Pastor's Corner

My dear Parishioners,

Happy Pentecost!

Pentecost is the commemoration of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles and the Blessed Mother while gathered in the upper room, and this happened ten days after Jesus ascended into heaven. Jesus calls the Holy Spirit our Counselor and Advocate (also translated Paraclete). As Counselor, the Holy Spirit is like a legal person who defends someone against an adversary and who guides that person during the ordeal of trial. The Holy Spirit is our Advocate and Helper who guides and strengthens us and brings us safely through the challenges and adversities we must face in this life.

What does Jesus tell us about the Holy Spirit? First, the Holy Spirit is inseparably one with the Father and the Son. It is the Holy Spirit who gives life, the very life of God, and who makes faith come alive in hearts and minds of people who are receptive to God’s word. The Holy Spirit makes it possible for us to know God personally. He gives us experiential knowledge of God as our Father. The Holy Spirit witnesses to our spirit that the Father has indeed sent His only begotten Son into the world to redeem it and has raised His Son, Jesus Christ, from the dead and has seated Him at His right hand in glory and power.

The Holy Spirit reveals to us the knowledge, wisdom and plan of God for the ages, and the Spirit enables us to see with the “eyes of faith” what the Father and the Son are doing. Through the gift and working of the Holy Spirit we become witnesses to the great work of God in Christ Jesus.

Here is also a reflection on the role of the Holy Spirit taken from the treatise “Against Heresies” by Saint Irenaeus, bishop. The topic is “The Sending of the Holy Spirit.”

When the Lord told his disciples to go and teach all nations and baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, he conferred on them the power of giving men new life in God.

He had promised through the prophets that in these last days he would pour out his Spirit on his servants and handmaids, and that they would prophesy. So when the Son of God became the Son of Man, the Spirit also descended upon him, becoming accustomed in this way to dwelling with the human race, to living in men and to inhabiting God’s creation. The Spirit accomplished the Father’s will in men who had grown old in sin and gave them new life in Christ. Luke says that the Spirit came down on the disciples at Pentecost, after the Lord’s ascension, with power to open the gates of life to all nations and to make known to them the new covenant. So it was that men of every language joined in singing one song of praise to God, and scattered tribes, restored to unity by the Spirit, were offered to the Father as the first-fruits of all the nations.

This was why the Lord had promised to send the Advocate: he was to prepare us as an offering to God. Like dry flour, which cannot become one lump of dough, one loaf of bread, without moisture, we who are many could not become one in Christ Jesus without the water that comes down from heaven. And like parched ground, which yields no harvest unless it receives moisture, we who were once like a waterless tree could never have lived and borne fruit without this abundant rainfall from above. Through the baptism that liberates us from change and decay we have become one in body; through the Spirit we have become one in soul.

The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of God came down upon the Lord, and the Lord in turn gave this Spirit to his Church, sending the Advocate from heaven into all the world into which, according to his own words, the devil too had been cast down like lightning.

If we are not to be scorched and made unfruitful, we need the dew of God. Since we have our accuser, we need an advocate as well. And so the Lord in his pity for man, who had fallen into the hands of brigands, having himself bound up his wounds and left for his care two coins bearing the royal image, entrusted him to the Holy Spirit. Now, through the Spirit, the image and inscription of the Father and the Son have been given to us, and it is our duty to use the coin committed to our charge and make it yield a rich profit for the Lord.

I pray for you and your loved ones that the Holy Spirit may grant you grace to be patient in adversity, to keep you humble in prosperity, and let you thirst after heavenly things, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Peace,

Fr. Riz