2015/05/24 - Homily - PENTECOST
A great celebration today - the Holy Spirit is sent to those who believe that Christ is our Saviour. At that time they were 12 apostles and women gathered at a place named the Cenacle. Together they had been waiting, together they received the Holy Spirit. Mary mother of Jesus had the first place. She is named Queen of the apostles. Together, they gave a testimony of the faith with a tremendous courage.
So, we are celebrating today the gift of the Holy Spirit sent to the whole Church including ourselves. What does the gift of the Holy Spirit mean to us? Have you been confirmed? Such a gift provides us with courage to say that we are happy to put our hope in God now and for eternal life. Can we say that such a gift provides us with the courage to fight the temptations in our life, even against our lack of faith? For many of us it is not sure that the Holy Spirit received on the day of our confirmation has deeply changed something in our lives.
But don’t worry. I can vividly remember that, in my own life, nothing very important seemed to happen afterwards. But for today’s preparation of this sermon, I thought back about what happened after my confirmation. It was actually a period of moving away from religion! I even thought that I was becoming an Atheist. But I never stopped going to church. Not going to church was quite difficult because of the social pressure. Today, however, we are in exactly the opposite situation. But another point worth emphasizing during that period of my opposition to religion was that I still read the Bible and especially the Gospel.
Today I think it was because the Holy Spirit made me do it. We often see God`s presence and God’s` action, afterwards. The Holy Spirit is acting without us knowing it. Why not? After all, if God leads us in a particular direction we don’t have to know WHY He leads us there.
It is often afterwards as I have said, that we discover, realize it was also the way of leading us to freedom and truth. Thanks be to God for that. We must ask The Holy Spirit to fill us with his blessed presence in order to be his genuine witnesses to others and to be able to reveal God’s presence to all humanity.
