[stephenkhoo]

27 May, 2012, Pentecost Sunday
ENCOUNTERING GOD, HEALING HEARTS, EMPOWERING LIVES
SCRIPTURE READINGS: ACTS 2:1-11; 1 CORINTHIANS 12:3-7,12-13; JOHN 20:19-23

The feast of Pentecost has always been seen as the birthday of the Church. Why? This was the day when the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples of the Lord and gathered them all as one in Christ. This Church therefore is but the gathering and convocation of the People of God. How was this brought about? Through the Holy Spirit, we are all baptized in Christ. Receiving the same Spirit we are all now united in Christ. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives us a share in the life of God and Christ Himself. Being one in the Spirit is to be one in Christ. Through repentance and baptism, we come to share in the Holy Spirit. This explains why at the very beginning of the mass, the Celebrant greets the congregation saying, “The grace of our Lord Jesus and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

But we are convoked for the purpose of being sent out to proclaim the Good News. That is why the very nature of the Church is missionary. The gospel reminds us that we are sent out to be ambassadors of reconciliation and proclaimers of the Good News, just as Christ was sent by the Father. After reconciling the disciples to Himself, Jesus said, “Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so am I sending you.” Yes, we are sent to the world for the work of reconciliation. Our task as Christians is to be ambassadors of Christ to reconcile the world to God.

What is this reconciliation that must take place? We need to be reconciled with God, with others, with creation and most of all, with ourselves. Division among men is the cause of misery and unhappiness in the world. Couples are estranged in marriage. Parents are not able to communicate with their children. Siblings are not on talking terms with each other because of jealousy and intolerance. Colleagues are competing against each other. Society is disunited. If there is so much division among men, it is because of sin. It is the sin of pride, envy, anger, sloth, gluttony, avarice and lust that gives birth to many other sins in man. Pride leads to arrogance, envy to slander, anger to revenge, sloth to boredom, gluttony to sickness, avarice to discontentment and lust to sexual abuses. All sins cause division, beginning within oneself, then to others and then to the world. There can be no peace and unity until man is reconciled within himself. Peace must begin from his inner self before it can be extended to others.

This explains why St Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, warns us saying, “When self-indulgence is at work the results are obvious: fornication, gross indecency and sexual irresponsibility; idolatry and sorcery; feuds and wrangling, jealousy, bad temper and quarrels; disagreements, factions, envy; drunkenness, orgies and similar things. I warn you now, as I warned you before: those who behave like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.” (Gal 5:19-21) Those of us who allow the spirit of selfishness and self-indulgence to control our primal energy or drives will be living a much divided life and cannot experience the peace of God.

Hence, peace can come about only through the forgiveness of sins. That is why Jesus added, “Receive the Holy Spirit. For those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain, they are retained.” The proclamation of God’s mercy and forgiveness is crucial to the work of reconciliation and restoration. What we most need is the experience of God’s forgiveness. Man is so deeply wounded that he cannot forgive himself for his failings and shortcomings. He does not love himself because he condemns himself for the sins he committed. He lives in guilt and in self-condemnation, besides the condemnation of society.

Man is broken and unloved. He seeks to be loved and accepted by the world. However, he must prove himself by being good, useful and impeccable before the world would accept him. He therefore lives under the laws. He seeks to observe the laws so that he can be respected by the world. But this attempt to find justification and acceptance from God and from the world by observing the laws leads to disappointment because he cannot keep the laws perfectly. As a result, he becomes hypocritical and pretends to be faithful to the laws, keeping them only for the world to see. Deep within, he knows he is deceiving the world. Otherwise, he thinks so highly of himself that he makes himself the judge of others, condemning those who do not observe the laws. His pride separates him from his fellowmen.

