This weekend we celebrate the “birthday of the Church,” the sending of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the Advocate, the Spirit of Truth and the ultimate “Gift-Giver” (remember the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit) of the Lord. This Sunday, bedecked in our liturgical color of red vestments, the Church-at-large celebrates the life blood or fuel of the Mystical Body of Christ: the Holy Spirit.

When I was a little boy, my second grade teacher, Sister Joseph Marie at the school where I attended, explained the Trinity to us one morning saying, in these or similar words, God is the car—the chassis, Jesus Christ is the engine, and the Holy Spirit is the gasoline that fuels our faith…explaining to us that “one car” has three distinct parts to it yet is still one car…and so today on this Pentecost Sunday let us consider the Holy Spirit as the “gasoline” that God sends us to ignite our own individual faith life. I guess we should begin this reflection with wondering how we again as individual Catholics, are going to “fill up” on the Holy Spirit and so direct our Christian discipleship in our words and deeds.

We should, as in all things, take our cue from Christ. How does our Lord Jesus Christ prepare His closest companions, the Apostles, to receive the Holy Spirit? The Lord prepares their reception of the Holy Spirit by saying to them, “Peace be with you.” Let us consider from what starting point do we begin our Christian discipleship? Are we starting out in peace, or anxiety, or fear, or any other unsettling place? The pre-gift of the Holy Spirit is peace. Our individual Christian lives should also be founded on peace: (a) peace in our hearts which can only come from knowing our Lord. We come to know Christ in the peace of the Word of God—by knowing His commands and understanding them (heavenly Wisdom) and then having the Courage to make them the foundation of “who I am;” (b) peace in our souls and innermost self by being graced and strengthened by the Sacraments of the Church, particularly from the peace which we receive in the Eucharist and in being freed and renewed in Confession; and, (c) peace which comes from the gift of the Community of Believers—the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church. God did not fashion His Church on earth to be franchises of believers who go-it-alone. He did not establish the Mystical Body of Christ to be a Confederation (a coalition) of believers who join together as individual believers who have a singular or uniting belief that holds us together for some things but then separates us for others. Rather, God the Father knew that peace and strength would come from those who join together in faith and unite for the building up of the Common Good, which is the Kingdom of God on earth. This unification of believers also gives strength and reinforcement in and through the simple idea of “critical mass,” that in number we are

strengthened and reinforced to act out in-and-through what we are called to profess. And if all of this—the abc’s of our faith—are not formed and conformed in the Peace of Christ then little will truly become of our solid faith, that is to say our living out of our faith in the daily activities of our lives. Christ Himself begins in peace, the peace of the Father in the gift of His Son sent in the Incarnation—the intersection of humanity with the Divine—for the salvation of the world; the peace of the sinless and innocent Christ on the Cross, that self-emptying love that C.S. Lewis describes as Agape, the Fourth Love, to redeem us for eternal salvation; and, the peace of Christ in the Holy Spirit sent to form, lead, guide and defend His Church on earth so that Church, the Mystical Body of Christ—you and I—can fulfill our Baptismal call to be His Disciples and become “perfected,” that is to align our human will with the Will of God and so do His work on earth and glorify the Father in heaven.

Last Sunday our music director, Susan Zybert, selected the hymn “Let There Be Peace on Earth” as the recessional hymn at the end of all the Masses. This hymn was very theologically correct as well as a fitting “patriotic” song for Memorial Day—while maybe not the typical “America the Beautiful” that we might expect, as the Lord said before He breathed the Holy Spirit upon His Apostles and His Church, we today are still called to be the “soldiers of Christ” as we used to say at Confirmation, and fight the noble battle of Christ with the weapon of peace. A nice “prelude” for Pentecost.