In Part I of Walking Before We Fly, I focused on Faith Formation, and on what I should have called Faith Maturation. Children do not choose to be born into a Christian family. We want them to embrace and flourish in it, not be frightened either into it or away from it. That is a challenge, even with adults. In between, we have the teens and young adults, like the girls’ volleyball team helping with food distribution at St. Finbar’s on May 29. Not only were they practicing their faith, but they were in a room full of adults doing the same thing. That reinforces the faith for them, as it did for the adults.
Following up, I agreed to comment on Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si’ (On Care For Our Common Home). Father Bill said “it is not just recycling.” True, but recycling is like learning to ride the bike (see Part I) toward protecting Mother Earth. If we cannot be bothered recycling, how will we face the big issues—changing our own lifestyles, even if it is inconvenient, and becoming advocates for protecting the environment, even if it is politically unpopular? Continue reading “Walking Before We Fly, (Pt. II) – Joe Genova”→
This week, Msgr. Alfred LoPinto and Tevin Williams discuss Pentecost Sunday and the role of the Holy Spirit in discerning the path of our faith journeys together to renew the face of the earth.
St. Charles at Home episodes feature conversation between the prior Sunday’s homilist and parishioners to provide us with more connection to the parish during the week. The videos are available on our YouTube channel and our website.
There are some parts of the Bible that seem like “fly over” territory. The requirements for what constitutes clean or how to build an altar are not inherently riveting and we can be forgiven for, at best, skimming over them. Yet we do so at our peril for often there are real jewels within the most seemingly tedious or perfunctory sections. Today’s selection from Exodus is one of them. Continue reading “Commentary from Fr. Smith on the 1st Reading – Closer and More Loving Than Reason Permits”→
Please join for evening prayer on June 5 at 5 p.m. This week, we will pray together for the victims of racial injustice and for reform in our nation. The prayers will be followed by a brief novena to St. Anthony and then by a discussion with Tevin Williams and Josephine Dongbang about racial injustice and what we can do for progress.
The service text with the prayers we will use for Friday’s evening prayer is available below:
From Thursday June 4 through Friday, June 12, we’ll meet at 5 pm each evening at the usual St. Charles Zoom link to pray a Novena to St. Anthony in preparation for his feast day, June 13. Like the Holy Spirit Novena, each day takes about 10-15 minutes, and on days when we pray the rosary or vespers at 5 pm, the novena will follow.
Brothers and sisters, we come together on this the feast of Pentecost, and come in a rather unique way, as we have been doing now for approximately 11 weeks as we have been living through the COVID-19 crisis. And as we come to the scripture today, it’s very interesting, because you have two presentations of the gift of the Spirit: you have from Luke his recording of the event of Pentecost, and then you have from John his recording of the sending of the Spirit – the giving of the Spirit – to the disciples on the night of the Resurrection.
And you might ask yourself, why two different versions? Well, I think what it points to is that at the heart of the Church is diversity. And diversity is probably the most challenging aspect of all.
It struck me that that diversity is captured in the responsorial Psalm, “Lord, send out your spirit and renew the face of the earth.” When you think about it, it’s a strange prayer because in a sense you want to say, but what’s being renewed?
We look at the earth and its history. I don’t think any one of us would want to renew any part of it, huh, because it’s often so filled with bloodletting, with struggle. There have been isolated moments, but for the most part the history is not something that you would want to renew. Who would want to renew World War 2, or who would want to renew the Depression, or who would want to renew the Civil War, or the religious wars of the mid-centuries?
So you say, well what is he saying? Lord send your spirit and renew the face of the earth. And yet, what is very evident from the two accounts of the giving of the Spirit is that both accounts talk about that which is new. They talked about in the first, you talk about the newness of going forth with the Gospel – not you have to do it my way, but going forth in a way that reaches out to all, where they are, in their own customs and in their own traditions, in their own languages.
Something new, because up to that point – and perhaps even to today – one of the great flaws of human life is tribalism. You have to be my way; if you’re not my way, you don’t have any place, you don’t belong. And we see that even in the Church, certainly that’s one of the struggles that Pope Francis is continually addressing, recognizing that there is more than one way.
And then if you come to the second version – the version from John – what you have is fear, there hiding in the Upper Room and the Spirit frees them. And it frees them to go out and to do the work of the Spirit, to do the work of the Lord. Reconcile. Reconcile. Reconcile. And in a sense, reconciling is about renewing the face of the earth. For what is it that God wants us to renew? God wants us to renew that which God created: harmony of the Garden, the oneness between the human and God, and between the human and nature.
It’s interesting, but that Laudato Si’ was issued on Pentecost Sunday five years ago, because again it’s that recognition that renewing the earth is not by our design, but it’s by God’s design, in which we are putting ourselves at service, in the service of God.
So as we come to the gift of the Spirit, we come to ask the Spirit, the Spirit of God who so takes over our hearts and minds, that the work of God becomes our work, and that we may go forward, bringing to fulfillment this great phrase: send your Spirit, Lord, and renew the face of the earth.
The following Parish Pastoral Council statement was announced at today’s Online Community Mass:
Transcript:
Thanks Donna. Good Afternoon. I’m Francis Chin, one of the parish trustees, and I am speaking today on behalf of the Parish Pastoral Council. We would like to take this moment to reflect together on what is going on in our country today.
Today at Pentecost, we celebrate God, the Holy Spirit – the breath of life and the founding of the Church, a community commissioned to spread the Good News of God’s love, to serve God’s people everywhere, speaking to them in every language.
So let us say this plainly. George Floyd’s killing was unjustified. Breonna Taylor’s killing was unjustified. The 100,000 Americans killed by COVID-19 were unjustified. They were denied their breath of life because of racial, social, and economic inequality. They were denied their breath of life because there are those who believe that to enrich and advance themselves, others must suffer. The daily bad news cycle of demeaning words and anonymous deaths has made us numb to the fact that this is wrong.
We believe that to love God we must love each other as ourselves. We call upon all of us to raise our voices to build up a more just society that serves everyone with dignity, rather than one that oppresses and tears people down.
Let us value each other more than we value our accounts. Let us redouble our efforts to care for each other and to be concerned for our world.
This Pentecost, let us speak each other’s language.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