The Good News of Christ is that we are all forgiven unconditionally. This is the first gift of Christ at Easter. In the gospel, Jesus appeared to the disciples “and stood among them. He said to them, ‘Peace be with you’, and showed them his hands and his side. The disciples were filled with joy when they saw the Lord, and he said to them again, ‘Peace be with you.’” In spite of the fact that they betrayed Jesus and abandoned Him in His moment of need, Jesus did not withhold forgiveness from them. He knew that they were cowardly and fearful of suffering and death. Indeed, we read that this was the case “as the doors were closed in the room where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews.” Jesus could feel with the weaknesses of the apostles. Hence, immediately after His resurrection, He came to offer them peace unconditionally.

However, the forgiveness of sin is incomplete. It is not enough to have our sins forgiven and removed. We need to fill the emptiness in our hearts with the love of God. Forgiveness of sins is but the negative dimension of salvation. We still need the positive aspect of salvation, which is the reception of the Holy Spirit. This is what Ezekiel says, “For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” (Ez 36:24-27) It must therefore be noted that after offering them forgiveness and reconciliation, Jesus then “breathed on them and said: ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.” So the forgiveness of sin is necessary for the infilling of the Holy Spirit and in fact the condition of receiving the Holy Spirit. Baptism therefore brings about the forgiveness of sin. At the same time, we receive the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit that enables us to live a life of grace and holiness. Only the love of God can heal our hearts within and empower us to love.

Only after healing and restoring them, did Jesus invite them to be His evangelizers. The work of evangelization presupposes that we are first reconciled and healed. Without being healed of our wounds through the forgiveness of sins, we will not have the capacity to heal others. This healing process must be completed by the infilling of the love of God. In the final analysis, only love can heal. We can heal people only through compassion, forgiveness and love. Without which, revenge and punishment will only breed bitterness, resentment and fear. Where there is fear, there cannot be love as St John says. “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”(1 Jn 4:18)

What is the outcome of being filled with the Holy Spirit? It is this experience of the overwhelming love of God through Christ in the Holy Spirit that brings about a real personal encounter with God, and it is this God Encounter that brings about the recognition of the Lordship of Christ, not just in faith but in our lives. The love of God that is poured into our hearts is the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that makes Jesus the Risen Lord real in our lives and present in our hearts. Through the Holy Spirit at work, especially in the sacraments, we come to encounter the personal presence and love of Jesus in the Eucharist, particularly His mercy and forgiveness in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the power of witness in the Sacrament of Confirmation, the capacity to love in the Sacrament of Matrimony, the power of the Ministry in Holy Orders and His healing grace in the Anointing of the Sick.

Accompanying the outpouring of the love of God in our hearts is the concomitant bestowal of the gifts of the Holy Spirit that empowers the Christian to build the Body of Christ and proclaim His Lordship in the world. St Paul lists the manifold gifts of the Holy Spirit given to the Church for the building of the Body of Christ. He wrote, “There is a variety of gifts but always the same Spirit; there are all sorts of service to be done, but always to the same Lord; working in all sorts of different ways in different people, it is the same God who is working in all of them. The particular way in which the Spirit is given to each person is for a good purpose. Just as a human body, though it is made up of many parts, is a single unit because all these parts, though many, make one body, so it is with Christ.” The Church is therefore never short of gifts. God has given to the members of His body the gifts necessary for the building of themselves, which is directed at the work of the mission.

This explains why the tagline of our Catholic Spirituality Center is Encountering God, Healing Hearts and Empowering Lives. We cannot begin the work of evangelization if we ourselves are not yet healed and empowered by the Lord. We cannot be healed until we encounter the Lord in the Spirit. As St Paul says, “In the one Spirit we were all baptised, Jews as well as Greeks, slaves as well as citizens, and one Spirit was given to us all to drink.” Only by drinking the Spirit of Christ, can we be reconciled in Christ. Only when everyone is in Christ, can there be peace and unity in the whole human race. But we cannot be united in one Spirit unless we are reconciled with God in Christ. So the work of evangelization presupposes that we have encountered the Good News in person ourselves, which is the mercy and love of God in Christ. Only with this encounter brought about by the Holy Spirit, can we be evangelizers.