Ascension of Our Lord
VOCATION: Jesus calls us - He calls you to follow Him, to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and become a missionary disciple....
Homily MP3 version
What are the offerings that we bring to God? What is the meaning of "HOSANNAH!" We acclaim God for his greatness and praise Him, while at the same time calling upon Him to rescue us in our distress.... "HOSANNAH!" MP3 version
So, brothers and sisters, the past few weeks we have been reflecting on the state of the Late Sunday Mass... over the last two years our churches have been closed, reopened, closed again, reopened again, and we have not returned to the way things were; far from it. Of course, it's not only our Evening Sunday Mass that is affected. Just before Mass I was chatting with Boris and he was telling me the latest news about attendance at St. Kevin.
This morning I was at Sainte Suzanne Parish in the eastern part of Pierrefonds, and everywhere we go probably less than half of the people who used to come to church are currently attending in person the Sunday worship. Now, this question is only one of the many issues that come our way in the course of our daily lives whether we're living alone or with a spouse or with children - little children, grown up children - whoever we may be living with, or we may be living alone; whatever our situation is at this particular season in our lives, every day things happen, or things don't happen yet that we would like to happen. So, we have hopes, and fears, concerns, worries, projects, successes, failures....
In all of our living, what is our perspective with which we live our lives? We have no control over other people; we have no control over things that happen around us in the world; so, in many ways we are more or less helpless. Of course we can make a difference, we can make a contribution by being there; whether it's in politics or in our neighbourhood, in the Catholic community of Montreal, by our presence, by our involvement, by speaking up, of course we can make a difference. We contribute something, but as we do that, how are we living ourselves on the inside? What is "la météo", what is the meteorology, what is the weather or our life? Is it sunny, is it stormy, is it dark, is it bright? It comes down to this question which the Lord is raising today in the Word addressed to us.
Are we living our life as though we are on our own, as though God has no interest in taking action in our life, or as if God is absent, or as some people think, as though God does not exist? Or do we enter into our days fully expecting the presence of God, looking for God's presence, looking for the ways the Lord will be guiding us into our day? I think that's a very important question. We see in the Gospels how the Apostles and disciples were often filled with fears, with concerns, with worries, ambitions; as though Jesus was not making any difference at all, and He often had to scold them a little bit or give them instructions, and they really didn't change a whole lot. Until after He died and rose again from the dead; then He had their attention. Then they were really listening during the forty days after Easter, and then, for once, after He ascended into Heaven, for once they actually did what He told them to do.
They gathered together, they prayed together, and they waited. That is very difficult for us to do; we pray, but we have a hard time waiting. You know, a lot of people tell me they're worred about their grown up children, they're worried about their elderly parents, they're worried about all kinds of things; they pray and pray and pray, and after they walk away from their prayer, they continue to worry. So, that's like putting something into God's hands, like this: "Lord I'm worried about this, please take care of it." And then, we take it back. When we insist on worrying about something, when we insist on, you know, stirring the pot, and making plans and making plans and making plans... there comes a time when we need to let go of a thing, you know. We don't stop loving the people we're worried about, but we can decide to stop worrying about it. You know, I pray about my sister, and then I put it in God's hands.
And when she comes to mind again, I decide not to worry about her and I repeat my prayer to the Lord: "Lord, I put her into your hands." Then, day by day, I wait for the manifestation of God's will, that something will unfold, that God will act in the way He wants to act, that He will bring about his will, not mine. It's very difficult for us to do that, not just for you as lay people, but for priests, bishops, and even for the Pope. It's very difficult to do that, to wait on the Lord, to live in joyful expectation that the Lord will speak, the Lord will act, the Lord will manifest his will in some way through other people, through events, somehow... and we are given the gift of faith to interpret the signs and to know with conviction what God is doing.
That seems humanly impossible, and it is humanly impossible, and that's why Jesus needed to go away; so that He could send the Holy Spirit, and like the Apostles and disciples, all 120 of them gathered around Mary in the upper room praying for 10 days after Jesus' ascension, waiting for God to fulfill Jesus' promise to send the Holy Spirit; we too need the Holy Spirit. We need to be filled anew with the Holy Spirit. We were touched by the Spirit at our Baptism. Even as babies, the Holy Spirit opened our mind, our heart, to the presence of God, to the love of God, through our parents and through others. At our Confirmation, the Holy Spirit came to strengthen us to enter into our life at that age, whatever age we were, and to face the obstacles and the contradictions and the challenges to our faith.
We're never finished being filled by the Holy Spirit, because the human condition in which we are in this life, it's incomplete, it's always "not yet", "not yet complete". We're waiting for the fulfillment, but while we wait, we still have one foot in Heaven, you know. We have one foot on Earth and one foot in Heaven, and that's about learning to pay attention to the Holy Spirit. How do we do that? Archbishop Christian Lépine gave a homily at the time they were receiving the relic of Carlo Acutis - and his display of Eucharistic miracles was partially put on posters at the Cathedral - in his homily the Archbishop spoke about the importance of silence.
He called on parents to introduce their children to the experience of silence. You cannot read the Bible without noticing the importance of silence. The prophets, the holy women and men who looked for God, who encountered God, did so in the silence. Jesus Himself said that when we pray, we should enter into our inner room in the silence of our heart, where the Father sees and hears us.
So, today the Lord is inviting us, during these days that we have between now and Pentecost, we have another week, to enter into this waiting and praying, so that we too will be available and attentive and waiting with Pope Francis and Archbishop Christian Lépine and all the other people in the Church today - amid all the troubles that humanity is going through - that we deliberately choose and decide to enter into the silence to listen, to be attentive to the Father and to Jesus who continue to want to pour out the Holy Spirit into us, to renew the joy of our youth, and to renew in us our capacity and our willingness to pay attention, to use the gift of faith to notice and to interpret the signs of God's presence and action in our world.
After all, Jesus has commissioned all of us to be his missionary disciples. It doesn't matter how weak we think we are, it doesn't matter how troubled we think we are, or it doesn't matter how incapable we think we are. That's good to be aware of our limitations; that's what we bring, that's what we offer on the altar to God. That's our part, is to offer to the Lord our insufficiency, and our Father is very pleased with that attitude and that offering, and He pours out his Holy Spirit, and the perfection of God completes our imperfection; the love of God dispells our fear; the wisdom of God enlightens our lack of understanding. It is a joy to walk with the Spirit and to be willing to make fools of ourselves and to be Jesus' missionary disciples for today. So, let us pause in a moment of silence to practice entering into the silence, to be attentive to the presence and action and the Word of the Most Holy Trinity.
© 2006-2022 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal QC © 2006-2022 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC
