GROWING IN THE SPIRIT OF THE RISEN LORD

20160515 GROWING IN THE SPIRIT OF THE RISEN LORD

Readings at Mass

Liturgical Colour: Red.

First reading

Acts 2:1-11 ©

When Pentecost day came round, they had all met in one room, when suddenly they heard what sounded like a powerful wind from heaven, the noise of which filled the entire house in which they were sitting; and something appeared to them that seemed like tongues of fire; these separated and came to rest on the head of each of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak foreign languages as the Spirit gave them the gift of speech.

  Now there were devout men living in Jerusalem from every nation under heaven, and at this sound they all assembled, each one bewildered to hear these men speaking his own language. They were amazed and astonished. ‘Surely’ they said ‘all these men speaking are Galileans? How does it happen that each of us hears them in his own native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; people from Mesopotamia, Judaea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya round Cyrene; as well as visitors from Rome – Jews and proselytes alike – Cretans and Arabs; we hear them preaching in our own language about the marvels of God.’

Responsorial Psalm

Psalm 103:1,24,29-31,34 ©

Send forth your spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of the earth.

or

Alleluia!

Bless the Lord, my soul!

  Lord God, how great you are,

How many are your works, O Lord!

  The earth is full of your riches.

Send forth your spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of the earth.

or

Alleluia!

You take back your spirit, they die,

  returning to the dust from which they came.

You send forth your spirit, they are created;

  and you renew the face of the earth.

Send forth your spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of the earth.

or

Alleluia!

May the glory of the Lord last for ever!

  May the Lord rejoice in his works!

May my thoughts be pleasing to him.

  I find my joy in the Lord.

Send forth your spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of the earth.

or

Alleluia!

Second reading

Romans 8:8-17 ©

People who are interested only in unspiritual things can never be pleasing to God. Your interests, however, are not in the unspiritual, but in the spiritual, since the Spirit of God has made his home in you. In fact, unless you possessed the Spirit of Christ you would not belong to him. Though your body may be dead it is because of sin, but if Christ is in you then your spirit is life itself because you have been justified; and if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, then he who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to your own mortal bodies through his Spirit living in you.

  So then, my brothers, there is no necessity for us to obey our unspiritual selves or to live unspiritual lives. If you do live in that way, you are doomed to die; but if by the Spirit you put an end to the misdeeds of the body you will live.

  Everyone moved by the Spirit is a son of God. The spirit you received is not the spirit of slaves bringing fear into your lives again; it is the spirit of sons, and it makes us cry out, ‘Abba, Father!’ The Spirit himself and our spirit bear united witness that we are children of God. And if we are children we are heirs as well: heirs of God and coheirs with Christ, sharing his sufferings so as to share his glory.

Sequence

Holy Spirit, Lord of Light,

From the clear celestial height

Thy pure beaming radiance give.

Come, thou Father of the poor,

Come with treasures which endure

Come, thou light of all that live!

Thou, of all consolers best,

Thou, the soul’s delightful guest,

Dost refreshing peace bestow

Thou in toil art comfort sweet

Pleasant coolness in the heat

Solace in the midst of woe.

Light immortal, light divine,

Visit thou these hearts of thine,

And our inmost being fill:

If thou take thy grace away,

Nothing pure in man will stay

All his good is turned to ill.

Heal our wounds, our strength renew

On our dryness pour thy dew

Wash the stains of guilt away:

Bend the stubborn heart and will

Melt the frozen, warm the chill

Guide the steps that go astray.

Thou, on us who evermore

Thee confess and thee adore,

With thy sevenfold gifts descend:

Give us comfort when we die

Give us life with thee on high

Give us joys that never end.

Gospel Acclamation

Alleluia, alleluia!

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful

and kindle in them the fire of your love.

Alleluia!

Gospel

John 14:15-16,23-26 ©

Jesus said to his disciples:

‘If you love me you will keep my commandments.

I shall ask the Father,

and he will give you another Advocate

to be with you for ever.

‘If anyone loves me he will keep my word,

and my Father will love him,

and we shall come to him and make our home with him.

Those who do not love me do not keep my words.

And my word is not my own:

it is the word of the one who sent me.

