Holy Spirit Liturgy

August 31, 2006

Homily

Howard Gray SJ

Introduction

God has just made a startling number of promises to us. In the reading from the prophet Joel we have been promised that we will feel the power of prophecy, that we will dream dreams and harbor visions, and that the Spirit will be poured out upon us! In the reading from I Corinthians we have been assured that our plurality of gifts will not divide us but rather unite us into more a more effective community of witness to the goodness and justice of God’s very self. Finally, in the gospel I have just proclaimed, Jesus promises us that, as ancestors of the apostles, we will have a Divine Advocate; that is, one whose primary task is to be our representative to the Father and the Son. Does God keep his promises? Or should we see God as just a frustrated and humbled troubadour:

“I

Am no superman

I have no answers for you

I am no

Hero, oh that’s for sure

But I do know// one thing

Is

where you are, is where I belong

I do know, where you go,

Is where I want to be. . .”

Deep in the lyrics of this all-too-human lament, the love of God does dwell, but not the power of God to fulfill God’s promise. Yes, we are called to dream and to envision and to prophesy. We are called to celebrate and use our many talents together. We are called to trust in a God who cares for us and works through us. It is the power of the Spirit of God that fulfills our dreams, gives flesh to our visions, confirms our prophesies. It is the power of the Spirit that makes us a community of free women and men dedicated to the works of faith that hasten the kingdom of justice and peace and love. Today we want to understand better how we can plug into this Spirit, how we can become what creation intended and what Christ has promised—truly partners with the Spirit of God.

The Call within John Carroll

The Spirit calls to us within every facet of our life here at John Carroll. That call is not disembodied, ethereal, spooky, or impractical. God’s Spirit calls out to us in the reality of the classroom and in the locker room, in the lab and on the track, in music from your I pods and in the silence of the chapel. Whenever we stop to listen to that deeper voice calling us to be more truthful, more respectful of one another, more honest and more available, more willing to learn and quicker to listen, more accepting of our differences in color and gender and sexual orientations and more generous in our judgments about the motives of others, we invite the Spirit of God to be our Advocate, the One who calls us to life.

There is no one not called—Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Gentile, Muslim or Christian. We are all called to know the power of God’s Spirit that lies beneath our friendships and our passions, our talents and our limitations. The Spirit never wearies of being a friend to us whenever we are truly human and open, telling us: “I do know, where you go is where I want to be.” The theologians speak of the Spirit as God looking for spaces to fill with wisdom and light and courage. In short, there is no movement towards knowledge and insight, no movement towards support and compassion that is not driven by God’s Spirit, empowering all of us to make this a community where the old still dream dreams and young continue to see visions, where the many can work towards common goals of justice and peace and mutual care. This noon we celebrate that we possess the power of God for good.

Challenges to the Spirit

Why, then, do we so often not hear or hearing not really listen or listening not really act in the power of this Holy Spirit to be the community God wants us to be? There are two reasons. First, we do not take time to celebrate what we are and what we have. In the American classic, Our Town, can’t we hear ourselves in the cry of Emily Webb as she revisits one day in her life, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?” And the Stage Manager responds in the underlying pathos of this great play, “No” (pauses). “The saints and poets, maybe—they do some.” Today we are all called—all of us from whatever religious tradition we espouse or from whatever heartfelt search we represent—to let the Holy Spirit call us to embrace the life we have here. We are called to move beyond the fears and distrust, the suspicion and jealousy that mar our best selves and our truly graced instincts. We are called to be daughters and sons of the Holy Spirit.

Second, we do not always appreciate how much the world needs John Carroll at its best: its wisdom and good sense, its union of old and young, women and men, black and white, its ambition to be a place where people can become men and women for others. When we engage that world, we are also engaging the Spirit of God.

For example, just a couple weeks ago a number of faculty offered a wonderful array of learning communities that they have organized to make our academic community even more a player in the struggle against poverty, violence, and apathy. Again and again these faculty explicitly tied their work to the mission of John Carroll, moving beyond professional competence to the kind of dedication to the good of this city and engagement with the world that witness to the presence of that Spirit among us.

Just this summer a young graduate of Carroll who has placed his life with the poor of Columbia came to see me. He was on a short leave from his volunteer work among the peasants trapped in one of the most dangerous regions of Latin America. Let me try to capture the heart of his narrative.

“I am working with a group of other young volunteers—smart and dedicated—but many of them motivated by a growing hatred of the military. I learned long ago that the work of justice can only be from the Spirit of Jesus when it is done in love. So I have tried in this midst of so much violence and hatred to withdraw every day into my own heart. There I search and I find the Spirit that first brought me here. It is a Spirit of love; and I need to touch it, to hold it, to let it heal me. Often I felt weak and unable to show others that love and only love can support the justice of God. But then, as I was packing to leave the area for my USA leave time, some of the peasants came to see me.

‘Will you return to us?’

I promised, ‘Yes, I will return.’

Then they embraced me, saying, ‘We want you here with us because you love us.’ At that moment I felt God was showing me that I had made a difference after all.”

That Carroll grad is you too. He once sat where you sit, went to classes as you go to classes. He, too, made friends and fell in love and tried to discern what he was going to do with his life. And the Spirit of God followed him and taught him how to love and how to serve.

Conclusion

This is what we celebrate this noon. The power of the Holy Spirit to help us be the human beings God intends. Listen to that Spirit sing to you:

“Where are you going?

where do you go?

Where are you going?

Where?

Let’s go.”

Yes, my brothers and sisters, let’s go where that Spirit leads!