Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle A

Welcome to read homilies for the Sundays of the year. These are sample homilies which you can read with devotion. You may use them in your own homilies without asking my permission. You may also change or edit these to fit them to your audience. A unique quality of these homilies is that they are Christ-filled. From beginning to end they present to us some aspect of Jesus so that beholding his glory we “are being transformed from glory to glory into his very image” (2 Corinthians 3:18 NAB).

The Most Beautiful House

Do you know what and where is the most beautiful house in the whole world?

According to the British Broadcasting Company or BBC, the most beautiful house is at Bear Run, 65 miles or 105 kilometers southeast of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It has a name. It is called Fallingwater. It was built by Frank Lloyd Wright, then in the 1930s the most famous living architect in the US. It was built among trees over a waterfall with the bedrock rising up to the living room floor. It is estimated that as of 2017 more than 5 million visitors have taken a close look at this house, reputedly the most beautiful in the world.

Our Gospel reading today talks about the most beautiful house in all the worlds, in the whole universe, more beautiful than the Fallingwater in Pennsylvania.  Let us listen again to Jesus as he talks about this most beautiful house in the whole universe. He says, "And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna or hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father's knowledge. Even all the hairs of your head are counted. So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows."

On first reading you do not see any house in this statement of Jesus. But when you want to understand more what he said, you will learn that he was talking about a house which is worth more than many sparrows, in fact worth more than all the sparrows in the world.

Jesus did refer to this kind of house in his other discourses. In Luke chapter 11 verse 24 to 26 he talks about this house. He says there, “When an unclean spirit has gone out of a man, it wanders through arid wastes searching for a resting place; failing to find one, it says, ‘I will go back to where I came from.’ It then returns, to find the house swept and tidied. Next it goes out and returns with seven other spirits far worse than itself, which enter in and dwell there. The result is that the last state of the man is worse than the first.”

In the first part of the passage we quoted, Jesus says, "And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul”. There have been many interpretations of the meaning of the words “body” and “soul” here. Body usually is understood as the material, physical part of a human being; soul usually is understood as the immaterial, invisible part. One dictionary defines the soul as “the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal”. This interpretation of the soul seems to look at it as a part of man which can be separated from a person. It can leave the person and still live without the body.

But Jesus’ idea of the soul is that of a house. In the passage from Luke which we quoted, Jesus says that the unclean spirit returns to the place where it came from and finds the house swept and tidied. This spirit then calls out seven other spirits far worse than itself to dwell there. They dwell in that man as in a house.

Because spirits are immaterial and invisible they dwell in that part of the man which is immaterial and invisible, his soul.

Again, in the conclusion of Jesus’ sermon on the mount he compares the human person to a house. He says there, “Anyone who hears my words and puts them into practice is like the wise man who built his house on rock.”

The human soul is the house of the spirit.

In contrast to Fallingwater or any other beautiful house the beauty of the human soul as a house does not consist in its building or its decorations. Its beauty depends on its occupant. The more beautiful its occupant the more beautiful it is.

This is the picture suggested by Teresa of Jesus when she talks about the beauty of our souls. At the beginning of her book THE INTERIOR CASTLE she wrote "I thought of the soul as resembling a castle, formed of a single diamond or a very transparent crystal, and containing many rooms, just as in heaven there are many mansions. If we reflect, sisters, we shall see that the soul of the just man is but a paradise, in which, God tells us, He takes His delight. What, do you imagine, must that dwelling be in which a King so mighty, so wise, and so pure, containing in Himself all good, can delight to rest? Nothing can be compared to the great beauty and capabilities of a soul."

This is the most beautiful house in all the world, the place where God, the source of all beauty, dwells.

This is what Jesus warns us that we will lose this most beautiful house if we do not fear God who can put this soul in hell if it is not given to him to dwell in.

There have been many debates whether the human person is composed of body and soul or of body, soul and spirit. Some theologians say that this has been settled by the Eighth Ecumenical Council, the Council of Constantinople in 869. Its Canon 11 says, The Old and New Testaments teach that man has but one rational and intellectual soul. That is also the position of Jesus. But with him the soul is the dwelling place of the Spirit. This Spirit of God is the one who gives beauty to this soul.

