|
Read the script
On 29 May we celebrated the feast of Pentecost and now, in the Church’s liturgical year, we are in ‘Ordinary Time’ which is basically from Pentecost until we start a new year next Advent. It is ‘ordinary’ because it focuses on the ordinary part of our lives when we live out the gift of the Holy Spirit which each of us has received. It is the time of the year that we reflect on how we, as ordinary Christians, can fulfil our unique place in our world. And the feast of Pentecost gives us a lead. Pentecost is the Church's celebration of the gift of the Holy Spirit. It comes from the realization that God's very life, breath and energy lives in, with and among us. On Pentecost Sunday, there is usually a reading from John's Gospel (20:19-23). It tells of a visit of the Risen Christ to the disciples huddled in fear. "Peace be with you," Jesus says. "As the Father sent me, so I am sending you." After saying this, Jesus breathed on them and added, "Receive the Holy Spirit." Pentecost reminds us that Jesus says the same thing to each of us and we Catholics mark that reality with the Sacrament of Confirmation. We receive the Holy Spirit, God living and active in us, and we are sent, like the Disciples, on a mission. That mission is to share and spread God’s love. Each of us has our unique contribution to make to the world and we have the Holy Spirit to empower us. But we don’t do it alone. Pentecost is also about belonging. The Holy Spirit was poured out on a large group of people who were from many different cultures and languages, yet in the miracle of that day, they were able to understand each other. In the Acts of the Apostles (2:4) we read that the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit, and the apostle Peter preached his first sermon, urging the crowds to repent, to believe in Jesus Christ as their Messiah and to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. That very day of Pentecost some 3,000 people were baptized and became the people of God. The Church had been born. So Pentecost is about the presence of God the Holy Spirit intimately in me, and it’s also about the gift of the Holy Spirit in the community we call the Church. There is an individual aspect and a communal aspect. Both of these are central in how we live out our ‘ordinary’ daily lives. As Marists we have the insight of our French founders who were moved to consider Mary at the time of Pentecost and see in her a model for ourselves. The only reference in the Bible to her at the time of Pentecost was a passing comment that she was with the Disciples in the upper room while they were at prayer. There is the tradition that she continued to live with the Apostle John, perhaps near Ephesus. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that she was simply present in a hidden and unnoticed way. She was unobtrusively effective. That is the Marist way. Just like Mary, we try to do what we are called to do in a simple, non-flamboyant way. We do it her way. And part of her way was to support the new Christians. We can presume that she would have been encouraging the Apostles, gathering the Disciples and playing her part in all sorts of ways. Fr Colin called Mary the “support, the director of the newborn Church, The ‘Queen of the Apostles’ ”. (Doc 14:4) He holds her up as a model for us in our personal roles within the local church and our neighbourhood. So as Marists, we can learn from Mary at Pentecost how to live according to the personal promptings of the Spirit and how do good for others. She teaches us a way to live our own personal mission in our ‘ordinary’ lives. There are many ways to be a Christian, but we Marists try to do it her way. A reflection on Pentecost tells us that each of us is called to be missionary. Not in the specialist way we associate with people like Francis Xavier trying to convert India or even Mother Teresa of Calcutta working as a foreign religious. They have their place. But all of us are called to share the Good News. Jesus said to the people at his Ascension: “As the Father sent me, so I am sending you.” We are empowered through our Confirmation to do it and we are exhorted to do it at the end of each Eucharist when we are “sent forth” yet again to our ordinary lives until the next Mass. I always like the words of St Francis of Assisi when talking to his brethren. He said something like, “Preach all the time, and only if necessary use words.” That’s what we are called to do. To ‘preach’ as it were, not so much by words but by our good actions. That’s how we spread the Good News of God’s love and build up the church. In a way, it’s the method Jesus used. He didn’t work the systems, but related with individuals; healing, forgiving, calling to conversion. All this had a tremendous effect on civilization for centuries, even though he worked simply with individuals. We too usually deal with individuals and if we can show them genuine unselfish love, then we are living out our Pentecost. Fr Colin said that we are to “do good in such a way that we appear as it were hidden and unknown in this world.” (Doc 5:1) In 2008 Pope Benedict XVI sent a text to the youth assembling in Sydney for the World Youth Day. His message, I am sure is valid for all of us no matter our age. He said: “God and His people expect much from you, because you have within you the Father's supreme gift: the Spirit of Jesus.” May we, as Marist, be able to live up to the expectations and needs of God’s people because we, like Mary, have the Spirit of Jesus within us. |
