Come Holy Spirit come by means of the powerful intercession of the Sorrowful and Immaculate heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Thy well beloved spouse.

Pentecost Sunday. May 15th, 2016

In the Season of Easter the Gospels have been concentrating on the Great commandment of Jesus, that is the commandment to love one another as He has loved us, with an agape love, a sacrificial love. To love this way we must keep His Word. In other words we must accept His truth, which comes to us in the teachings of the Church and then strive to live it out in our lives with the help of His grace, which comes to us through the Same Church. If we do this then we can love one another, not only with our own human love, but also with His divine love alive in us known as Charity, which goes beyond even agape love.

In this One Great Command of Jesus, we can quickly realize that being a faithful follower of Jesus is demanding. Christianity—Catholic Christianity in particular, is a hard religion; in fact, it is the hardest religion in the world, by far; that is, if it is lived correctly and fully. Christianity is the only religion that calls us to love, not just our friends but our enemies as well.

And we are not just to love our enemies as we love our friends, but we are to be willing to lay down our life for them as well, to sacrifice our self for love of even them. Even more, we are to love of enemies with our human hearts elevated to and filled with the very love of Jesus himself. As Jesus says, “But to you who hear I say, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you…(Luke 6;27). For if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them...(Luke 6;32) This is what it means to, “… be merciful as your Heavenly Father is merciful.” (cf. Luke 6;36). I ask you, what other religion is there that places any such demands on its disciples, to demand that its disciples love with their human love elevated to the divine level?

And so, where can we, you and I, find the strength to love not only our friends, but also even our enemies and to do so with a human-divine love? Well before we give love, we must receive love. One can not give what one does not posses. In his great encyclical Deus Caritas Est-God is love, Pope Emeritus Benedict reminded us of this.,

“Anyone who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift. Certainly, as the Lord tells us, one can become a source from which rivers of living water flow (cf. Jn 7:37-38). Yet to become such a source, one must constantly drink anew from the original source, which is Jesus Christ, from whose pierced heart flows the love of God.” (¶#7).

So how do we do this? How do we go to the source and receive the love of God as the Holy Father says? In and through the Sacraments received with proper disposition; that is with faith and in a state of grace.

It is in the Sacraments that we are able to enter into the very Heart of Jesus and literally come in contact with the living waters of His love and so be transformed in order to become ourselves a source of this living water of his love to others. In fact, the Holy Eucharist is indeed this pieced human and divine heart of Jesus from which flows the love of God, the Love of God Who is the Holy Spirit. Or as the Benedict put it, the Holy Spirit is the living water that flows from the heart of Christ in the Holy Eucharist.

The Holy Eucharist is therefore the source of the strength we need to love even our enemies and to give our self in sacrifice for love of God and love of neighbor and to do it all with the love of God alive in our hearts, which is Jesus loving others in us, through us and with us…which is Jesus saving souls through us. So it goes with out saying we have to come before the Holy Eucharist in faith whenever we can to receive, and be filled to overflowing with the Love of Jesus (if you look at the divine mercy picture you see the rays of God’s mercy and love flowing from the heart of Jesus…the Divine mercy image is a picture of the Holy Eucharist. When you are in the presence of the Holy Eucharist those same rays come forth from the Eucharist and they penetrate hearts that believe, adore, hope and love.

At our Holy Baptism, we received the Capacity to receive the Holy Spirit of God into our Souls, to become living temples of the Holy Spirit, temples not made by human hands but by the hand of God. At our confirmation we confirmed in the Gifts of the Holy Spirit given to us at our baptism and we were thus given the power to use these same gifts of the Holy Spirit fully in our daily lives. At our first Holy Communion (and all our Holy Communions since) Jesus gave (and gives) Himself to us Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in order to bring us the Holy Spirit to perfect us in Love and so to become one with God in a unity of love.

At every Holy Communion Jesus comes for a little while sacramentally and then He says to us, “it is better for you that I go, for if I do not go, I can not send you the promised advocate, that is the Holy Spirit. Receiving the Holy Spirit, if we listen to His promptings, He then gently, but firmly, convicts of our failures to love, namely our sins, and He leads us to the Sacrament of Forgiveness. In Confession, the Sacrament of God’s Mercy, Jesus forgives us these same sins in the Person of the Priest who has receive this divine power, as did the Apostles, from the Holy Spirit (see Jn 20;20). And by removing our sins makes way for a deeper and fuller indwelling of the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, Who is the Love between the Father and the Son.

Notice in our Gospel today that the first Pentecost occurred on the first day of the week, that is on Sunday. In other words, Pentecost occurred at Holy Mass. If as the Church teaches us, every Sunday Mass is Easter, so too, every Holy Mass is a Pentecost. However to receive this power from on high which comes to us anew at every Holy Mass, we must through a deeper faith open our hearts to this Divine Guest of our souls. We must ask Him to help us repent more fully of our sins, especially our hidden ones, and we must ask for His help to offer ourselves fully to God on this altar of Sacrifice. Then as the Holy Spirit descends from heaven by the prompting of the priest, He will also transformed our hearts as he transforms the bread and the wine into the Heart of Christ, so that we may live only for Jesus, through Jesus and with Jesus, loving every soul we meet, friend or enemy, with the very love of God alive in us.

So today at this Mass let us ask the Holy Spirit to inflame our heart in the love of God, so that we can truly love as Jesus Himself loves. The Advocate will help us to worship and adore God in Spirit and in truth in order to come in contact with the very source of the living waters of Love. He will help us to “lift up our hearts” that is to offer them fully to God in complete trust and so draw closer and develop an more intimate relationship with the Father, through the Son, in the unity of the Holy Spirit.
When Karol Wyvotiva, the future St John Paul the Second was still living at home with his father, his father said to the future pope, “you do not pray enough to the Holy Spirit.” John Paul’s father then directed the young John Paul to pray daily to the Holy Spirit. To help him, John Paul’s father gave him the following prayer, which St. John Paul prayed every day for the rest of his life:

Holy Spirit, I ask you for the gift of Wisdom to better know You and your Divine perfections; for the gift of Understanding to clearly discern the spirit of the mysteries of the holy Faith; for the gift of Counsel that I may live according to the principles of this Faith; for the gift of Knowledge that I may look for counsel in You and that I may always find it in You; for the gift of Fortitude that no fear or earthly preoccupations would ever separate me from You; for the gift of Piety that I may always serve Your Majesty with a filial love; for the gift of the Fear of the Lord that I may dread sin, which offends you, O my God. Amen.

Come Holy Spirit come by means of the powerful intercession of the Sorrowful and Immaculate heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary Thy well beloved spouse. (3x).