And this is the tragedy of the human being, if he does not value this soul and abandons it to hell. It is like throwing the most beautiful house into fire.

In the first reading we heard Jeremiah exclaim, "Sing to the LORD, praise the LORD, for he has rescued the life of the poor from the power of the wicked!" The word "life" here can also be translated "soul". It is Yahweh who rescues our souls from Satan by Jesus' warning us to make sure we do not abandon our body and soul to hell by not fearing God.

In the second reading we are told by St. Paul that this saving of our souls from the power of the wicked is "the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ". Because of our sin in Adam all of us deserve death and consignment to hell. St. Paul says, "Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all men, inasmuch as all sinned." But God saved us by this gift of Jesus.

Yes, we have the most beautiful house in all the worlds, our soul, because God himself dwells in our soul by grace, the gift Jesus gives us. Let us not allow the enemy to destroy this in hell by denying Jesus.

Let us bow our heads in prayer. Lord Jesus, you told us that if we deny you, you will deny us before your Father in heaven. By doing this we lose the most beautiful house in all the worlds. Give us the grace never to deny you and thus value the beauty of our souls, your dwelling place. Amen.

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Note for the readers:

The Mass readings are from the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE). This is where our Lectionary gets the readings.

NAB stands for New American Bible (before it was revised). This is the translation I use. Unless otherwise stated the text I use is from this translation.

AV stands for Authorized Version of the Bible. It is more commonly referred to as the King James Bible. It is the version most used in English literature, therefore it is the one known more by the English speaking world.

Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ Cycle A

Welcome to read homilies for the Sundays of the year. These are sample homilies which you can read with devotion. You may use them in your own homilies without asking my permission. You may also change or edit these to fit them to your audience. A unique quality of these homilies is that they are Christ-filled. From beginning to end they present to us some aspect of Jesus so that beholding his glory we “are being transformed from glory to glory into his very image” (2 Corinthians 3:18 NAB).

The Most Controversial Food

There are lists of the most controversial foods on earth. Some list 10 of these. Others have 15 on their list. Whatever the number in the list, it shows that there are foods which are controversial, foods that bring on a debate whether we humans should eat them or not.

On one list which is found in the thedailymeal.com the first food listed as controversial is Beluga Caviar. It is the salted egg of the fish sturgeon which is found in the Caspian and Black Seas. One reason why it is so controversial is because it is very expensive, $4,000 per pound or $8,800 per kilogram. (This is about 400,000 in Philippine pesos, where an ordinary fish costs only 100 pesos per kilo.) And it is controversial also because the fish which produces this egg is becoming rare.

But there is a food which is the most controversial of all. It has spawned debates all over the world for centuries, and the debate is not over yet.

That food is the subject of our Gospel reading today. It created a stir among the people when Jesus introduced this food for the first time. This food was the reason why many of his disciples left him. It seems that all the seventy two disciples mentioned in Luke 10:1 whom Jesus sent before on a mission left him. Only the twelve remained. And were it not (humanly speaking) for the very prompt reply of Peter to Jesus' question whether any of the twelve would also leave him, some of the twelve might have dropped from the company of Jesus. For the Jews it was controversial because it was most repugnant to them to eat human flesh and drink blood.  

This food indeed was very controversial to have effected such a result. In reality it is the most controversial food in the world.

Children in the elementary grades are now taught the food pyramid, the kinds of food in a drawing like a pyramid which they need to consume in proper quantities in order to grow, glow and go. These are the carbohydrates, the proteins, the fats, free sugars, the vitamins and minerals. This food pyramid evolved into MyPyramid. And this in turn was changed into MyPlate, where the drawing now is not a pyramid but a plate with the kind and quantity of the different foods drawn proportionately in the plate.

All these foods serve to nourish the body and mind or soul.  But this most controversial of all foods is not meant to nourish the body and soul only. It is meant primarily to nourish the spirit, our spirit. This is the only food which can truly nourish our spirit.

