Pentecost, May 19, 2024
Pentecost
May 19, 2024
In the reading today from Acts of the Apostles we hear how the disciples spoke and those gathered heard them in their own language. One of the gifts of the spirit is the gift of tongues.
With this gift, those who have been given it, are able to speak in many languages. Another gift of the spirit is the gift of interpretation of tongues. When someone has the gift of tongues someone else is needed to interpret the gift. Today those who have the gift praise God in an angelic voice, but few can understand what is being said.
Many can hear the words, but few are able to listen and understand what is being said. Often, we hear the words spoken to us but do not listen or act upon them.
Hearing and listening are two different actions. Hearing and listening are different actions.
Emerson once said, “Who you are speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you are saying.” Often, we cannot hear the other for we prejudge their words by what we expect them to say. We can be so busy fashioning our response to what we think they are saying that we do not listen to what is being said to us.
Pope Francis has invited our worldwide church to enter into a process of Synod. The focus of the Synod is listening to each other. The structure of the synod process is each person having a period to speak. The others simply listen, no comments are made. Each person has time to share his/her views and the others simply listen. This is the model we used in our diocese and has been used in Rome.
Fr. Timothy Radcliffe OP the retreat director for the Rome sessions has published his retreat talks under the title of Listening Together. In his reflections Fr. Radcliffe spoke about Hope, Home in God, Friendship, Authority and the Spirit of Truth.
As we listen to the spirit, we find that we are all united in our goal of the kingdom of God. We may not always agree, but we find we have a common goal. In listening to each other, we may find friendship.
Here is what Fr. Radcliffe has to say about friendship:
Preaching the Gospel is never just communicating information. It is an act of friendship. A hundred years ago, Vincent McNabb, OP said ‘Love those to whom you preach. If you do not, do not preach. Preach to yourself. St. Domonic was said to have been loved by all since he loved all. St. Catherine of Siena was surrounded by a circle of friends, men and women, lay and religious. They were known as the Caterinati, the Catherine people. St. Martin De Porres is often shown with a cat, a dog and a mouse eating from the same dish. A good image of religious life and of the synod.
There is a widely-held truth of Christianity that is expressed in the statement, “There is no such thing as being a Christian in isolation.” It has also been expressed as, “There is no such thing as being a solitary Christian.” The fundamental reason that there is no such thing as being a solitary Christian or being Christian in isolation is that God, the God of our Christian faith, is a God of relationship — a God in relationship! That relationship is what we celebrate today in the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit — one God, three persons — each with unique roles in relationship to one another: God the Creator, God the Redeemer, God the Sanctifier. If, therefore, the God we believe in — the God we profess, the God that we worship and pray to, the God we trust in — is fundamentally a God of and in relationship, it follows that we, who are created in the image and likeness of that God of and in relationship, cannot express what we believe , cannot BE what we profess by being what our God is not: Christians in isolation; solitary Christians. We say that God is Love, and so God is. We sometimes identify the Persons of our Triune God — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — as the Lover, the Beloved, and the Love between them . There is a mutual indwelling of the three persons of the Holy Trinity, and mutual giving and receiving in which each shares and receives all that they are with each other. This expression of love of the Holy Trinity is communion . And it is the highest aim of the Love of God to draw us into the life of love of the Holy Trinity that is that communion. The Church teaches that “the dignity of [humanity] rests above all [emphasis added] on the fact that [we] are called to communion with God” (Catechism #27). That is why today is of such high importance among our days of worship that we deem it a solemnity — The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. Above all , we are called to communion with God. In the first reading we hear that the Wisdom of God, the Holy Spirit, “was poured forth before the earth...playing on the surface of God’s earth” and the Spirit of God says, “ and I found delight in the human race." Our responsorial psalm, Psalm 8, reminds us that we are made “little less than the angels, and crowned with glory and honor.” These verses signal that we are created for communion with our creator. In the second reading St. Paul tells us that “ the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” That sounds like communion, doesn’t it? Indeed, the very incarnation of Christ is the manifestation of our God coming out to us to draw us into the life of the Trinity! Therefore, if we are called into communion with God, then we, as the Body of Christ, are called into communion with each other . The very indwelling-dance of love of the Holy Trinity that we are invited and drawn into, invites — and also urges — that we go out and draw others into this dance of love. That's what the communion of our God does. That's what the love of our God is. The love of God poured into our hearts, as communion with the Holy Trinity, is to be poured forth from our hearts into this world in imitation of our Triune God: in little acts of love as simple as reaching out to make a connection to someone to let them know you were thinking about them, and greater acts of love through service that gather us, feed us, caring for each other in mind, body, and spirit; acts of mercy. For we are not Christians in isolation. And we cannot be Christians in isolation.
