Pentecost C.  May 27 2007.  Our Lady of Grace 7:30,  11:30, 6PM.  Acts 2: 1-11. I Corinthians 12:3b-7. 12-13.   John 20: 19-23.

God loved the world so much that he didn’t send a committee to save us.   Committees are very important. They bring people together to express their needs and to discuss what might be done to solve them.  Committees are wonderful ways of involving people in helping themselves.  But God knows that people follow leaders, not committees.  God loved the world so much that he sent a living person, his Son Jesus Christ, to be our leader and our friend.   Jesus is the Good Shepherd who shows us the tender love of God in the miracles he performs for the poor and the suffering.  Jesus is the merciful Savior who touches us with God’s words of kindness and the forgiveness.  Jesus is the human face, the human touch and the human word of God.  God loved us so much that he sent us a crucified loving Shepherd to lead us safely home.

God loved the world so much that he did not send an organization or a denomination to lead us to salvation.  God loved us so much that he founded an historical, visible, flesh and blood Church – filled with the power of the Holy Spirit.  The Church is much more than a social group or an institution.  The Church is the true, real and mystical Body of the crucified and risen Christ.  The Church is not an idea that we had or a group or organization that we founded.  The Church was founded by Christ himself.  The Church was sanctified by the blood of Christ on the cross and it was filled with divine love, healing power and authority when the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples on Pentecost.  Jesus breathed on his disciples, the first members and leaders of his Church saying, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.  Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” Jesus had Divine Power to forgive sins.  Jesus gave that same Divine Power to forgive sins to flesh and blood human beings, the leaders of his Body the Church.  It is an awesome thing to listen to a person’s story of sin and pain and to pronounce the words of forgiveness that are much more than human words or the words of some earthly organization.  The words of forgiveness that I am privileged to speak are Christ’s words.  They have the power to forgive sins because they are truly Christ’s words spoken by his living Body, the Church.

Every member of the Church, in his or her own way, speaks in the name of Christ and with the love and authority of Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit poured out upon us on Pentecost.  Several years ago I was standing in the gathering area at the back of church after Mass when I saw a woman crying.  I went up to her and asked if there were anything that I could do to help her.  She said, “I was born and raised a Catholic and I have been away from the Catholic Church for almost 25 years. I was driving by here today and I saw all of the people going into church.  For some strange reason I decided to go in too.  I have been going to another Christian church that has been a great blessing in my life.   In the middle of Mass I suddenly realized that everything I had found in the other church was present here at the same time everything was present here that I missed because I was no longer Catholic.  I was filled with peace and joy being at Mass again and I started to cry.  The woman next to me put her arm around me and said, “Can I help you with something.”  At that moment I knew that I was home.”  This woman found her way back to the Church not only because of what was happening at the altar, but maybe even more because of the loving embrace of a very caring lay woman sitting in the pews.  The whole Church is the Body of Christ and the whole Church is filled with the love, sensitivity and the healing touch of the living Christ.

It is usually easy to love Jesus because Jesus is perfect and full of goodness and love.  It is often harder to love the Church because members of the Church are not perfect.  If they were, you and I would not be able to be a part of the Church because we are not perfect.  Down through the ages there have been sinful popes and pastors and sinful members of the Church.   Yet, the Church itself is holy because it is the Body of Christ and no sinful member can destroy the power of the Holy Spirit working in the Church to make us holy.  God has always raised up great saints at times when there was great sin and confusion in the Church and a great need for reform.  The Protestant Reformation was one of those times.   Two things happened at the time of the Reformation.  Some tried to reform a Catholic Church that was very much in need of reform by moving outside of it.  Others reformed the Catholic Church by becoming saints within it.  St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, and St. Robert Bellarmine, a Jesuit scholar, St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, two Carmelite mystics, St. Charles Borromeo and St. Frances De Salles, two Catholic reform bishops, St. Phillip Neri a priest and St. Thomas Moore, a layman, are outstanding examples of the power of the Holy Spirit working to reform the Catholic Church from within.   The only answer to the Church’s problems is the call to holiness. Criticizing the Church will not help much, all by itself.    Pentecost reminds us that God pours out the Holy Spirit on everyone of us to make us holy and to heal and strengthen the Church by empowering us to be saints.

God poured forth his Holy Spirit upon the Church on Pentecost and God continues to pour out his Holy Spirit upon the Church in our day.  We are all responsible for the life and holiness of the Church.  We are all called to be holy.  Pentecost teaches us that holiness is not someone else’s business.  Holiness and ministry are the responsibility of every baptized member of the Church. For the gift of the Holy Spirit who comes today to transform our lives and our Church we give God thanks and praise.