Homily for Pentecost 2007, May 27 - Commencement Day

The word "Pentecost" in Greek means "the fiftieth": this is the fiftieth day from Easter Sunday. Today marks the close of the seventh week of the seven-week festal season, Eastertide, or Paschaltide, when we celebrate the central mystery of the Christian faith, what is called the Paschal Mystery: God's eternal Son become also a human being as we are (without ceasing to be God) and having lived a life like ours, died for our sins, was raised from the dead, is now above the universe, interceding for us with the Father and sharing with us from there the divine life, which is everlasting.

Pentecost, also called the Feast of Weeks, is already a feastday in the sacred calendar of the Jews; and it commemorates for them the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai fifty days after the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt, which is remembered in the feast of Passover.

In parallel to the Jewish feast of Pentecost, today's Christian feast commemorates the giving of the Holy Spirit to the apostles and the other disciples (most especially Mary, the mother of Jesus), that is, to the Church, on the Pentecost which came seven weeks after that unforgettable Passover on which Jesus died, and was raised from the dead. We heard about the actual event in today's first reading, from the Acts of the Apostles.

What is this Holy Spirit that descended upon the infant Church? The Holy Spirit, i.e., the holy breath, is the Divine Life, God's own life, God's way of being and acting, which Jesus, by dying on the cross and rising again,  qualified to impart to his fellow human beings, and which he continues to impart to us in a preeminent way in the sacred liturgy---very notably in the Sacrifice of the Mass, which we are celebrating right here, right now. In the Mass, his entire person--- his human body and blood , and human soul, and Divine Self---become sacramentally really present on the altar under the outward appearances of bread and wine, so that those who believe in him and in his presence and power can receive him in Holy Communion, which then gives us the power to live the resurrection life , the divine life: to live like God, in decency, in holiness and charity. This is the Holy Spirit, God's own breath, breathing in us, energizing us, making us immune to death.

Ten days ago we celebrated the Ascension of Christ, his being taken up in his risen human body, to be our absolutely effective, invisible mediator with God,the Father, who out of the great love with which he loved us, had sent this only Son of his to redeem us from our miserable state of alienation from him (what we call "sin", what we call "fallen humanity".) Today we celebrate the risen and ascended Christ's sending upon us the Holy Spirit, the Divine Life, to make us able to live like God and so be fit to share intimacy with God in eternity, where death cannot come.

In the second reading of today's Mass, St. Paul says to us: "We are not debtors to the flesh, to live according to the flesh; for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." He sets up an opposition between the flesh and the Spirit.  By "the Spirit" he obviously means the Divine Life given to us through our being united to Christ.  By "flesh" he means mere human imagination and nothing else, mere human will and impulse with nothing added, mere unaided human strength; or, more specifically, he means our old way of life, with its self-absorbed, self-interested resistance, and even hostility, to God. He says, "Those who are in the flesh cannot please God" (of course; they don't even want to).  "But you are not in the flesh...you are in the spirit, if the Spirit of God dwells in you."  And if we are in the Spirit, then we are continually putting to death the deeds of the body, that is the deeds of the old self (thus continually dying with Christ), so as to be raised with Christ to the new life, which is God's own life, which is Eternal Life, with which death has nothing to do, over which death has no say.

What are these deeds of the body, deeds of the flesh, deeds of the old self?  Elsewhere (Galatians 5) St Paul gives a list. Here it is:

sexual immorality, impurity, licentiousness, (things which, while not greatly admired in our present-day society, seem to be widely considered pretty standard and tolerable as long as they don't spread disease or cause unwanted pregnancy; but we learn here in the word of God that, indulged in without repentance-no matter what the world says---they are among the prime ways of driving the Holy Spirit away and keeping him away),

idolatry (I wonder if that includes celebrity worship or the worship of money and possessions),

sorcery (that would certainly include playing around with the Ouija board and other occult practices),

hatreds (including racial and religious prejudices, as well as hatred of individuals),

rivalry (angry party spirit), jealousy,

outbursts of bad temper,

acts of selfishness,

dissensions, factions, occasions of envy,

drinking bouts (which, in certain contexts and at certain ages, are considered, again, standard practice, even though they not infrequently give rise to crimes, and result in injury or even death),

orgies.

Those who want to live the divine life must put to death these deeds of the body in themselves. (We may indeed not be able to put them to death in ourselves all at once.  We may have to put them to death over and over again.  But put them to death we must, if we want to live the risen life with Christ.)

And what are the opposite to these works of the flesh? What are the fruits of the Spirit? There is a list of them too. Here it is.

First, love,

then, joy (which in fact is another name of the Holy Spirit)

peace,

patience (that is, courageous perseverance in the face of difficult situations which we are powerless to change),

kindness,

generosity,

faithfulness (standing by our commitments, discharging our duties),

gentleness,

self-control.

When we have these, we have a foretaste of the life of Heaven.  When we can say to God "Father", "Our Father", and mean it, we can only do so because we have the Holy Spirit in us, which is the Spirit of Jesus.  And when it is like him that we speak, then we know that we are, like him, God's children, and that we are, along with him, heirs to everything God has, that is, heirs to the divine life. God's life is ours, if only we suffer with Christ---because putting to death the deeds of the body will certainly cost us suffering---if only we suffer with Christ, so that we may also be glorified with him.  To be glorified with him will be the real, definitive graduation. Let us all, together and individually, ask the Lord to help us to work toward that most desirable commencement, the utter fulfillment of our deepest desires.  And let us thank him for letting us know him and be joined to him in the Paschal Mystery.