PENTECOST, HOLY SPIRIT AND THE CHURCH

The first Pentecost changed the lives of whom the Spirit touched. It changed them forever. We continue to pray that we may have the same awakening. For God to touch us completely so that we can be created and He can renew the face of the earth.

It is a deep Catholic conviction that one cannot be truly converted to Jesus Christ without being, at the same time, incorporated into the church. In making this claim, we confront the enormous cultural prejudice against institutions of all stripes, especially the Catholic Church. In fact, just very recently, we have seen a You Tube post on “I love Jesus but I hate religion.” Surprisingly, most Catholics were the ones hitting left and right the “like” button confirming only the reality that we have been so far away from understanding the role of the Church which Jesus himself has willed to established as his physical and human presence and convey the signs of his love to mankind.

Though the Church has an institutional dimension, it is first and foremost a body, that is to say, a living organism made up of interdependent cells, molecules, and organs. The head of this living body is Jesus Christ and its life-blood is the grace flowing from Jesus’ death and resurrection. All of the baptized are incorporated (how appropriate that word is) into this organism and are drawn into its dynamics and interrelationships. So intimate is the bond between members of the body of Christ that the joys of any one are the joys of every other, and the sufferings of any one are the sufferings of every other. St. Paul, who developed this image of the church as body in a number of his letters, wondered: “Can the eye say to the hand, I have no need of you?”

In the Gospel of John, Jesus himself says, “I am the vine, and you are the branches,” implying that the members of his church are organically and not simply institutionally related to him. One of the most powerful Biblical testimonies to this idea of the mystical body of Christ is the account of the conversion of Saul on the road to Damascus. Saul falls to the ground, blinded by a great light, and he hears a voice, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” When he inquires as to the identity of this mysterious speaker, he hears, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.” Well, Saul had been aggressively persecuting the newly-born Christian churches. This was tantamount, he learned, to harming Christ himself.

Therefore, it is not the case where an individual negotiates his or her relationship with Jesus Christ and then decides to join a group of like-minded people. Rather, the church is the life-force of Jesus Christ, the indispensable place where full encounter with him is alone possible. One way to specify this idea is to speak of the sacraments. Jesus has willed that the Incarnation—the enfleshment of God—should continue precisely through those physical signs that become bearers of divine power. In baptism, confirmation, reconciliation, marriage, the anointing of the sick, holy orders—and especially the Eucharist, members of the church receive the Christ-life and are hence inserted more fully into the dynamism of the mystical body.

Another way is to speak of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.  Giving food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, comforting the sorrowing, counselling the doubtful, praying for the living and the dead, visiting the imprisoned, etc. are the ways that the truth of the mystical body is put concretely into action. Dorothy Day commented that everything a baptized Christian does every day should be directly or indirectly related to these defining works of the Church.

Still another way is to speak of the practice of the faith. Many people today consider themselves “spiritual” even when they do little to instantiate and embody that spirituality. You can’t say you are an athlete if you don’t establish a consistent way of living an athlete’s life, like every morning jog, some routine exercises, regular schedule of playing and etc. If you only sit watching TV all your life, you are a fan or spectator and never an athlete. We need to establish some spiritual routine like praying, reading and study of scriptures, actively participating in the sacramental life of our local parishes, pursuit of virtues and practice of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

The church is that body, that organism, that field of force, in which the faith is concretely practiced. And that is why we cannot truly enter into Christ without entering, simultaneously, into the embodied activities that characterize the church. And so, when we evangelize, we preach, not Christ alone, but Christ in his mystical body, Christ in his church.

We depend on each other. Christ has made it so when He established the Church. This is His will for us. He has gifted the church with so many different charism all geared towards fulfilling the mission He has entrusted to the apostles.

So this Sunday, we truly have several reasons to rejoice: the coming of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Church which Christ founded on the apostles. Why would you go somewhere else?