May 19, 2024（Feast of Pentecost）
Father Ken’s Message:
Good afternoon and Happy Pentecost Sunday. Today is the birthday of the Catholic Church. We are 1991 years old…applause please!!! How have we survived so long? Because of the Holy Spirit. Baptism saves us from Original Sin and makes us members of the Catholic Church; it brings us into the Catholic Church. But at Confirmation we receive the Holy Spirit which actually sends us out of the Church to practice the love and forgiveness in Catholic thought in our daily lives. Today let us thank the Holy Spirit for inspiring the early apostles and Mary the Mother of Jesus to build and organize our Catholic Church and let us ask power from the Holy Spirit to also be good models of Jesus in our work place, at home with our families, and at church.
I think it is important to stop and remember the history of how the Holy Spirit came to us from Heaven. After Jesus died, Resurrected and Ascended into Heaven the disciples were confused and afraid and spent their days hiding their identity in a house in Jerusalem.
On Easter Sunday in the evening Jesus appeared to them and gave some of the power of the Holy Spirit to them through his breath to give them courage until Pentecost; Apparently, they hide going fishing for 50 days until Pentecost. On Pentecost Sunday, the Holy Spirit gave St. Peter the power to give his first sermon as the first pope of the Catholic Church.
I would like to talk a little about a saint I love and respect very much who had a similar experience to St. Peter. I am talking about Mother Theresa. I think you all know a little about her life. She actually wanted to be a missionary but started out working as a geography teacher in the Convent of the Sisters of Loretto in Calcutta, India. It was after World War II ended and India was fighting for independence from Britain. Inside the convent the sisters and students were protected by the high walls of the convent but they could hear the fighting outside and lived in fear, except Mother Theresa. She felt called to leave the walls of the convent to go outside to help the people suffering and who were hungry. Mother Theresa heard the call from God to help people; she called it a call within a call. And she wrote to the Pope in Rome who gave her permission to leave the walls of the convent and to start a new order of sisters to help the poor around the world. I think the Mother Theresa story is helpful for us modern Catholics to also understand how to use our own gift of the Holy Spirit from Confirmation. The key is to jump over our fear and stop hiding from problems in our life situation with the power of love for God, for self and for others.
As children we all used to play the game “hide and seek.” Right? But some of us in our adult life too continue to play a spiritual version of “hide and seek” from God. We hide from going to church because we have too much work to do. We hide from prayer because we have no time. We hide from God because we think God is only for children. We hide from God because we think we can control our own lives, etc. But here is the best secret of Catholicism, God is searching for you and me. God has never stopped looking and even calling out, “Where are you, Ken?” Ever since Adam and Eve made the mistake of eating the rotten apple in the Garden of Eden and hid from God because of their mistake, God has been looking for us to find us and tell us how much he loves us. The best part of the game of “Hide and Seek” is actually being found, don’t you think? How nice to be actually found by God!
My friends today on Pentecost 1991 years ago the Holy Spirit filled the apostles and Mary with the Holy Spirit. After that, they stopped hiding and set off for the world to teach about the love and forgiveness of God for all human beings.
Happy birthday today everyone. Brother and sisters, let us get re-empowered by the Holy Spirit today, stop hiding from our problems and solve them with love, kindness and courage. And let us come to Mass each Sunday so that God may find us. Thank you.