Prayer Warriors@ St Mary Help Of Christians Church, Aiken, South Carolina at 118 York Street SE, Aiken, SC 29801-4568 US - Enabling The Holy Spirit

Peter offers us an interesting question:  “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit even as we have?”  In other words, can anyone prevent the Holy Spirit from being poured out on people?  No . . . and yes.  What do I mean?

No, we can’t prevent the Holy Spirit from being poured out on people.  St. John told Nicodemus, “The Spirit goes where it wills.”  Peter tells us in our first reading that “in every nation whoever fears God and acts uprightly is acceptable to him.”  The truth is that we can’t control God.  We sometimes act like we are God, but He is the Almighty; we are His creatures.  He is all-powerful; we are weak and frail.

In the first reading, the Holy Spirit comes down on the members of the household who are neither Christians nor Jews.  This is an amazing revelation – God has no favorites.  How open are we to that truth?  How open are our eyes to see that the Holy Spirit is alive and well in our world, in our country, in our parish, and in us?

I’m not saying that the presence of the Holy Spirit is always as profound as we see in our first reading, but the truth is that the Holy Spirit is being poured out on people all of the time.  Do we say, “thanks be to God” and live in the joy of knowing that God is active in peoples’ lives, even if we are not always aware of it?  As a deacon in this parish, I have the benefit of knowing a lot of you and hearing your stories of the Holy Spirit active in your lives.  As a result, even though I don’t always personally feel His presence, I know that He is always there.

In the days of Peter and Paul, the Spirit went forth in many and mighty ways because they didn’t chain or impose limits on God’s work.  God is no less powerful today than He was 2000 years ago.  His Spirit is no less present in the world than it was 2000 years ago.  The only difference . . . is . . . us. 

That brings us back to the question I opened with “Can anyone prevent the Holy Spirit from being poured out on people?”  No . . . and yes.  We can’t prevent the Holy Spirit from going where it wills, but we can affect who will be open to the presence of the Holy Spirit when He comes.  Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing people?  Absolutely.  We do it all the time by our failure to provide a faithful witness to the Good News, and that’s what concerns me, especially as I see it in my own life and my own family.

There are several ways.  We do it by our lack of knowledge of our Catholic Faith.  Jesus tells us, “I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing.  I have called you friends.”  We have been blessed to be in the Church with such a great and deep understanding of God’s plan, and yet how many of us do not have an adult understanding of the Faith?  How many of us are like little children saying “feed me, feed me,” or like teenagers saying, “What is there to eat?” instead of going into the kitchen ourselves and taking something from the incredible selection. 

Then, when the parish does offer to feed us through the parish missions, adult education, the CD’s in the back through Lighthouse Communications, youth ministry, or Life Teen, how many of us choose to go hungry?  How many of us are experts in biology, history, mathematics, music, engineering, finance, or computers, but are ignorant of the truths of God?  Do you have a copy of the Catholic Catechism?  Have you read it?  We withhold the waters of baptism because we are unable to see the face of Jesus and reveal it to others.

We can block the action of the Holy Spirit by our lack of faith.  Too often we think that “faith” starts with us, instead of seeing that faith starts with God; it is our response to Him.  Do our lives reflect that God is front and center of our actions and decisions, or is he a family keepsake we keep on the fireplace?  It looks nice, but it has no real value or use.  It doesn’t make a difference. 

Elsewhere, Jesus asked a very scary question of his apostles:  “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?”  More immediately, when God comes to you in the morning, when he comes in the face of a co-worker, child, or friend, when God comes to you in the poor and needy, when he comes to you in the Eucharist, will he find faith in your heart?  The Holy Spirit is active in the world, but our lack of faith keeps Him at bay in our lives and the lives of others.

In addition to a lack of knowledge or a lack of faith, another reason that others are not ready to receive the Spirit is because of our lack of love.  What do I mean by a lack of love?  We may say, “I love my wife.  I love my kids and friends.  I love my work.”  I’m talking about the love that is the source of all love.  As it says in our 2^nd reading, “God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life THROUGH him.  In this is love:  not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.”

The relationship between love and faith and our witness to God has been in front of us for several weeks in the second reading.  “Let us love one another because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.”  That sounds so simple, and yet I fear that many of us are ready to “move on.”  Move on!  Move on to what?  To something more complicated that we won’t understand?  I guess that would at least give us an excuse for not following it. 

I’m guilty of that when I prepare my homilies.  I want to say things that are profound, things that nobody else ever said.  But maybe there’s a reason nobody ever thought of saying it.  It may sound wonderful and brilliant, but nobody gets the message.  The message of love is such a simple message.  “Let us love one another because love is of God.”

In God’s kind of love, we give of ourselves for the sake of another without self interest.  Love involves me doing things for a reason greater than me.  The Catechism tells us that “charity is the virtue of faith by which we love God above all things for his own sake and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God.”  When people see that we do things because we love God more than ourselves, they will begin to question their own priorities.  When people see that we love our neighbors more than ourselves, their hearts will be drawn to a love that is greater than any they have experienced.  Their hearts will open ever so slightly, and the Spirit will be able to enter.  Or we can withhold the waters of baptism by living as though we are the center of the universe.

Can anyone withhold the Holy Spirit?  Yes, we can, but let us pray that we are ones who open rather than close hearts to the working of the God’s Spirit.  Yes, I know that the world is a mess, but we can do something about it.  If we are willing to learn our Faith, to respond in faith to God’s invitation, and to put the love of God and neighbor ahead of our own self seeking, there will be renewal and new life in the Church that will rival what happened 2000 years ago.  It’s the same God.  It’s the same Holy Spirit.  It’s the same Church.  It’s the same Good News.  The only difference is us.