I have said these things to you while still with you;

but the Advocate, the Holy Spirit,

whom the Father will send in my name,

will teach you everything

and remind you of all I have said to you.

GROWING IN THE SPIRIT OF THE RISEN LORD

SCRIPTURE READINGS: [ ACTS 2:1-11; ROMANS 8:8-17; JOHN 14:15-16, 23-26  ]

Today we reach the climax of the Easter Season by celebrating the feast of Pentecost.  For 50 days after Easter, we contemplated on the Risen Lord and the new life that He offered us by His passion, death and resurrection.

Indeed, the scripture readings in the last seven weeks of Easter basically contemplated on the Risen Lord and how this resurrected life could be lived by us through the sacraments of Initiation.  In Christ Jesus, through baptism, we share in the new life of Christ and have become a new creation.  Through the Eucharist, which is where the Lord makes Himself present in a par excellence manner, Christians continue to be nurtured and be fed by the Lord, sharing in His life, passion, death and resurrection more deeply and also becoming more and more united with the Church, His body.  Finally, through the sacrament of confirmation, they were given the Spirit and His gifts for witnessing to the Risen Lord in the world.  The sacrament of confirmation empowers the newly baptized to live out their respective vocations in the world, be of service and a witness to the new life that they have been given in Christ.

Yet, today’s scripture readings remind us that being born again in Christ into a new creation is just the beginning of new life, not yet the consummation.  Baptism is just the entry into the life of Christ when we die to our sins and rise to a new life in Christ.  It is not yet the realization of the fullness of the resurrected life.  It only brings about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and gives us the grace of renewing ourselves daily for the final resurrection.  It is at most anticipatory.  Indeed, all sacraments have this dimension of the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’.  Sacraments are symbolic of the future reality and yet this future has already begun in us when we live out the sacraments.  So the sacraments are not just a foretaste of the fullness at the end but also instrumental in helping us to reach that ultimate goal which is to be fully resurrected with Christ at the end of our lives.  Therefore, it means that Pentecost is that period of the Church when members of the Church continue to grow in the Spirit of the Risen Lord until consummation.  That is why Pentecost is not a one-off event but a series of events.  Pentecost is ongoing until the end of time.

The primary purpose of the giving of the Holy Spirit is for mission, as Jesus told the disciples earlier on: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  (Acts 1:8)  This explains why the Acts of the Apostles was written as a sequel to the gospel of St Luke because he wanted to write on the ongoing mission of the Church that was begun by the Lord.   And this will go on until the Kingdom of God is established at the end of time and spread to all of creation.

However, the Holy Spirit, whilst it is given for mission, is principally also for the growth of the life of the Christian in the Lord. We cannot be missionary for Christ unless we are disciples.  So discipleship in the Lord is an ongoing process impelled by the Holy Spirit.  Before we can go out to proclaim Christ to the world and be His living witnesses of love and life, we must deepen our sonship in Christ.  This is what St Paul is telling us in the second reading.  Pentecost cannot be reduced to merely some spiritual enthusiasm and religious emotions that we experience but rather an obedient Christian living of the gospel.

Unfortunately, many of us forget that baptism is just the beginning of this process of being formed in Christ until the day we die.  In truth, many Catholics stop growing the day they were baptized.  This is also true for those who have been renewed in the Holy Spirit at some retreat or seminar, like the LISS or Conversion Experience Retreat.  They think that growing in faith is like attending a course where at the end of it you get a paper stating that you have graduated, and life continues as before without any change.  Christian faith is a different thing. It is a process that never ends since the moment we were baptized.  This explains why the liturgical colour after Pentecost is green, signifying that the Church is still growing each day in the power of the Spirit.  The giving of the Spirit at baptism marks the long journey that is to be undertaken for the rest of our lives, growing in discipleship each day.

How can we grow in discipleship, which is basically, to grow in the Spirit of the Risen Lord?  Firstly, we are called to obedience to the commandments of Christ.  Jesus said, “If you love me you will keep my commandments.  Those who do not love me do not keep my words. And my word is not my own: it is the word of the one who sent me.”  So if we claim that we love Jesus and believe that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life, it means that we are ready to obey His commandments since they are the way to the fullness of life and love.   This obedience is not a reluctant submission to the commands of Christ but like Jesus a total surrender in love to the Father.   Jesus’ obedience was the result of His identification with the Father’s will and love for humanity.

