Pentecost Sunday
May 19th
Today is the day the Lord has made! Oh, how I love the great feast of Pentecost. It is exciting, it is invigorating, it is challenging.
We all know that the Church has three great feasts – Christmas Day, the Nativity; Easter Sunday, the Resurrection; and Pentecost. Those first two Church celebrations get a lot of attention because the secular world likes them too but for the wrong reasons. I think that the followers of Jesus Christ ought to draw just as much joy and enthusiasm out of the Feast of Pentecost as we do at Christmas and Easter. On Pentecost Sunday a spotlight in heaven swivels around having been shined lo these many months on our Lord that spotlights slowly swivels around on us and WE are under the spotlight.
On Pentecost Sunday each one of us should recommit ourselves to our baptism, call for the grace of Confirmation and endeavor to make knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth our Lord and Savior better known on this battered and sinful world. Just before his return to his Heavenly Father, Jesus commissioned the apostles to be preachers of his word in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth. In some limited sense, that command has been fulfilled. Communities of faith are now everywhere on the planet but in varying conditions.
As we think about the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity descending upon the apostles and the other disciples who were present on this awesome day. Since we should be conscious that the Holy Spirit has been given to us as well as to the apostles, we should look inside ourselves and ask if we ever do anything to move forward the message of Jesus. There are many ways to do this. You don’t have to go to the Congo or Guatemala as a fulltime foreign missionary. The main way to teach people about Jesus of Nazareth is to try as best as we can to live like Jesus of Nazareth, namely to be honest, sensitive, generous and when necessary courageous. To the extent that we find ourselves more and more like our Savior, we can then say like St. Paul, “I live now not I but Christ lives in me.”
It is a wonderful job. It is a wonderful opportunity. Let’s thank God that we have it.

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Confirmation

Several times over the last few weeks, I have talked very briefly about the beauty to be seen in the celebration of the Sacraments. Catholics know that the seven Sacraments are the central structure of our faith since each one of them brings us into closer touch with Jesus of Nazareth. However, we don’t necessarily see them as gifts in our lives that really do reflect beauty. I started at the end by touching on the Last Anointing or Extreme Unction. I have also said the same thing about Baptism. When each of these ceremonies are carried out properly, they not only achieve their purpose, they achieve it in a way that is quite pleasing to the eye. Now let’s talk about Confirmation.

Like the other Sacraments, Confirmation is filled with symbolism. We receive it but one time in our lifetime and ordinarily we receive it, not in isolation, but in a communal context celebrating our position within the community of faith. This is seen first when those being confirmed are put together in sizable groups and secondly, the larger community of the parish really comes out to join the celebration. In baptism, our parents and godparents speak for us because usually infants are baptized. However, in Confirmation, the person being confirmed speaks for himself or herself. She has come of age, she has studied her holy faith and she is prepared to solidify or to confirm the commitment made for her in baptism. Now the young people do it for themselves.

Each person being confirmed is already a member of its own proper family, but with baptism and First Communion that person very visibly joins the larger faith community, the essential organizational component of the Universal Church, namely the Diocese. Dioceses have very specific boundaries and are headed by a single shepherd, the bishop. In Confirmation, those being confirmed come to the parish church to meet their shepherd and, after questioning them about the clarity of their thinking and their determination to walk in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, he confirms their faith by a holy anointing. The holy oil that is used for that anointing is itself a symbol of ties to the Diocese. The oil was blessed by the bishop at the Cathedral Church during Holy Week and then was divided among all the parishes of the Diocese. Once again, it symbolizes our unity through the bishop with the whole local Church; in this instance, the Diocese of Austin, the Church in Central Texas.

And so the spiritual journey continues. The child is born into its natural family, elevated to membership in the spiritual family, the community of faith which is the Church, and after a certain amount of maturing, that faith is confirmed by the chief shepherd of the local Church, the bishop. No one is isolated in the Church. Through the Sacraments, we are united to Jesus and, through those same Sacraments, united to those who share our faith. These are beautiful milestones on our way to our eternal destiny. Happily, none of us go alone.

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For the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, He is still with us. Jesus is here. Jesus is walking with us. This awesome reality is brought into our lives and maintained in our lives by the mystery of the sacraments. The sacraments are spiritual gifts of awesome and unimaginable value. Through the sacraments, Jesus touches us and we, ourselves, reach out to touch Him.