This food is controversial for other reasons. Theologians have debated for centuries whether this food is flesh and blood in the form of bread or only bread wine but they point to the reality of flesh and blood.

We Catholics have maintained throughout the history of the Church that this food is actually flesh and blood in the form of bread and wine. What we see are bread and wine but actually they are the flesh and blood of Jesus. The process whereby this happens is called by our theologians as transubstantiation. The non-Catholics who evolved from the Reformation think that this food is actually bread and wine but they refer or point to the reality of Jesus' flesh and blood. Some of them call the process of how this happens as consubstantiation. This means that the bread and wine are still there, but so are the flesh and blood of Christ. Our Church teaches that what we see as bread is not really bread but the flesh of Jesus and what we see as wine is not really wine but the blood of Jesus.

This debate is still going on and will continue to go on, until Jesus comes back. 

This is the significance of the solemnity which we celebrate today, the solemnity of the body and blood of Christ. We are celebrating Jesus' giving to us his flesh to eat and his blood to drink. These foods nourish our spirits. There are cases of saints whose body and soul were also nourished by this food alone, as was the case with St. Catherine of Siena who ate only this food for many years.

One of the writers on the Holy Scriptures whom I liked very much when I was still studying formal theology was William Barclay. He explains the Bible in such a simple way that the average person is able to understand him. This is not surprising when we read that Barclay had dedicated his life to "making the best biblical scholarship available to the average reader".

Later I found out that William Barclay had become a universalist, a person who believes that eventually all will be saved, even Judas the traitor, even those who blasphemed God and died unrepentant. But this does not make all his writings of no value. After all we have great theologians who wrote questionable teachings, like Origen and Tertullian, but who wrote wonderful works of theology.

I introduce William Barclay because he has something so beneficial for us in our attitude towards the Eucharist, although he belonged to the Church of Scotland. His writings on this matter reflect the views of St. Teresa of Avila in her emphasis on the humanity of Jesus. Here are some thoughts from Barclay in his commentary on the body and blood of Jesus.

For Barclay to eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus is to feed our heart, feed our mind, feed our soul with the thought of Jesus’ humanity, so that when we are discouraged and in despair, when we are beaten to our knees and disgusted with life and living, we remember that Jesus took our life and our struggles as his. When we do this suddenly our life and flesh are clad with glory for they are touched with God. To eat Christ's body is to feed on the thought of his manhood until our own manhood is strengthened and cleansed and irradiated by his.

To drink Jesus’ blood is to take his life into the very center of our being, we take his life into the very core of our hearts. When Jesus enters into our hearts we can feed upon the life and the strength and the dynamic vitality that he gives to us. Jesus said that we must drink his blood. He is saying: "You must stop thinking of me as a subject for theological debate; you must take me into you, and you must come into me; and then you will have real life."

Barclay continues, when he told us to eat his flesh and drink his blood, he was telling us to feed our hearts and souls and minds on his humanity, and to revitalize our lives with his life until we are filled with the life of God.

In the first reading we are reminded that the Israelites ate manna in the desert for forty years. The word manna means “What is it?” This came from the sky. It was a figure of the food which Jesus would give us, his own flesh and blood for the sustenance of our spirits.

In the second reading Paul writes about the Eucharistic meal which the first Christians partook of to remember Jesus. He clearly tells the Corinthian Christians by a rhetorical question that when they drink the wine they participate in the blood of Christ and when they eat the bread they participate in the body of Christ.

Jesus gives us himself as our food. There is a curious detail here from the Evangelist John or Jesus' choice of words. In verses 49-53 the word used for eating the flesh and blood of Jesus is the ordinary word for eating which in Greek is esthio. In verse 54, however, the word used is no longer esthio but trogo, which means I "munch" or I "gnaw", that is, I keep on chewing or biting the raw flesh and blood of Jesus. It is continuous eating or eating with relish for quite some time, enjoying every bite and chewing of it.

This is what Jesus wants. He wants to be eaten by us again and again until we become more and more like him, our body becoming like his body and our blood or life—because life is in the blood, becoming like his blood and life.

