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.
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