HOMILY WEEK 28 06 – Year II
Knowing God, Acknowledging Jesus and Experiencing the Holy Spirit
Memorial of St. Teresa of Jesus
(Eph 1:15-23; Ps 8; Lk 12:1-7)
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The gospel today invites us to “acknowledge” Jesus, put our complete faith in him, be ready to witness to him openly, and to believe in the Holy Spirit. St. Paul adds as we come to know Jesus more fully, we will come to know the Father more intimately, and experience God’s power working in our lives.
In one of his writings, St. Paul states “the Father was pleased to reveal his Son Jesus to him.” In the movie Paul – Apostle of Christ, the reason Paul went to Arabia for three years after his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus was to have his “three years with the Lord,” because that was the experience of the other apostles. That statement resonated with me, because that is precisely what I think I would have needed to do if what happened to Paul happened to me.
Paul was a zealous Jew, a Pharisee educated under Gamaliel, one of the leading rabbis of his day. He was totally convinced God was YHWH, totally other, all powerful, needing the sacrificial system of the Temple religion as worship worthy of an omnipotent God and creator. And now suddenly, in a flash of blinding light holding within it a voice claiming to be persecuted by Paul, his whole worldview and belief system was dramatically transformed.
God was now the Father of this Jesus whom he was persecuting; Jesus was no longer a misguided traitor but both the long-awaited Messiah and Risen Lord, and Paul would learn both Father and Son were bonded together in love by the Holy Spirit. It makes sense it would take Paul three years to sort all that out, to integrate this new belief system into his life, and above all, to take in the awesome love of God as fully and freely given forgiveness for all the harm Paul had done. But once Paul “got it,” once he knew who God really was, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, an eternal sharing of love, a divine dance or perichoresis, he never stopped acknowledging Jesus as Lord and spreading that good news.
Hopefully, what Paul says of the Ephesians also applies to us – our faith in Jesus Christ is like theirs; because of him we are striving to love others and accept them as they are, and we are becoming more and more aware of God’s power working within us, especially through forgiveness and healing. The Jesus Paul encountered on the road is the Messiah who came with a two-fold mission – to redeem and to sanctify, to forgive and to heal.
If we really want to know the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and experience the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, then we need to do what Jesus initially preached – repent of all our sins, receive his forgiveness and place our faith in him. But as the saying goes, “that is only the half of it” – there is more – healing. Jesus also wants to heal us of our sinfulness, that which makes us sin, our painful emotions and deeply-rooted defects of character and negative attitudes. And this Jesus does by filling us up with the gifts of the Holy Spirit – forgiveness, peace, joy, understanding, patience, wisdom, courage, knowledge, prudence and awe. Especially when we know how truly loved we are, and filled with peace and joy, there will be no room in our lives and personalities for all those negative attitudes bothering us for so long. We will truly be free.
In the gospel, Jesus adds two caveats – we are not to be afraid of acknowledging him before others, and we are to believe in the Holy Spirit as the agent of forgiveness.
In our more and more post-Christian and secular society seemingly losing all sense of basic values, objective truth and morality, acknowledging Jesus is becoming more and more of a challenge, yet conversely, more and more a necessity, and an opportunity to test our faith. How tragic it is when a school principal in the States can decide without informing parents the washrooms in the school would be gender-neutral, leading to a 5-year-old kinder-garden girl being sexually molested by a classmate who claimed he had a right to go into that washroom. What is even more deplorable is the school seems to have ignored the complaint of the mother, and even questioned her credibility as a parent. Holding to Christian values of respect for our human sexuality has never been more urgent, and a prime way of acknowledging Jesus.
Regarding the second caveat, if the Holy Spirit is the agent of forgiveness, then when one does not believe in the Holy Spirit, one might find one’s self resisting the very power making it possible for us to forgive others, as well as seek forgiveness from others for ourselves. That is why Jesus states in the gospel “whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.” God is forgiveness and never stops forgiving. The problem is we lose our faith in the Holy Spirit and in forgiveness, leading us into carrying a burden of resentment instead of the peace and joy of the Spirit.
St Teresa of Avila
Today the Church honors St. Teresa of Jesus who had to deal with perhaps the opposite religious problem in her day, religious laxity. Teresa was born in Avila, Spain, on Mar 28, 1515. Of the many women who exercised leadership roles in the Church, Teresa must surely be considered among the greatest. When she entered the Carmelite convent, some thought Teresa was a spoiled young woman with an unremarkable prayer life, but she soon advanced in prayer and the spiritual life, experiencing visions and hearing voices. Dissatisfied with the laxity she perceived among the religious, she determined to institute reforms and established St Joseph’s Convent where enclosure and a strict rule prevailed. With the assistance of Peter of Alcantara and John of the Cross, she became a reformer and succeeded in founding the reformed (Discalced) Carmelite order of nuns and friars.
There was much resistance and pushback from even her own order. After the chapter in 1575 and for the next five years, every effort was made to destroy Teresa’s reforms and many of her followers (including John of the Cross) were imprisoned and cruelly treated. At length, in 1580 and with the support of King Philip II, the Discalced Carmelites were made independent and St. Teresa was able to found more new convents.
Teresa wrote several works considered classics of spiritual literature, including The Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle. A great mystic and strong, intelligent and active leader, Theresa was canonized in 1622 and in 1970 became the first woman to be declared a Doctor of the Church. She is patron of Spain. She died, worn out by her efforts, on October 15, 1582.
The Eucharist that sustained Paul through all his trials as well as St. Teresa of Jesus, makes present the unconditional love of Jesus Christ for us through Word and Sacrament. May our celebration deepen our knowledge of God, empower us to witness to Jesus, and fill us with the transformative gifts of the Holy Spirit.