Secondly, St Paul reminds us that unless we walk in the Spirit, we cannot live.  “In fact, unless you possessed the Spirit of Christ you would not belong to him.  Though your body may be dead it is because of sin, but if Christ is in you then your spirit is life itself because you have been justified.”  Negatively, it calls for death to the self, particularly what is worldly, especially sensual living and pride.  “People who are interested only in unspiritual things can never be pleasing to God.”  So we are called to live a transcendent life which is one of love, peace, joy, service and compassion; not one of self-centeredness, pleasure and self-indulgence.  Life in the Spirit entails a struggle for freedom from the flesh and to place ourselves under the Lordship of Christ.

Thirdly, it means living a life of freedom in the Spirit.  St Paul wrote, “The spirit you received is not the spirit of slaves bringing fear into your lives again; it is the spirit of sons, and it makes us cry out, ‘Abba, Father!” Of course, this struggle for authentic living in freedom means suffering, which is symbolized in our desire to die with Christ, effected internally through personal mortification and external persecutions.   When a Christian deepens his sonship in the Lord, he lives like a free person because the Spirit removes all fear from his life.  Fear is the work of the devil to hinder us from giving ourselves to God and for service.  Fear is the cause of all our sins.  But when we are children of God, we know that the Father will take care of us.   We are confident that regardless of what happens, our future will be glorious in Christ.  Like Jesus and the apostles, we can therefore spend our lives in total giving to God and the service of the gospel.   We are called to share the gifts of the Spirit we have received and put them into action.

Fourthly, a life of discipleship requires ongoing formation.  We are called to deepen not just our knowledge of the Lord but our relationship with Him.  This is the reason for the giving of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus said, “…the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you.”  All that needs to be revealed has been revealed in Christ.  He has shown us the fullness of revelation because He is the revelation of God.  But there are many things that we do not fully understand, partly because of the depth of what Jesus wanted to teach us and also because of new situations.  The Holy Spirit’s task is not to reveal to us new truths, but to deepen our understanding, interpretation and application of what has been taught to us by Christ.  By growing in understanding and perception of the truth in Christ, we come to know Him more and by so doing, we also come to know our Father as well.

In the final analysis, the joy of the Christian lies in his or her personal relationship with the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son and the Spirit.  This is the implication of today’s gospel when the Lord said, “If anyone loves me he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make our home with him.” Through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the Lord comes to our hearts with His Father.  Through the Holy Spirit, we come to be in touch with the Lord and in seeing His face, we see the Father’s face and experience His Trinitarian love for us.  Such a life is truly what we call a Christian life because it is a sharing of the life of the Trinity.  With Jesus, we can then truly call God ‘Abba Father’.

Consequently, we need the Holy Spirit to do all these things.  On our own, we are helpless unless we receive the help of God the Holy Spirit Himself.  It is for this that the Lord promised that He will pray to the Father to give us the Holy Spirit.  This is the prayer of Jesus for us all.  It is His desire that we receive the Holy Spirit so that we can truly live the resurrected life and be empowered to love and give as He did in union with Him.  This too is the constant refrain of the Church, “Come, Holy Spirit.”  That was what we prayed in the responsorial psalm, “Send forth your spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of the earth.”  With the Holy Spirit, everything is possible.

So let us ask for the renewal of the Holy Spirit in our lives, not once but again and again.  That is why we celebrate Pentecost every year.  We need the Holy Spirit to constantly renew us and empower us.  We must make ourselves available to the Holy Spirit through renewal programs, retreats, contemplation and especially through the reception of the sacraments, particularly the Eucharist.  In this way, the Holy Spirit dwells with the Church, the Christian community more and more, bringing us all together in Christ and forming us all truly into the sons and daughters of God.  The world cannot see Christ today but they can see Christ in us.  By sharing our love with them, we bring the world together in unity.  This, then, is the way to renew the face of the earth and to proclaim the marvels of God working in our lives.

Written by The Most Rev William Goh Roman Catholic Archbishop of Singapore © All Rights Reserved