2015-05-25 Pentecost 7PM

Long ago when I was a seminarian both in Seattle and in Rome, we used to have a novena to the Holy Spirit during the nine days before Pentecost, the days between Ascension and Pentecost.  Every evening we would gather to pray for a new coming of the Holy Spirit into our world and into our lives.  John tells us that the Holy Spirit is an advocate – a lawyer, of all things.  This divine advocate has a special job: to guide us to the truth.  What truth?  God’s truth.

God’s truth found in the Gospels, revealed in the person of Jesus Christ: a truth having to do with who God is and who we are called to be; a truth having to do with helping God’s rule come about; a truth concerned with bringing life, peace, justice, forgiveness into our world.  A truth that will not make peace with anything less than the whole truth.

There is the truth of the sanctity of human life from beginning to end.  There is the sanctity of the lives of those who are called “the working poor.”  There is the truth of our role as stewards of creation, our responsibility for caring for the world that has been entrusted to us, not relinquishing it to business interests that will impoverish our future.

Paul gives us another way to think about the Holy Spirit: as Gift-giver of “different kinds of spiritual gifts… different forms of service… different workings.”  The Spirit gives them to us for the good of the body of Christ, the church.  To call down the Holy Spirit means to accept responsibility for us know the gifts we have been given and to cherish them; for enabling us to recognize others’ gifts, being able to rejoice in what has been given for the good of all.

Finally, Luke tells us that the Holy Spirit is a wind that blows where it wills.  Locked doors cannot deter it.  The Spirit comes to set us on fire, to move us out to warm a world that is often cold.  So, tonight, we pray: “Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and enkindle in them the fire of your love.”

As the beautiful sequence for this feast day says: “Heal our wounds, our strength renew, on our dryness pour your 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.”

The work of the Holy Spirit makes us daughters and sons of our God.  The Advocate brings the truth, the Gift-giver, who will lead us to attend to the good of the many, and the Wind and Fire who push us out into a world not always welcoming, but yet hungering for the Spirit’s refreshing breeze and purifying heat.

The Spirit can be trusted.  Not for nothing is the Spirit called the Sanctifier, which means Saintmaker.  Let us ask today that the Saintmaker fill us with knowledge and love of God.  And let us conclude this Easter season with a heartfelt acclamation of the Easter anthem: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Paul A. Magnano

Pastor