is the origin of the practice of novena prayers. Novena coming from the word, novem, which means nine. So, Friday of this week begins the Pentecost Novena. By praying the Pentecost novena we follow the Lord’s command to prepare for Pentecost.
I encourage everyone here to pray this Novena. I’ll put a link to the Novena on the parish website and twitter account, and you can even sign up to have the daily prayers emailed to you by visiting the website “Praymorenovenas dot com” The Pentecost Novena is a powerful plea for the light and strength and love so sorely needed by every Christian. You would do well to pray it together as a family, with your spouse and children, or with your fiancé or significant other.
I remember, it was my second year of seminary, and I was walking past one of the priest’s offices, and he was meeting with a young couple preparing for marriage. He stopped me, and asked if I had any advice for this young couple. Now, I was a celibate college kid, what did I know about marriage? But I heard myself blurting out the words, “the couple that prays together stays together”. I’ve shared that advice with the couples I’ve prepared for the Sacrament of marriage.
Statistics show just how important it is for families to gather together for weekly Mass. The less husbands and wives attend mass together the greater the chances of the hardening of hearts and division. Prayer, worship, and faith are to unite us.
I had an engaged couple who had a long-distance relationship; the groom, I believe, lived in Chicago leading up to the wedding. But every night, they would pray the Church’s official Night Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours over the phone together. And they are a very strong and faith-filled married couple now. Free nights and weekends, there’s no excuse not to pray with your spouse if you are ever traveling on business!
Doing marriage preparation, I also meet a lot of young couples who are not practicing the faith. Some of them really haven’t been to church since their confirmation a decade before. With many of them, faith was not a priority for their families growing up and it still isn’t as they prepare for marriage. Thankfully, sometimes during the course of their marriage preparation they do rediscover the faith, or discover its power for the first time. But, sometimes they grow resistant, they make no effort to go to mass, they laugh off my insistence that they go to confession, they do not practice chastity. They put their future at risk, their marriage and their souls.
If we are to stay together, we must pray together. This is why weekly mass is so important. For Christianity is not simply a “me and Jesus” faith. The Body of Christ is to gather every week to remain united in common worship and the Spirit of Truth.
The Holy Spirit was sent upon the Church that we may be unified “in Spirit and Truth”. Think of the many ways the Holy Spirit brings unity. Through the Holy Spirit, the sinful soul is reunited with God. The Holy Spirit enables baptism to be powerful and effective. The Holy Spirit enables the Sacrament of Confession to reconcile souls separated from God through sin.
The Holy Spirit unites Christians in the bond of faith. For, it is through the Holy Spirit that apostolic succession through the sacrament of Holy Orders continues, so we can be united under the shepherding of Bishops who trace their lineage all the way back to the apostles. It is through the Holy Spirit that we are able to profess the one Faith received from the Apostles, free from error.
The Holy Spirit strengthens our faith and deepens our love and bestows countless gifts so that we continue to build up the church and have the courage to spread the faith.
The Holy Spirit unites families; a family that prays together opens itself to the strengthening of the Holy Spirit. When a family prays together the Holy Spirit heals wounds of division in a family, and gives family members patience to love each other as they should. Having a lot of arguments with the family? Consider coming to Sacramental Confession together on a Saturday afternoon. How powerful would that be!
The Holy Spirit works to unite the divided members of the human race by softening hardened hearts to the truth of Christ.
And the Holy Spirit works to bring unity within our own divided selves, our wounded fragmented selves. Often we continue to fall into sins because our egotistical, selfish, impatient, lustful selves still have healing to do.
Healing for a soul, a family, a parish, a nation occurs when we dispose our souls to the unifying power of the Holy Spirit: through prayer, the rosary, the divine mercy chaplet, the liturgy of the hours, lectio divina with scripture, novenas, through the humble confession of sins in the sacrament of confession, and through acts of charity.
St. Paul says, “The Holy Spirit brings life”…life which Jesus died to obtain for us, the life of grace, the life of holiness and wholeness, life for the spread of the gospel, the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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