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How many of you recall the following hymn refrain? Misericordes sicut Pater Misericordes sicut Pater… It is the refrain from the hymn of the same title that was composed for the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, which Pope Francis opened in the first week of Advent in 2015 and concluded with the feast of Christ the King on November 20, 2016. You may recall that throughout that Jubilee Year, we opened our Masses with that hymn and sang that refrain. Misericordes sicut Pater… …Merciful like the Father …Merciful like the Father. How appropriate that on this Sunday, the second Sunday of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday, is also the weekend in which we have laid our Holy Father Pope Francis to rest, and entrusted him to the tender, eternal mercy of God the Father. It was no coincidence that Pope Francis declared the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy. Pope Francis believed Mercy is the primary expression and experience of God’s love for us, and Mercy is the primary expression and experience of the love that God calls us to share with each other. So important was his belief and trust in God’s Mercy, that when he was ordained to the order of Bishop, he took as his episcopal motto “ miserando atque eligendo ” ( which roughly translates from Latin as “having mercy, he chose him”). It is taken from a homily written by St. Bede the Venerable, an eighth-century saint and Doctor of the Church, reflecting on the call of St. Matthew by Christ to become an apostle. St. Bede wrote, “[Jesus] saw the tax collector [Matthew] and, because he saw him through the eyes of mercy and chose him, he said to him: Follow me .” So important was his belief and trust in God’s Mercy, that when Francis was elected as Pope, he kept this episcopal motto as his papal motto. This motto expresses so simply and beautifully truths of our faith: God loves us deeply; God expresses that love to us through His mercy for us in our sinfulness; and that despite our sinfulness, God calls us . God calls us to trust and hope in God’s love for us and calls us to express the same love and mercy for one another. That call is reflected also in the Gospel account of Matthew’s call to discipleship by Jesus, which concludes with Jesus challenging the Pharisees, saying “Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice'” (Mt. 9:13). Jesus challenges us in the same way. He calls the Pharisees – and us – out of ritual acts of worship and piety that are not also accompanied by acts of mercy! Jesus is clear about this. In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus says, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Lk. 6:36). In his Papal Bull announcing the Extraordinary Year of Mercy, Pope Francis describes God the Father’s mercy for us as like “that of a father or a mother, moved to the very depths out of love for their child…a “visceral” love…gush[ing] forth from the depths naturally, full of tenderness and compassion, indulgence and mercy” (Misericordiae Vultus, no. 6). He also describes God’s Divine Mercy as a ”wellspring of joy, serenity, and peace.” (MV 2). These words bring to mind the visceral atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross for our sins, when blood and water sprung forth from Christ’s side as the cleansing waters of baptism. It is that visceral sacrifice which we recall in the Divine Mercy chaplet when we pray, “O Blood and Water which gushed forth from the Heart of Jesus as a fount of mercy for us, I trust in You!” It is that cleansing sacrifice that we recall when we pray in the Anima Christi prayer, “Water from the side of Christ, wash me.” And it is that same merciful cleansing in which we hope and trust, as we place all that burdens us into the waters of God’s grace, as we have done here, symbolically, in placing our Lenten stone-burdens in this fountain of Holy Water from the Easter Vigil Baptismal pool. As we contemplate God’s Divine Mercy, we place our trust and our hope in that Divine Mercy, recalling the words our late Holy Father Pope Francis left us with: “Mercy will always be greater than any sin, and no one can place limits on the love of God who is ever ready to forgive” (MV 3); “Mercy [is] the bridge that connects God and man, opening our hearts to the hope of being loved forever” (MV 2). Misericordes sicut Pater Misericordes sicut Pater…
