For the past 40 days of the Easter season, we’ve reveled in and celebrated, contemplated and hopefully lived out and proclaimed the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Throughout the Easter Season, our Sunday readings have led us to consider what it means to live in the peace of the Risen Christ, what it means for us to feed the lambs and tend the sheep of the Risen Christ. We’ve considered what it means for us, as members of the Risen Christ’s flock, to continue to listen to the Shepherd’s voice, and what it means to love one another so as to glorify the Risen Christ.
Hopefully, during these 40 days you have seen and witnessed in your own life and in the lives of one another the effects of Christ’s resurrection: greater peace and joy and courage and charity.
Today’s feast of the Ascension marks the final phase of the Easter Season which will culminate in the Feast of Pentecost next Sunday. Our Scripture readings today look forward to Pentecost, too. We heard in both our First Reading and the Gospel about “the promise of the Father” and “in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
During those days between the Lord’s Ascension and Pentecost, the apostles gathered together to pray with the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Cenacle. So, imitating how the earliest Christians prepared for Pentecost, in invited you, over this next week, to consider adding to your daily prayer routine special prayers for the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Especially as our parish prepares for a retreat next Saturday on the discernment of our spiritual gifts, please pray for each other and for yourselves, that Pentecost can be for you and our fellow parishioners a new openness to the promises of the Father.
That’s an interesting phrase, the Lord uses in the Gospel, isn’t it? “The Promise of the Father”. The phrase “promise of the Father” is rich in theological meaning and ties together the Old and New Testaments. Throughout the Old Testament, God makes promises to His people—not only of land and descendants, but of new life and interior renewal:
In the prophet Ezekiel we read: “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you”. In the prophet Joel we read, ““I will pour out my spirit on all flesh”. Again in Ezekiel we read, “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live”
In using this phrase, “the promise of the Father” Jesus is drawing attention to the fact that these ancient promises are not abstract—they are now being fulfilled in the Church. The Father has promised His very Spirit, and Pentecost will mean an outpouring of the Spirit on the Church.
Calling the Holy Spirit “the promise of the Father” reminds us that the Spirit is not just a force or an impersonal gift—He is the personal bond of love between the Father and the Son. And Christians brought into that very communion. In calling the Spirit “the promise of the Father” Jesus is saying, “My Father has been longing for you to be brought into full Communion with the Trinity. And that plan of the Father is now being fulfilled.”
God is faithful to his promises. The Father is not like the world, which makes and breaks promises. What God promises, He brings to fulfillment. Just as He fulfilled the promise of the Messiah in Jesus’ coming, so now He fulfills the promise of divine indwelling in the sending of the Spirit.
In speaking of the promise of the Father, the Lord Jesus invited his apostles to continue just a little while longer to wait with trust, and Jesus invites us into that same posture: expectant, receptive, persevering. For, the promise of the Father was not just for the apostles. It is for us, here and now—in this age of the Church. The Father wants life for us. As St. Ireneus said, the glory of God is man fully alive. And the Spirit enables us to abound with the life of God.
Particularly, the Spirit is given to restore us to life due to our sins. It is through the Holy Spirit that the redemptive grace of Christ’s Paschal Mystery is applied to us through Baptism. And it is through the Holy Spirit that sins that we commit after baptism might be absolved. The absolution prayer in the Sacrament of Confession echoes this. After the penitent makes the act of contrition in the Sacrament of Confession, the priest prays: “God the Father of Mercies, through the death and resurrection of His Son, has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit for the forgiveness of sins.”
The forgiveness of sins is truly a restoration of life. What is dead in us is brought to life through the power of the Holy Spirit.
But the Holy Spirit also causes spiritual gifts to sprout from seed form, to grow, flourish, and bear fruit. In baptism, each of us the gifts of God are given in seed form: knowledge, wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, piety, and fear of the Lord. And as we cooperate with the Spirit in the course of our lives, and receive the Sacraments, we increase in these gifts.
The Gifts of the Spirit are gifts God has given to each of us to be active and alive and effective in our Christian mission. But there are also unique gifts, charisms, given to me that he hasn’t given to you, and gifts that he has given to you that he hasn’t given to me. And we are to seek to discern and cultivate those as well.
Again, our retreat next Saturday will help us to discern those gifts and how they can be put to use in God’s service.
None of God’s gifts are to be hidden under a bushel basket. We are fully alive when we have allowed promises of the Father to be fulfilled in us, when we have allowed the Holy Spirit to animate us—our words, actions, and decisions.
So again, this week, in preparation for the Feast of Pentecost: pray for greater openness to the Promise of the Father. Take some time this week to ask the Holy Spirit to help you identify gifts that have gone dormant, gifts that need strengthening, and the courage to put those gifts into action. Lord, what gift right now, do I need to cultivate more than others? What gift have I fearfully or lazily hidden away?
And please pray for your fellow parishioners who will be attending next week’s retreat. If the glory of God is man fully alive, fully utilizing his gifts, then God is certainly glorified when brothers and sisters in Christ come together in seeking to put their gifts in service to God collectively as a parish.
May God’s promises and gifts become ever more manifest in each of our lives and families and relationships for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
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