I remember when my son, Luke, received the sacrament of Confirmation. His Confirmation Mass was at St Wenceslaus on a Sunday afternoon. The bishop called for all the Confirmation candidates to stand. He then extended his hands over them and called upon the Holy Spirit to come down upon the Confirmation candidates. At that precise moment, something began swooping over the heads of the Confirmation candidates. It wasn’t a dove, nor some bird that somehow got trapped in church. It was a bat making this great swooping arc from the choir loft over the heads of the kids, turning around in the sanctuary, flying back up to the choir loft and then swooping down again. The kids didn’t know whether to stand , duck, run or cry. Eventually, the ushers using the collection baskets chased the bat into the west stairwell and closed the door. I thought it was both ironic and amusing. Not all shared my sentiments. But the one thing we could agree on was that it was surprising. Surprising is a good feeling word for what the apostles experienced that Pentecost Sunday so many centuries ago.
We hear Jesus tell the apostles in the Gospel today, “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth.” This Gospel is taken from the Last Supper discourse in John’s Gospel. This is Jesus’ last teaching to the apostles before his arrest, his torture, and his execution on the cross. Jesus knows that the events that are about to happen will shake the apostles to the very core and that much he could reveal to them would be forgotten by the terror they would experience over the next several days. Jesus reassures them that in spite of all that will happen, in the end, everything will turn out well. When the time is right, the Holy Spirit will come to them and they will understand why Jesus had to suffer and die. Everything will be made right and whole again in the Resurrection of Jesus.
What was true for the apostles is true for us, too. Our whole lives are not revealed to us at our birth. We could never be able to take all that knowledge in at one time. We need to be surprised. When I wass 22 years of age, I married Ruthie, and thought that the rest of my life would be spent as a music educator, composing music, living in destitution and being buried in a pauper’s grave. Had I known that I would be doing what I am doing right now, I might have suggested someone take me out in the yard and put me out of my misery. As we all know our lives unfold and surprises happen along the way. Through the power of the Holy Spirit we are guided and gradually come to know that which we are suppose to do in our lives. We gradually learn the gifts the Holy Spirit has bestowed upon us and how those gifts can benefit the lives of others. The Holy Spirit uses the failures in our lives to help guide us along the path we have been called by God to take. Not all surprises are fun. Some are painful. Through the power of the Holy Spirit we can even begin to understand the suffering we have in our own lives. I have told this story before. After a serious head-on collision on highway 21, I found myself in the trauma unit at North Memorial Hospital. I remember Fr Steve Ulrick, the pastor of St Hubert, visiting me. I had gotten out of surgery and had all sorts of tubes and electrical leads going in and out of me. Steve looked at me and said, “So, where is the grace?” My first inclination, punch him in the nose. I replied that I had no clue as to where the grace was but would eventually find out. That was true a statement. I knew that over the next 18 months as I recovered from that car accident the Holy Spirit would reveal much I had needed to learn from that car accident and the suffering that accompanied it.
You see, we just don’t encounter the Holy Spirit in the sacraments or those “churchy” moments in our lives. We are in the presence of the Holy Spirit at all times. We move, live and have our being in the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is all around us, above, below, and within us. And so we pray, “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and enkindle in us the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth. Amen.”