For our prayer today let us take the first stanza of the hymn, Lord, Who at Your First Eucharist Did Pray. This hymn by William H. Turton tells us that the final result of our eating the body and blood of Jesus is that we become more and more like him and thus we will all love one another and there will be one Church as Jesus prayed during his last Supper. Let us bow our heads.

Lord, who at your first Eucharist did pray

that all your church might be for ever one,

grant us at every Eucharist to say

with longing heart and soul, 'Your will be done':

O may we all one bread, one body be,

through this blest sacrament of unity. Amen.

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Note for the readers:

The Mass readings are from the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE). This is where our Lectionary gets the readings.

NAB stands for New American Bible (before it was revised). This is the translation I use. Unless otherwise stated the text I use is from this translation.

AV stands for Authorized Version of the Bible. It is more commonly referred to as the King James Bible. It is the version most used in English literature, therefore it is the one known more by the English speaking world.

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity Cycle A

Welcome to read homilies for the Sundays of the year. These are sample homilies which you can read with devotion. You may use them in your own homilies without asking my permission. You may also change or edit these to fit them to your audience. A unique quality of these homilies is that they are Christ-filled. From beginning to end they present to us some aspect of Jesus so that beholding his glory we “are being transformed from glory to glory into his very image” (2 Corinthians 3:18 NAB).

More Than a Sound

During our high school or college days we might have heard this passage from one of the dramas by William Shakespeare. "What's in a name? that which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet." These lines are from the play Romeo and Juliet and are one of the most famous lines from the works of Shakespeare.

Those words are from the mouth of Juliet who comments on the name of her lover Romeo Montague. The audience is led to understand that the guy, the lover, can have any name other than Romeo Montague and he still will be loved by Juliet, just as a rose can have any other name but it still smells as sweet as a rose.

In our Gospel reading today we have a word which is not just a word, a breath of a voice or in the famous Latin phrase flatus vocis. It is more than a sound as other names are for all practical purposes merely sounds. It is a name which cannot be taken out and substituted with another name because this name is the reality of the person. Take out the name and the person referred to by this name is no longer the same, because his name is his reality. It is a name that is not like the word “rose” in Shakespeare's play.

That name is Jesus.

Listen to the last sentence in our Gospel reading today. "Whoever believes in him (that is, Jesus) will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God."

 

The name of the only Son of God is Jesus and this name not only describes Jesus but is the reality of Jesus so that it is as powerful as Jesus himself. That is what the Scriptures tell us.

Saint Paul in his letter to the Philippians says, "Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him (that is, Jesus), and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (2:9-11 AV)

Our Catechism tells us: "But the one name that contains everything is the one that the Son of God received in his incarnation: JESUS. The divine name may not be spoken by human lips, but by assuming our humanity The Word of God hands it over to us and we can invoke it: "Jesus," "YHWH saves." The name "Jesus" contains all: God and man and the whole economy of creation and salvation." (2666)

Before I proceed I recommend to you 2 reading materials which if properly read will inspire you to have a genuine love for the name of Jesus. Both reading materials are very short but very powerful.

The first is from "Jesus": The Shortest, Simplest, and Most Powerful Prayer in the World, in the book Prayer for Beginners which you can access from peterkreeft.com

The second is THE WONDERS OF THE HOLY NAME by Fr. Paul O'Sullivan, O.P. which you can access from olrl.org. 

These two reading materials can revolutionize your life when you pronounce the name of Jesus. Time does not allow us to read these materials but I strongly encourage you to get these reading materials and let them transform your spiritual life.

I usually do not make such recommendations during my homilies but this is something very different. Those readings can bring back a dead soul to life. After the Mass I will be giving to those interested a piece of paper which contains information where you can get these reading materials, free in the Internet.

For now I only want to relate to you two stories about the name of Jesus from Debbie Przybylski which she related last June 10, 2015 in this website, intercessorsarise.org.