This is true in all of the sacraments, but I want to say a word today about one that is very important, but that we tend not to think about a great deal. I am talking about Confirmation. Confirmation is a one time event surrounded by extra ceremonies, excitement and family jubilation. Speaking frankly, the jubilation is caused by the happy atmosphere that marks the life of the family when the Bishop comes and presides over this important event. There is nothing wrong with that, but a more important cause of happiness should be that this young developing adult is making a commitment to be a follower of Jesus. She is CONFIRMING the commitment made for her at the time of her baptism. She is walking into the future, strengthened by her faith, supported still by her Godparents and now by her confirmation sponsor. She is moving into a challenging chapter, but she has her faith, her friends, and the saving power of Jesus Christ to guide her and keep her on the track which leads to eternal happiness.

While it may be a one time event, the reality of our confirmation should be with us throughout our life and make us conscious of who we are, and to whom we have been joined-Jesus Christ. Now we can say, with St. Paul, “For me, to live, is CHRIST.”

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The Sacraments are absolutely central in the life of most of the world’s Christians. For Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox, there is unanimity on the Sacraments and the fact that there are seven of them. Some of the earlier Protestant churches celebrate baptism and the Eucharist with great faith and fervor, and there are some Christians who deny the very idea of sacramentality.

For those who hold to the seven Sacraments, I would like to point out that they do two things: they parallel our regular lives in a very beautiful and meaningful way and of even greater importance is the fact that they fuse our lives into the life of Jesus so that with St. Paul each one of us can say, “I live now not I but Christ lives in me.” We are born into the natural family. When we are Baptized, we are reborn into the family of faith, which is the Church.

When we begin to grow, our human natures are nurtured by earthly food and drink and our life in the family of the Church our souls are nourished by the Eucharist. In our day-to-day life, we make mistakes and nature calls us to repentance. In our spiritual life, we sin and Jesus Christ invites us to repentance in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. With age comes responsibility. High school and college graduates in a special way symbolize moving on to more mature responsibilities. Confirmation gives us the grace to carry out the responsibilities that flow from our baptism and our commitment to Jesus of Nazareth. The family is the bedrock of all civilizations and the Sacrament of Matrimony provides the grace necessary for that awesomely important role in life, just as the Sacrament of Holy Orders provides the Church with leadership and sacramental services that this enormous community of faith requires.

Finally, as our earthly lives come to an end, the Church stands with us once again bringing the saving grace of Jesus Christ as we are prepared for death and to meet our Lord himself in judgment.

These sacraments provide markers on our spiritual journey, but more importantly, they make it possible for us to intimately share in the life of Jesus of Nazareth and in so sharing be united ultimately to God himself.

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6th Sunday of Easter

Today, the Church presents us with a wonderful vision of life in the early Church. We have to use our imaginations a little bit and try to visualize how the followers of Jesus were struggling trying to straighten things out between their religious roots and the teachings and actions of Jesus, and put the two together in a harmonious whole. The first reading describes Philip being extraordinarily effective as a missionary north in Samaria, where the people had Jewish roots and blood, but had not been faithful to the Mosaic Law. Nevertheless, converts to Jesus came in large numbers. The sick were cured. All in all, it was a happy scene.

Next, the leaders in Jerusalem hear about conversion in Samaria and they send Peter and John north to sort of examine the condition of the Church. They seem to have been surprised that these new converts had been baptized but had not as yet received the Holy Spirit. Then, you see the first implication of the Sacrament of Confirmation – the giving of the Holy Spirit to those already baptized.

The text states that, “The pair (Peter and John) imposed hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit.” We need to be constantly reminded that Confirmation is not a one-time event, but it establishes a new relationship between ourselves and our commitment to spread the message of Jesus Christ.

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Catholics who studied their catechism before the Second Vatican Council all knew the names of the seven sacraments and for some of them the name of the last one was a little difficult.  It was called “extreme unction,” literally meaning, “the last anointing.”  Today, we usually refer to this sacrament as simply “the last rites.”

In addition to this sacrament, the Church also uses oil at baptism, confirmation and ordination.  All three ceremonies set a person apart in their relationship to the Church and Jesus Christ.  When a person is baptized, he is marked and drawn into the family of faith.  Confirmation reflects recognition of a person’s maturity, growth in the faith and a willingness to assume responsibility to spread it.  In the priesthood, the man’s hands are anointed to mark the fact that in a very special way those hands are instruments in our Lord’s plan for keeping his presence among us until the end of time; namely, the celebration of the Eucharist.  Finally, in the last rites (extreme unction), we lift up the lives of the persons who are ill, present them to God and ask for his mercy and salvation.  Overall, these four sacraments together form a marvelous collage of religious life inside the family of the Church.

Don’t forget that you have been anointed, you have been marked, you are special because of the saving actions of Jesus Christ.

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