Pentecost

Pentecost Sunday

JohN 14:15-16, 23B-26

Jesus said to his disciples:
"If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
And I will ask the Father,
and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always.

"Whoever loves me will keep my word,
and my Father will love him,
and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.
Those who do not love me do not keep my words;
yet the word you hear is not mine
but that of the Father who sent me.

"I have told you this while I am with you.
The Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name,
will teach you everything
and remind you of all that I told you."

Today is the birthday of the Church. We are the Church, so today is our birthday; we remember today that we have been born to fullness of life in the Spirit.

Birthdays are days for getting presents. It is no different for us here today; today we receive gifts, the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Our second reading from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians speaks about the gifts of the spirit we have each received. We are the body of the Church, and Christ Jesus is the head. So it is a birthday celebration for Jesus as well, but what can we get Jesus? What do you give to the Son of God, the man who has everything?

Thursday at mass the Gospel was from John’s 17^th chapter, today is from his 14^th Chapter, but there was a line in Thursday’s Gospel that struck me, verse 24, Jesus says, “Father, they are your gift to me.” So what is the gift that we give Jesus on this the birth of the Church? We are the gift. We give our very selves to Jesus.

I was thinking about these birthday gifts in relation to the children our community. You know how kids love to get gifts, how it doesn’t seem to matter what it is they are just filled with joy to get a brightly wrapped package tied up with a colorful bow. You see the delight in their eyes. Jesus looks at us with the same kind of delight, and that look in his eyes is what we call love. Jesus looks at us with love because he is so thrilled with the gift that we are to him. We don’t have to get Jesus anything, we just have to be who we are, and we are the gift God has given to Jesus. I wish that I could hold up a mirror so that you could see the gift that we are giving to Jesus.

It isn’t an individual gift though; Jesus doesn’t have over a billion presents that he has to unwrap. No, we are a collective gift, together we are one big gift that is given to Jesus. That is why today is the birth of the Church; the Church is what binds us together and makes us one. Unity is the work of the Church. That is why our Church is called Catholic, Catholic means universal, so the more that we are united, the more that we are one the better gift we are to Jesus.

To truly be the Catholic Church we have to work to be one Church. We have to work to make sure that everyone is included in the Church, it is our job to make sure that no one feels excluded, left out or less then. We know that the Catholic Church is universal, there are 1.2 billion of us in the World, but really all 7.7 billion people in the world have a claim on us, we have a responsibility to them. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. When we talk of the universality of the Catholic Church we are blest here at St. Alphonsus. As we think about the universality of the Church we don’t need to think about the Catholics in the Far East like Viet Nam, because we have parishioners here from VN. We don’t have to think of Catholics in Africa such as Liberia, because we have several parishioners from Liberia. We don’t have to think theoretically of Catholics in South America, because hundreds of Catholics from South America fill our pews every Sunday. We don’t have to think of the history of the Church in Europe, because most of us have ancestors who left Europe to come to this country.  Every Church community is a microcosm of the whole universal church. But us that isn’t just theoretical, it is our reality. There are people from every continent walk through these doors every weekend. Over 80 nationalities make up our parish community.

As we come together as one parish community we become that gift that God has given to Jesus. That is hard work though, it is not just something that we say, we have to work to become one. That is why we have received the gift of the Spirit. Alone we are just a collection of individuals, but with the gift of the Spirit we are being molded into one body, one gift. The Holy Spirit is like the wrapping paper, not to make us pretty but to bind us together as one.

So on this birthday of the Church let us celebrate what we are… the gift God has given to Jesus. One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church!