Sixth Sunday – 2017- C
Rdngs: Acts 8:5-8, 14-17; 1 Peter 3:15-18; John 14:15-21
We have not yet celebrated the feast of the Ascension, yet all three
readings this morning remind us of the work of the Holy Spirit in the
early church and in our lives today.
Jesus said to his disciples: “If you love me, you will keep my
commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another
Advocate to be with you always …. “(John 14:15) So it’s all about
obedience – and, coincidentally, this morning, our community was blessed
and delighted to witness Br Matthias making his first annual vows, the
first of which was Obedience … the ability to hear the voice of God in
our elected abbot, in our holy Rule, in the members of the community, both
old and young; but obedience – listening to the voice of God, is also
necessary in the person we married, in underlings and children, in elderly
parents and boring in-laws, in our friends at AA and Al-Anon and even in
the voices of the people who get on our nerves at work. In all these
places we can, if we listen with the ear of our hearts, hear the voice of
God. You might wonder why these words about the coming of the Holy Spirit
focus so much on the human. The answer, of course, is that the human is
the only place we can really be sure that God is.
It is so easy to love the God we do not see but it is so much more
sanctifying to serve the God we learn to see in others. It’s about
self-donation; it’s not about ourselves; it’s about our consideration of
the “other.” The self-giving of real obedience means putting down our own
selfish concerns and allowing ourselves to be led by the sights of
another, treating our own best interests with a relaxed grasp. (cf. The
Rule of Benedict -Joan Chittister, OSB, p.57)
We empty ourselves so that the presence of God – another Advocate, the
Paraclete, the Spirit of truth can come in. Will we know when the Holy
Spirit comes to us? What does the Holy Spirit look like? Will there be
some kind of a sign of his/her presence?
An early Cistercian Abbot, Doctor of the Church, St Bernard of Clairvaux,
speaking of the coming of the Holy Spirit in his life, put it this way:
“Because he is living and active, scarcely had he entered me than he
awakened my slumbering soul. My heart was as hard as a rock and stricken;
he shook it, softened it, and wounded it … You well understand that the
Bridegroom Word, who has entered me more than once, has never given me a
sign of his presence by voice, image or any other appeals to the senses.
No movement on his part warns me of his coming, no sensation has ever
hinted to me that he was entering my interior retreats … I understood
that he was there due to certain movements of my own heart. The fleeing
of the vices and the repression of my carnal appetites has made known to
me the strength of his virtue. The uncovering and accusation of my hidden
feelings has led me to admire the depth of his wisdom; even the slightest
amendment of my way of life has given me the experience of his sweet
bounty; seeing the renewal and reformation of my mind, that is, the
interior man in me, I have perceived something of his beauty; finally,
contemplating the wonder of his greatness in all this, has left me
speechless.” (Sermon on the Canticle of Canticles, 74,6)
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