Pentecost Sunday 11.5.08 Experiencing God
In a previous parish one Pentecost Sunday a young lady came to Mass to provide music for the singing. She did not usually come, so I thought she must have been converted for Pentecost, but it turned out she had only come because it was Mothers Day! Well, coming for Mothers Day has some value too, but it does reveal how we can operate at different levels with God, often relegating Him to second place after secular values. It should not shock us to hear that we must love God more than father or mother, or any human love. In fact, if we do love God first the other loves will also be stronger as a result.
It is along these lines that Our Lord promises the Holy Spirit to His apostles.
Don’t be sad that I am leaving you; there will be another just like Me and He will fill you to satisfaction. You will want nothing once you have met Him.
Yet the Holy Spirit is an invisible Person and that normally would not satisfy us.
Still, visibility is a small consideration if we receive an influx of love and wellbeing greater than we have ever known before.
Only those who have done a bit of preparation in terms of humility and patience are going to be able to perceive the presence of God, let alone how important He is.
The great saints could tell a consecrated host from an unconsecrated one. Only love (or demonic hate) can do that. The heart has eyes of its own.
Jesus was preparing the apostles for this more perceptive approach. It is no use just walking around next to Him if we have not learnt the basic attitudes required.
It is not physical closeness that wins the day, but closeness of the heart.
Attila the Hun could stand next to a tabernacle but it might not do him much good.
Or one can generate communion with God in a concentration camp (like St Maximilian Kolbe).
If we can get used to the idea that we have access to the greatest love possible, and relatively easily, then we are on the way to being much happier people.
We just have to dig a little bit to get into this new understanding. We have to look further than the superficial ways of the world.
As God offers Himself He also demands a change of heart from us. He both provides the change and He demands it.
Thus we have to make an initial display of interest, and then He can go to work to bring about the rest of the change.
So, come and pray, and as much as you can spend time with Him, inside or outside of a church.
Set up new patterns in your life. Force yourself to seek Him out and you will discover this great love, which otherwise will be only academic.
God has different ways of making Himself known.
Many have had a ‘baptism in the Spirit’, a term which loosely conveys an infusion of heavenly love. This experience has the good effect of accelerating conversion and launching one on a path of holiness. It has to be handled carefully because initial enthusiasm can evaporate very quickly. Also because the more external elements can be over-emphasized.
He gives us a taste, not the whole lot, which would be impossible, but something to get us going.
Or, if we have never had any strong experience of God, it may be coming, or there are other ways of getting to the same place. A thousand small steps will get the same place as a few bigger ones.
If you did not give you life to Jesus at a Billy Graham rally, no matter, you give yourself each day.
You seek Him out, and He seeks you out, it is not too much to hope that one of these days you will meet! Your faith will then be as strong as that of those first disciples at Pentecost.