The first story concerns her husband, Norm. Let her relate the story. "A few years ago my husband, Norm, had an opportunity to test this promise (of using the name of Jesus for a miracle) at a movie theater with his nephews. Lord of the Rings was an exciting movie, but right in the middle of it, a teenage boy stopped breathing. Those in the theater could hear the agonizing cry of a father pleading for his son to start breathing. He cried out with all his heart, “David, breathe! David, breathe!” But David just lay there without moving, without breathing. 

“The movie stopped abruptly, and people in the theater began to fear and panic. The atmosphere was extremely tense. Not knowing exactly what to do, Norm walked right over to where the boy was lying motionless. He then stooped down, and with an act of faith, he laid his hands on David and quietly said, “In the name of Jesus, breathe.” Suddenly David came to life and began to breathe! God had answered believing prayer."  

Then Debbie adds, "There is power in the name of Jesus when we link our faith with heaven."

The second story is about a young boy. It is humorous but it illustrates very simply the power of Jesus' name. Here is Debbie's record of that story.

“The news reporter, Paul Harvey, told the story of a three-year-old boy at the grocery store with his mother. She sternly told him before entering the store, “No chocolate chip cookies, so don’t even ask!” In the store she put him in the little child’s seat in the cart, and they wheeled down the aisles. He was quiet until he got to the cookie aisle. He saw those delicious chocolate chip cookies, stood up and said, “Mom, can I have the chocolate chip cookies?” With a strong voice she said to him, “I told you not to even ask. No!” 

“He sat down. They went down the aisles but later had to come back to the cookie aisle again. He asked for them again. She told him, “Sit down and be quiet. I said no.” Finally arriving at the checkout lane, the little boy knew it was his last chance. He had to do something quick. So he stood up in his seat and shouted as loud as he could, “In the name of Jesus, may I have some chocolate chip cookies?” 

"Everyone around him began to laugh and applaud that little boy. And because of the generosity of the other shoppers, the little boy and his mother left the grocery store with twenty-three boxes of chocolate chip cookies! He was very happy. God loves to answer persistent prayers that are prayed in the name of Jesus. This may be a funny story but let’s not forget the message. There is an authority attached to using the name of Jesus.”

And now let us go back to our Catechism. It tells us how to pray with the name of Jesus. I quote:

"To pray "Jesus" is to invoke him and to call him within us. His name is the only one that contains the presence it signifies. Jesus is the Risen One, and whoever invokes the name of Jesus is welcoming the Son of God who loved him and who gave himself up for him. This simple invocation of faith developed in the tradition of prayer under many forms in East and West. The most usual formulation, transmitted by the spiritual writers of the Sinai, Syria, and Mt. Athos, is the invocation, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us sinners." It combines the Christological hymn of Philippians 2:6-11 with the cry of the publican and the blind men begging for light. By it the heart is opened to human wretchedness and the Savior's mercy. (2667)

“The invocation of the holy name of Jesus is the simplest way of praying always.

When the holy name is repeated often by a humbly attentive heart, the prayer is not lost by heaping up empty phrases, but holds fast to the word and "brings forth fruit with patience." This prayer is possible "at all times" because it is not one occupation among others but the only occupation: that of loving God, which animates and transfigures every action in Christ Jesus.” (2668)

Today is the solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity and it is very appropriate that we reflect on the wonders of the name of Jesus for this name contains the initials of the Trinity. “Jesus” contains the initials of the Trinity. J is for Jehovah, the Germanized pronunciation of Yahweh, the name of God in Hebrew which is appropriately ascribed to God the Father. S is for Savior which is appropriately ascribed to God the Son. And the second S is for Spirit, of course the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of both the Father and the Son.

Our first reading emphasizes the name of God in the Old Testament. Moses in the early morning went up Mount Sinai taking with him the two stone tablets. Having come down in a cloud, the LORD stood with Moses there and proclaimed his name, "LORD." The word Lord here is all capitalized. When this happens to be written in our English bible it means that in the original Hebrew God's name YHWH is written there but the Jews would not pronounce that name. Instead they pronounce the word Adonai or Lord.

In the second reading we have the formulation of the greeting used in our Mass which includes the three persons of the Trinity. "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you."

