Homily: 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time yr. B, (2009)
He heals the broken-hearted, he binds up all their wounds. - Psalm 146
I’m sure that more people find the concept of the Holy Spirit easier to grasp and accept than that of the Eternal Word truly becoming flesh and blood for us. ‘I’m not religious but I’m a very spiritual person’. We are happy to admit a universal spiritual sense because it does not seem to demand too close a definition. Oh, but for us Catholics the truth about him is closely defined.
‘Giver of life’: of course, if the Son had a special role in creating all things, that was not to exclude either the Father or the Spirit. In the first book of the Bible, Genesis, there are two accounts of the creation of the cosmos. Those who accuse Christians of taking Genesis literally must face the fact that we’ve always know it wasn’t literal for there are two accounts and the world was only created once! The two accounts bring out complementary truths about creation, both of them in powerfully symbolic language. In the second account of creation, man’s body is described as being made from the dust or slime of the earth (sounds very much in keeping with Darwin’s theory of material evolution?!) But man was made special, given a unique relationship with God which none of the other animals were given: God breathed his spirit into the nostrils of Adam to bring him to life, “… and thus man became a living being”.
Now just think what this means to a man and woman who have sex and are open to bringing a new life into the world, who are open to having a baby: they are opening their hearts and lives to the Lord, the Giver of Life, really and truly. This is why sex, for a Christian, should always but always be something very special, very holy. It is a calling to be a cooperator with God, in bringing new life into the world. How wonderful! But doesn’t this also imply something quite serious about contraception? Doesn’t this also make sense of what the Catholic Church still says (what all the Christian churches said until the 20th century) that contraceptive sex is always wrong, in fact very wrong: because couple is saying: we want sex but we exclude God from this, we exclude the Lord, the Giver of Life, in fact we positively want Him to stay away.
The Holy Spirit is the ‘Giver of Life’ to our spirits. There is a further, deeper meaning to this line of the creed. The ‘Life of the Spirit’ is more than just being alive. It is the life of a Christian. Even that doesn’t adequately express this life: it is what St Paul calls “life in Christ” . Let’s add the next line:
‘Who proceeds from the Father and the Son…’.
This was added to the creed at the Council of Toledo in 589. There was a concern that the divinity of the Son was being down played and so it was made clear that the Son sent the Spirit with the Father. If I were the pope I would add another line to the creed here which gets across the full meaning of what is intended by these lines:
‘and gathers all to the Father through the Son’
You see there’s NO separation between the work and Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit. After the Ascension of Christ to heaven, the Father and Christ sent the Holy Spirit into the world to work in the hearts, minds of souls of all who are open to God to gather all to the Father by coming to Christ through his Church, through his sacraments, especially through the sacrament of his living flesh & blood, the Eucharist. Why? Because God still wants to come to us in a way we can fully grasp and so he wants to unite our living flesh & blood with his living flesh & blood.
·Giver of Life: and yet another meaning! ‘Get a life’ we sometimes say or think about someone. The ‘Life of the Spirit’ or ‘Life in Christ’ is the best life anyone could ever ‘get’. This kind of experience of life, of the Holy Spirit in our lives, is something some of us may experience. It’s the life of the mystic, the life of a few great saints. St Theresa of Avila almost certainly experienced it and wrote about it. It is accompanied by moments of exquisite joy and peace but these, we’re told by those who’ve had them, only last for moments. Sometimes it is to prepare us for a time of great trial or testing. I read something during the week which made the fairs on my neck stand on end: the account of the last Mass of the Carthusians in London on the eve of the Reformation…
One of the names that Jesus gave the Holy Spirit is ‘the Comforter’ and Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit, the Comforter would be given to those who needed him in times of great suffering. We’ll sing in the hymn to the Holy Spirit later in Mass:
Thou of all consolers best,
Thou the soul’s delightsome guest
Dost refreshing peace bestow:
Thou in toil art comfort sweet;
Pleasant coolness in the heat;
Solace in the midst of woe.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life: and that life has been given to us: in our Baptism, in our Confirmation, in divine Absolution after Confession, in EVERY sacrament; for in every sacrament, the priest holds out his hand over us and calls on the Holy Spirit, the Giver of Life to come down upon us. “He heals the broken-hearted, he binds up all their wounds”. We heard that in today’s psalm. It’s true: the Holy Spirit does that for us, to us, above all through the sacraments.
‘he has spoken through the prophets.’
Do we always remember when we hear those sometimes difficult OT readings on a Sunday, from Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah, that it was the SAME Holy Spirit who inspired them as who spoke through and in Jesus and now speaks in and through his body the Church: through John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and hopefully your parish priest? Since the Spirit is one, the message must be one. Something is wrong if someone thinks that the Holy Spirit is leading them to act in a way that contradicts Scripture or Church teaching.
There is no one here whose life has not been touched, affected, deeply changed through the action of the Holy Spirit, the Giver of Life: parent, child, Christian. How much our creed proclaims and celebrates!