Pentecost Sunday
Fifty days after the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the New Covenant, sanctified by the Blood of the true Lamb of God, is solemnly promulgated by the outpouring of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. The Catholic Church, the Bride of Christ, the only Ark of Salvation, is founded, and the apostles are sent into the whole world to preach the Gospel and baptise every individual and all nations together. The Holy Ghost, Lord and Giver of Life is infused into the hearts of those who believe and take up residence in their souls to guide them to a blessed eternity. Such is the mystery of this most holy feast that we celebrate today.
Last night, during the long vigil, we were given several prophecies of the Old Testament to consider, each one followed by a magnificent oration that summarises its spiritual teaching. While most of these prophecies refer in general terms to the transformation of the world that would flow from the coming of the Messiah, there is one that explicitly refers to the Holy Spirit. It is the prophecy found in Chapter 37 of Ezekiel, in which this prophet is taken into the midst of a vast plain full of bones, many bones on every side, exceedingly dry bones. They were dead. God tells the prophet to prophesy to the bones and say: Ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord…. Behold, I will send Spirit into you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to grow over you, and will cover you with skin: and I will give you spirit and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord. Ezekiel obeys, and he prophesies, and lo and behold, there is a commotion, and the bones come together, each one to its joint. Sinews, flesh and skin grow back, and the bodies are recomposed, but they remain dead – the field is now full of corpses.
Again, he is commanded to prophesy, and this time, he is given these words: Come, Spirit, from the four winds, and blow upon these slain, and let them live again. He obeys, and then, lo and behold, the Spirit came into them, and they lived: and they stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army. They have come back to life! It does not end there, however, for the Lord then gives the prophet the explanation of this mysterious vision: All these bones are the house of Israel: they say: Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost, and we are cut off…. Thus saith the Lord God: Behold I will open your graves, and will bring you out of your sepulchres, O my people: … And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall have opened your sepulchres, and shall have brought you out of your graves, O my people: and shall have put my Spirit in you, and you shall live, and I shall make you rest upon your own land: and you shall know that I the Lord have spoken, and done it, saith the Lord God.
The vision astounds us; it moves us, but do we understand? We, too, at certain times of our lives, have been like dead bones; we had lost God’s grace and were doomed to eternal death. But God did not give up on us. He sent His only Son and the Holy Spirit to breathe new life into us. He sewed us together again and breathed new life into our souls, and behold, we live of the very life of God Himself. If sanctifying grace inhabits us, it is the work of the Holy Spirit. If we do good works, it is the work of the Holy Spirit. If we find joy in actually doing things that are rewarding but very hard for our fallen nature, it is the work of the Holy Spirit in us. If we find ourselves capable of sacrifices that would appal many a worldling, it is not for any merit of our own. Still, rather, it is the living proof that the Almighty Spirit of God has blown upon us and raised us up to be part of His formidable spiritual army.
There are many others out there today who are still dead. They are dead from the many sources of corruption in our modern world. The triple concupiscence reigns more than ever. The mass of humans are spiritually dead because they have taken the deadly poison of the sexual revolution. Frail, stinky, corrupt flesh became their god, and now they rot in a life that resembles death more than life. The love of money kills legions of others. They spend their lives running after more, but it is eaten up by moths or disappears in an instant on the virtual bank of a factitious world. Pride and lust for power and influence lead so many others to spiritual death. Our list could go on and on, but that is not our point today. Rather, our point is to show that, just as happened in the vision of Ezekiel, the resurrection of souls is real; it happens.
The most profound lesson this holds for us, dear Friends, is that God does not want to lock anyone up in their past. Among those whom we just mentioned, some come to the realisation that their life is a failure, but they seem stuck in their past, haunted by what they have done; some think they can never change, and they open themselves up to despair. In reality, as the vision of the dead bones reveals, this is simply not true. It is the evil spirit who whispers in our ear that nothing can change, that we are dead and that it is all over; the Holy Spirit blows gently upon every soul and seeks to bring it back to life. If that soul welcomes the grace and allows itself to be transformed from within, then a new life begins, one whose potential no one but God Himself can fully gauge.
There are unmistakable signs today of souls longing for life. They realise they are dead, and they want life. The number of baptisms in recent years has been increasing in several European countries, the United States, and even here in secular Australia. The young generations, in particular, thirst for truth and authentic life, virtue and holiness, and the Church once again shows that she is in possession of the wellsprings of God’s grace that transforms the world. This is not possible for nature, but it is for grace. St John Henry Newman once wrote: “For grace can, where nature cannot. The world grows old, but the Church is ever young. She can, in any time, at her Lord’s will, ‘inherit the Gentiles, and inhabit the desolate cities’… Arise, Jerusalem, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee… Arise, make haste, my love, my dove, my beautiful one, and come. For the winter is now past, and the… flowers have appeared in our land…” (St J. H. Newman).
All this encourages us, and it gives us strength. It reminds us, too, of the role we must play for others. Today’s liturgy is replete with lessons on how to approach this, starting with our own interior lives. When we speak of interior life, we are not talking about digestion but rather of the life of the soul, that intimate commerce that goes on between God and us. The Holy Spirit is, according to the sequence of this Mass, the sweet Guest of the soul (dulcis hospes animae). He is the One who gives us to understand and to sense what is truly right and good, and He rewards with ineffably sweet recompense those who allow grace to transform them interiorly. He is also, according to the hymn Veni Creator Spiritus, the living fount (fons vivus), from which all goodness comes, a refreshing source that soothes the pains of the heart and calms the fiery passions that can seek to carry us away back to the land of the dead. But He is also the fire (ignis) that inflames with a true love for God and neighbour and instils unconquerable zeal for preaching the truths of the faith, sharing with others the treasure, that marvellous hidden treasure of grace which we have received as a Gift.
Again, the Holy Spirit is the one who breaks the rigidity of worldly thoughts and perspectives (flecte quod est rigidum) and opens up to the grand vista of the life of the soul; He is the one who reins in those who go astray into crooked paths (rege quod est devium) and warms up those who are freezing to death in the sub-zero climate of the modern spiritual wasteland (fove quod est frigidum).
My dear friends, let us never forget that the source of life is here, right here, in the Church through her sacraments, in which it is the Holy Spirit Himself who works invisibly. We must never underestimate what He can do with each of us individually and with the Church as a whole. Are we on the verge of one of those massive returns to the faith that we sometimes read about in history? We do not know, but we have every reason to hope, and we must, for it is only when we have true hope that we can feel motivated to reach out to others and help them come to the joy and peace that, thanks to the Holy Spirit of God, we have come to taste and relish in His sweet presence.
In this ongoing campaign for souls, we turn to Mary, our Mother, the sweet Lady of the Cenacle, who, surrounded by the apostles, was present on that first Pentecost, obtaining the Gift of the Holy Spirit through her supplication. On this day, she becomes the Mother of the Church and the Mother of each of us. Let us ask her to intercede for each one of us, to teach us the treasures of the interior life, so that we can, in turn, become instruments for the resurrection of many whose dry bones litter the modern landscape but whom our loving God longs to raise up into a powerful army to transform the world. Amen.
