Category: Holy Spirit

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Open To The Holy Spirit

Pentecost (C)

 

Pentecost.  The outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the infant Church. The proclamation of the Gospel to devout Jews gathered for the first major Jewish feast after Passover. Some people scoff and sneer at the proclamation. Others, cut to the heart, ask what they must do, and come to believe and are baptized.

Pentecost is presented to us as not only a beginning, but also as a summary of what the Apostles would do – and the responses they would get – throughout the Acts of the Apostles. Pentecost is also a template for us. It reveals to us the foundations of our own vocations, whatever they may be, and shows us how we are to live out our vocations in union with the Lord and His Church.  It shows us what the Holy Spirit does for us, the responses we are likely to get in living out our vocations, and also how the Spirit helps our faithfulness to Him bear great fruit. Continue reading “Open To The Holy Spirit”

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Different Gifts, One Spirit

Pentecost (B)

It was Thanksgiving morning. While eight-year-old Sarah and her siblings were watching the Macy’s parade, their parents were preparing Thanksgiving dinner. When dinner was over, Sarah’s mother told the children, “Now that Christmas is only a month away, be sure to make a list of what you want Santa to give you.”

And so it happened! Sarah’s siblings made their lists, but Sarah didn’t. A week later, her mother asked her why she hadn’t made a list for Santa. Sarah replied, “But, Mom, if I tell Santa what I want, I’ll never know what he wanted to give me!”  Continue reading “Different Gifts, One Spirit”

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One In The Spirit

Pentecost (A): 1 Corinthians 12: 3b-7; 12-13

“No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’, except by the Holy Spirit.” – 1 Corinthians 12:3

Many Catholics in this country came from ethnic groups that have been here for generations. Some began to arrive in the great waves of immigration that began in the 1830’s – the Irish, the Germans, the French Canadians, the Italians. Others were descendants of Spanish and Portuguese settlers that had arrived in the Americas long before the English and French began to settle here.

All of these, however, had one thing in common – they were not “White Anglo-Saxon Protestant”. They had the wrong accents, the wrong customs, and the wrong religion. They usually arrived poor, if not destitute, and were seen by many Americans as bringers of disease and crime, and as a threat to American democracy. (Funny how some things do not change – and sad to see how the descendants of people so treated now treat new immigrants in the same way.) In a word, these Catholic immigrants had no status in American society.  Continue reading “One In The Spirit”