There is no need to think how the three persons can be one God. All we need is to pronounce the name of Jesus with reverence and love and the Father and the Holy Spirit will come and do their work in our life. We may not be able to understand the Trinity, but we know the three persons are there because they live within and through us.

Let us now say the doxology with reverence and love as we bow our heads.

Glory be to the Father and to Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

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Note for the readers:

The Mass readings are from the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE). This is where our Lectionary gets the readings.

NAB stands for New American Bible (before it was revised). This is the translation I use. Unless otherwise stated the text I use is from this translation.

AV stands for Authorized Version of the Bible. It is more commonly referred to as the King James Bible. It is the version most used in English literature, therefore it is the one known more by the English speaking world.

Pentecost Sunday Cycle A

Welcome to read homilies for the Sundays of the year. These are sample homilies which you can read with devotion. You may use them in your own homilies without asking my permission. You may also change or edit these to fit them to your audience. A unique quality of these homilies is that they are Christ-filled. From beginning to end they present to us some aspect of Jesus so that beholding his glory we “are being transformed from glory to glory into his very image” (2 Corinthians 3:18 NAB).

The Forgotten Breath

I was about to entitle this homily as "The Forgotten Spirit" when I realized that there was already a novel by this title. That novel was written by Evie Rhodes, published in 2007. Its subtitle is A Christmas Tale. What is surprising for me about that novel is that in the Dedication Page it says that this novel is dedicated to Jesus. And as the story unfolds it is very clear that this story is more about Jesus than about Jamie Lynne Brooks who appears to be the central character of the novel.

And it is better that my planned title was changed to “The Forgotten Breath” because this explains the primary reason why many knowledgeable Christians complain that the Holy Spirit is the forgotten person of the Blessed Trinity.

In our Gospel reading for today the Holy Spirit is plainly described as the breath of Jesus. Here is the passage where He is described as the breath of Jesus. "Jesus said to them (the disciples) again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained."

Jesus did that many centuries ago, on the day of his resurrection, he breathed the Holy Spirit into his disciples. But after those many centuries many Christians still complain that the Holy Spirit is a forgotten member of the Blessed Trinity.

We start with our own Church.

Fr. Daniel A. Lord, S.J., was a prolific writer in the 1900s. In 1941 he wrote a pamphlet entitled "The Holy Spirit and Youth". In it he asks these questions, "Whose is the fault? Is it the fault of us who are priests? Is it the carelessness of parents? Is it the strange blindness of the young people themselves? Or are priests, parents, and young people united in a singular conspiracy of silence and almost contempt which makes it sadly true that, for the overwhelming number of boys and girls, young men and women, the Holy Spirit is simply the Forgotten and Neglected God?"

It would seem that after the Second Vatican Council in 1965 which was obviously the work of the Holy Spirit and with the charismatic renewal in the Catholic Church this has changed. But little has really changed.

Tim Staples, in the October 13, 2011 webpage of catholic.com, wrote, "The third person of the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is sometimes referred to as "the forgotten" member of the Godhead. He is, no doubt, the least spoken of among the three persons of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."

And only last year, October 30, 2016, Fr. C. John McCloskey III wrote an article entitled "That Forgotten Person, the Holy Spirit" which appeared in The Catholic Thing. Towards the end of his article he calls the Holy Spirit the "often-forgotten and misunderstood member of the Trinity".

Our brothers and sisters in the non-Catholic churches have the same problem. The famous preacher and author Francis Chan wrote a book entitled "Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit", published in 2009. In a commentary about this book we read this, "Too many churches have locked their doors to a vibrant understanding of the Holy Spirit's role in their midst. . . . For the most part, we have shut the Holy Spirit out of our lives and out of the church."   

It is very clear now that the Holy Spirit is indeed the neglected person of the Blessed Trinity. So, how do we cure this neglect? How do we make sure that we do not only always remember him but also revere him, adore him, follow him in all that we think, say or do, and give him due place in our Christian life?

The answer is in our Gospel reading today. Again we read the portion where Jesus gives this Holy Spirit to his disciples. "Jesus said to them (the disciples) again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained."

