Our People

Homily for Pentecost Sunday 2006 St Mary’s Cathedral Sydney

By Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
4/6/2006

Spirituality is all the rage today. Google presently lists 95 million web sites under spirituality – that’s up from only 23 million one year ago. Likewise bookshops which used to offer shelves of philosophy and theology now have a large spirituality section instead. We are offered all sorts of exotic possibilities, such as crystal power, tarot and auras, astral travel and channelling, Sufi mysticism, discovering the goddess within, hugging the trees in your garden, Marxist-feminist Wicca, whale music CDs with aromatherapy oils, vegan cosmology, self-soothing… and the rest.

Of course even within mainstream Catholicism there are many spiritual traditions, such as those forms of prayer or meditation associated with particular religious orders. In Catholicism more than any religious tradition in history, diverse forms of meditation, prayer, devotion and cultural expression coexist and complement each other.

But when people today say the word ‘spirituality’, they often mean something rather different. Today it is often code for ‘religion lite’: religion without creeds, rules or hierarchies; religion which makes no demands, requires no commitment, offers no sacrifice; a private faith of song and dance, nice sensations and good karma; and all of it focused inwards. As consumers we pick and choose from the spiritual supermarket shelf.

Whatever we might think of some of these things, they point to a craving in the human heart, for something a little transcendent: the survival of what Paul VI called ‘the religious sense’. People still reach out, however imperfectly, for something beyond themselves. But there are forces at work in contemporary society even against such minimalist spiritual projects. Generations X and Y are not in fact great fans of new agery, of religion without church or spirituality without creed. Most of them either believe some full-blown religion or nothing much at all.

 Perhaps for the first time in history, a growing cohort of people seem to be inoculated to religion. For them nothing is true, or true for everyone, or true for very long. Getting my own way is what matters, not compromising my preferences even to the universal life force or my present partner or the community or some ideal. Da Vinci Code spirituality doesn’t really care whether its fact or fiction, myth or magic, sense or nonsense. Its just my cocktail, my poison, for now at least, until my tastes change.

Well, how do we know when a spiritual movement is of the Holy Spirit rather than merely our own spirit or the spirit of the age or some evil spirit? How do we know when it is so lite a religion that it is effectively inoculating us to the real thing? How do we know the real thing? The Pentecost story tells us how (Acts 2:1-11).

Mary and the apostles gathered in a room for prayer. Any true Christian spirituality begins here: in prayer, with the Church, in the communion of saints on earth and in heaven. Catholic spirituality is essentially ecclesial and Trinitarian: it is Christ who brings us together in the Father’s name, summons us to ‘the upper room’, the Church, to pray and worship, to give and receive. He brings us together into his Body, the Church, that he might nourish us with his Body, the Eucharist. And there, with his saints, in the midst of the Church, we receive the Holy Spirit. So it was at the birth of the Church at the first Pentecost. So it is today, two millennia later.

At Pentecost Peter and the lads gathered with Mary in a room to watch and pray, and God came to them. The Holy Spirit could have come in any form. He chose tongues of flame. Tongues so as to grace their tongues; flame so as to fire up their hearts. He made ordinary blokes into preachers and martyrs. Unlike consumer religion, then, it is God who picks and chooses us, not us who pick and choose Him. Unlike New Age spirituality, when he comes he makes his demands, requiring commitment and self-sacrifice, the testimony of our lives and maybe even of our deaths. Unlike some of the spiritualities of today, which require no change in us, the Holy Spirit turns us upside down, inside out, converting and transforming us, filling us not with more of our own spirit, but with that Spirit Who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

We have many names for God because no single piece of language can ever capture God’s ineffable mystery. We have many names for God because he comes to so many different people and causes such diverse fruits in them as those identified by St Paul in our Second Reading today (Gal 5:16-25): love, joy and peace, patience, kindness and goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control. The Holy Spirit, especially, has many names: Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, Light, Grace, Counsellor, Consoler, Comforter, Healer, Advocate, Inspirer, Breath of God, Love of the Father and the Son, Shalom (Peace or Presence), Paraclete. In today’s Gospel he is called “the Spirit of Truth”. “I shall send you the Spirit of Truth who issues from the Father,” says the Lord, “and when the Spirit of Truth comes he will lead you into all truth.” (Jn 15:26-27; 16:12-15)

Such words are alien to the ears of our tolerant, relativist, nihilist world. Of course some people have always resisted the truth. Part of the reason, no doubt, is that the truth can threaten us, interrogate us, cut us to the quick. Truth unmasks our false and unjust social structures, institutions, policies. It reveals our own long-ingrained and firmly-held misinformation, prejudices, ideologies. It criticizes our inhumane behaviour, our bad ways of relating, our self-centredness. It demands a rethink, an intellectual, moral and personal conversion. That has been so in every generation.

What is alarming today, however, are the ideologies and spiritualities that tell us there is no such thing as truth, that truth is only for fanatics and fundamentalists, that there is no black and white only shades of grey. Such worldviews rob us of our confidence in the ability ever to discover and articulate the truth; they sap us of the passion even to try. Yet it is truth itself – given and received, not invented and tailored to suit our tastes – truth itself from Truth Himself, given to all and true for all, that saves and satisfies. Only Truth. Holy Spirit-uality believes in the truth, craves it, seeks it out, receives it, and then speaks and lives the truth with passion. With love. With fire.

There is one last test that Pentecost offers us of a genuine Christian spirituality. After gathering in Christ’s name and receiving the Spirit of Truth, the disciples started talking. Not about themselves but about Christ. Not just to the like-minded, but to Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Aussies, you name it: everyone eventually heard them! For once we receive the Holy Spirit we are propelled on a mission. Massage oil and crystals are private and only spread through marketing. But the Holy Spirit is like wild-fire and communicates Himself to all who receive Him. The boys had barely received the Spirit and they were off to Greece and Rome and India and beyond with Words of Life for others.

Candidates who are to be confirmed: today we complete your initiation through Confirmation. In that wonderful sacrament the Holy Spirit will come upon you as gifts of wisdom and understanding, right judgment and courage, knowledge and reverence, wonder and awe. As the apostles were the first to receive those gifts at Pentecost, so one of their successors will pass them on by calling down that Holy Spirit upon you and sealing that gift with sacred chrism. This is your Pentecost. The tests of its authenticity in you, as of any particular spirituality, are to be found by placing yourself at the first Pentecost. Ask yourself: are you called to this place and sustained  there by Jesus Christ the only Son of God? Are you in and of and with the communion of saints, with Mary and Peter and the apostles, gathered in that upper room which is Church? Will you gather there every time Christ summons you, as he does every Sunday to celebrate his Eucharist? Will you allow his words and sacraments to confront you and change you and propel you outward, to take the Gospel into your home, your workplace, the rest of world?

Know this: from today you must be God’s witnesses to all world. Use the gifts God gives you, always to help and never to harm, always to build up rather than to tear down, especially to build up the holy People of God, the Church, in unity and love. Be active members of Church, alive in Jesus Christ. And under the guidance of the Holy Spirit give your lives completely in the service of all, as Christ did.