Receive the Holy Spirit.
I do not know if you are familiar with the super jumbo jets.
One of the super jumbo jets is the Airbus 380.
It is a massive airplane.
It is a double decker the whole way on top and underneath.
It can fit up to 850 passengers.
It can travel for 20 hours without stopping
and it can travel over 10,000 miles before refueling.
It does carry 82,000 gallons of fuel.
And here is the most amazing part:
It is 1.2 million pounds in weight.
To take off, it has to go at a minimum of 170 miles an hour.
Imagine it. 1.2 million pounds of metal at 170 miles an hour
and then lifts off and flies.
It is amazing to watch.
When you see it, it just sort of hovers;
it is like an aircraft carrier in the air.
It is a phenomenon; it is an amazing feat to be able to fly it.
Yes, it has 4 Rolls Royce huge jet engines
but it is all about air movement.
It is all about the wind and the wings
that capture it and hold it in the air.
The reason I bring it up is
it is a great metaphor for the Church.
As I look at that airplane and I think that should not be able to fly,
1.2 million pounds, in the middle of the air.
It just defies logic.
I look at the Church and think
with all the foibles and all the weirdness we have in the Church;
it is just amazing it still flies.
When you think of it in the early days of the disciples,
they walked with Jesus for 3 years and they still did not get him,
still did not understand him;
even the 40 days having him appear in the Spirit
and they are still locked away in a room afraid.
You wonder, “How did it ever start?”
Then you look at the Middle Ages and the craziness that happened then;
the corruption and the pitiful state of our Church
and yet it still survives; it still flies across the centuries.
Then you look at the Church in our lifetime,
the sexual abuse scandal;
the absolute mess and yet the Church still, still flies.
There is only one way in which that can happen
and that is through the gift of the Holy Spirit.
It is not us as human beings that keep the Church afloat.
It is the wind of the Holy Spirit that keeps it alive
and flying through the centuries. It is really amazing.
But we have to be humble enough to recognize that.
Then we could sort of take the prospective and
marvel at the beauty of the Church
in the same way we might marvel at this super jumbo jet;
there is something magnificent here
and it is not about us as individuals
but the Holy Spirit that animates us.
Let’s be honest as Catholics,
we are a bit dubious about the Holy Spirit.
We’re like okay with Jesus and God
but when we mention the Holy Spirit,
we all get a little squirmy.
If I say, “I’m going to call down the Holy Spirit upon you.
Fill this place with the Holy Spirit!
I pray that the Holy Spirit come upon.”
You’re all going, “Okay, he’s finally lost it.”
And that’s the struggle.
The Holy Spirit is a constitutive element of the Church.
Without it, we wouldn’t have the Church;
without it, we don’t even have the Trinity.
The Trinity is embedded in everything
that we have and everything we are.
So, what are we to do?
If the Church is animated by the Holy Spirit,
then we have to ask ourselves this:
Are we animated by the Holy Spirit?
Are we going to allow the Holy Spirit into our lives,
into our hearts; and set our hearts on fire?
I do not know how else to be a disciple
unless we allow that Holy Spirit to flow through us
and to not just keep me alive but keep us all alive,
and to set our hearts on fire.
It is the Spirit that is going to give us the courage to be bold;
to say something when it is necessary to speak up as a prophet.
It is also going to be the same Spirit that will keep us silent
when it is time to listen and to care.
It is the same Spirit that is going to give us the wisdom
to figure out which one of those we are called to do
at any one given time.
But if we do not ask and allow Jesus to give us his Holy Spirit
as he did his disciples then we will be left orphaned.
We will not be able to do the work;
we will not be able to witness to the gift of God in our life
because we have to allow this Holy Spirit to come.
I know that it sounds almost too good to be true
but that is the gift that the Father promised us.
And we say this in the Creed:
We say in the Creed that the Holy Spirit
proceeds from the Father and the Son.
This is what we hear in these readings today.
We hear that the Spirit was given to Jesus
and he imparts it to his disciples and
from that moment on, the fear was dissipated;
from that moment onwards,
they went into the world and they proclaimed the gospel.
They proclaimed Jesus and their hearts were on fire.
They spoke in different languages.
When they spoke, everyone heard them
in their own different languages;
extraordinary gifts of the Spirt.
It is that same Spirit that animates every single one of us here;
and every single one of us has a different gift.
So we are called to discover those gifts
and to use them for the good;
not just of ourselves
but the good of the whole community.
That is what we do here when we come to the Eucharist,
and we ask the Holy Spirit to bless this bread and wine
into the Body and Blood of Christ.
But also to help us to become the Body and Blood of Christ.
We are inviting implicitly when we come here;
we are inviting the Holy Spirit to take our lives and
allow us to become what we receive.
But we have to be willing to allow ourselves to change:
to not be afraid of it;
and to go forward here to be witnesses
and to proclaim what it is that the Lord is doing in our own life.
We need to become men and women of prayer and
prayers that will ask the Holy Spirit to
“come Holy Spirit, renew my heart,
make me new, make me something different,”
and allow that transformation to take place.
And we have cooperate with that transformation.
Let me give you an example:
Yesterday, I gave this exact same homily here at the 5pm Mass.
We had graduation earlier in the morning
and then I had a thank you dinner for people
who have given to the STEM project over here.
And it was a long day yesterday.
At the end of that day, there was a party for the 8th Grade Graduation;
I wanted to go over but I was tired after a full day
but I promised I would go over. And so I did.
To my shock and pleasure, they were all still there,
parents and children, late at night.
When I went over, the kids were just delighted to see me;
and they were coming up to me and chatting.
This one a small kid came up to me and says,
“Fr. Brendan, can I give you a hug?”
And I said sure.
When he gave me the hug,
I thought he was going to squeeze the life breath out of me.
He just squeezed me so hard.
And I was like, “What is this?” and he goes,
“I just want you to know that you have changed my life
with all your homilies especially that one this morning.”
And I said, “Really?”
He said, “Yeah, you have changed me!”
I didn’t even realized they listened!
Now that is the movement of the Holy Spirit.
Through that young man, and allowing him the courage,
that is hard for an 8th grader to say
with all his friends hanging around him.
That was bold.
That was the Holy Spirit moving him and he allowed that to happen.
It was also a gift to me after a long day
when I was exhausted about ready to collapse into bed
that I got that boost from the Holy Spirit, saying,
“Yeah, you’re doing okay. Now go to sleep.”
That is what I’m saying, my friends,
we have to allow this Holy Spirit to move us.
We cannot just settle for just coming to Church
and going home the same way.
If we are going home the same way, something has not happened.
And we got in the way.
We have to allow the Holy Spirit into our life;
we receive Jesus and that is the gift of his love
and that is the gift of his grace that he is going
to share with us today so let us receive the Holy Spirit today.
May we allow the Holy Spirit to come alive in our hearts;
and may he renew the face of the earth.
Let us renew the face of the earth by first renewing our own hearts
and allowing that Spirit to flow and
to do whatever the Holy Spirit wants us to do.
Receive the Holy Spirit.