The real problem is that we forget that the Holy Spirit is the breath of Jesus. And that is why I call him the forgotten breath. Our Gospel reading makes this clear. Jesus breathed into his disciples and as he did, he said, Receive the Holy Spirit. Spirit in Greek is pneuma and the primary meaning of pneuma is wind, breath. What Jesus breathed into his disciples was his breath, the Holy Spirit.

Most commentators draw a parallel between this passage and the one in Genesis 2:7. Here is the passage in Genesis 2:7, "the Lord God formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being." Here is the Douay-Rheims version of that verse which is very similar to the Authorized Version, "And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul." The last six words are exactly the same in our Douay-Rheims version and in the Authorized Version, “and man became a living soul”.

When God first blew his breath on man, he became a living being, a living soul. When Jesus blew his breath into his disciples, they became new living beings, they became living spirits. They became new creatures, patterned after the first new creation who is the resurrected Jesus.

We who are disciples of Jesus have become living spirits by the breath of Jesus. We are spirits. We are no longer just body and soul as when God first blew his breath on our first parent. We are now spirits, patterned after the Holy Spirit.

The reason why we can so easily relate with God the Father is because we see many fathers around us. One of these Sundays in June, June 18, is Father's Day. Many of us are fathers. So we can easily relate with God the Father.

The reason also why we can so easily relate with God the Son is because we see so many sons around us. We are sons and daughters of parents who are also sons and daughters of our grandparents.

The reason why we cannot so easily relate with God the Holy Spirit is because we do not see spirits all around us, because spirits are invisible. But if we take to heart the Gospel reading for today we learn and know that by the breathing of Jesus into his disciples who centuries later include us, we have become new creatures, new living beings, new spirits.

The problem then is that we are not aware that we also are spirits. If we know and affirm that we are also spirits, whose pattern is that of the Holy Spirit, then we can easily relate with the Holy Spirit.

In philosophy this is talked about, that we are spirits. But how many of us have studied formal philosophy? And even those philosophers who claim that we are spirits do so from reasoning, not from the revelation of God. But we have our basis from the revelation of God.

As the Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." We are embodied spirits.

Of all the authors I have cited Francis Chan seems to be one most passionate in bringing us to a living, working, fruitful experience with the Holy Spirit. And yet his solution to the problem of the neglect of the Holy Spirit is to learn more about the Holy Spirit and to obey him. He does not touch on the reality that we are indeed spirits. And until this truth sinks into us, we will always have this problem of neglect of the Holy Spirit.

You and I are spirits if we have received the Spirit of Jesus in baptism and confirmation. If we are spirits, then let us live as spirits. And this can only be done by moment to moment dependence on the Holy Spirit in all that we think, say and do.

The first reading tells us that the disciples were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim. The word "filled" means that they were all controlled by the Holy Spirit. They were all controlled, they were now filled with the Holy Spirit because they have become spirits by the breath of Jesus.

The second reading tells us that we were all given to drink of one Spirit, that is, the Spirit of Jesus. The Spirit is like wind, he is breath. He is also like water, as Jesus referred to him when he said that he who believes in him from within him shall flow rivers of living water (John 7:38). The next verse plainly tells us Jesus was referring to the Holy Spirit. He is water which satisfies our thirst for spiritual things. Before we become spirits we do not have this thirst. Once we are made spirits by the breath of Jesus we experience this thirst for the things of the spirit. This is the proof that we have become spirits because now we long to eat spiritual food and thirst for spiritual water.

For our prayer let us recite that prayer which my American professor in Philippine sociology always recited before class. Let us bow our heads.  

Direct, O Holy Spirit, we beseech you, all our actions by your holy inspiration and carry them on by your gracious assistance so that every thought, word, and work of ours may always begin from you and by you be happily ended. Amen.

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Note for the readers:

The Mass readings are from the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE). This is where our Lectionary gets the readings.

NAB stands for New American Bible (before it was revised). This is the translation I use. Unless otherwise stated the text I use is from this translation.

AV stands for Authorized Version of the Bible. It is more commonly referred to as the King James Bible. It is the version most used in English literature, therefore it is the one known more by the English speaking world.