In person Masses have resumed once more!
And live-streaming Mass on Facebook, every Sunday at 10 am.
Posted later on YouTube. Video at end of this email.
FR. JT’S HOMILY FOR PENTECOST SUNDAY
Beloved,
I just felt at Mass today like dancing around the church for joy (just like King Solomon of old did in the Temple in Jerusalem) at seeing parishioners back to church after ten week of lockdown. But I couldn’t because of social distancing and suspension of congregational singing.
I told you in one of my messages that our churches will restart when God wills it. God has now willed that we restart on Pentecost Sunday.
At a Catechism lesson for kids preparing for First Eucharist or First Holy Communion, the Catechist showed a painted portrait of the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles to them.
One of the kids who loved the image got excited and said to the Catechist in a loud voice: I can see 12 Holy Spirits on their heads (of course Mary, the mother of Jesus was in their midst).
The Catechist smiled and said: No my child. The Holy Spirit is 1. Those 12 are “tongues as of fire” represent the power of the Holy Spirit inside them, and inside us who through them have come to faith in Christ.
Question: Why has the Holy Spirit been sent to believers as Jesus promised (God is ever faithful)?
The Holy Spirit has been given:
- to help us worship God together in community as family of God (kahal yahweh);
- to help us to witness with our lives to the good news of Jesus Christ;
- to help us share our faith in an explicit way with others, with boldness, courage and confidence and without fear or timidity;
- to help us invite people to our faith;
- to help us respect established order in the Church;
- to help us recognize gifts that abound in each of us & in the church, and to harness these gifts to build up the body of Christ, the Church;
- to help us as one family of God to build up the Church founded by Christ and built on the Apostles;
- to help us overcome our weaknesses and defeat temptations;
- to help us pray and worship God in the language that God understands.
Let me repeat this question that Holly asked in her bulletin column, “Setting Our Hearts Aflame: What does Pentecost mean to you?
In a very special way, we invoke and beckon the Holy Spirit to renew the face of our world that has been battered by the COVID-19 pandemic, and to renew the face of the Church that has been stained by so much division.
As our hearts and prayers go out to the family of George Floyd who was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis this last week, may the Holy Spirit help to douse the tension created by this incident in that city, the state of Minnesota, and throughout our Nation.
May the Holy Spirit help us to recover, to heal, and to rebuild in the aftermath of the pandemic.
Happy Pentecost!!!
Fr. JT.
Administrator