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| Bishop Michael F. Olson at the first Solemn Mass of Fr. Henry Finch (front, center). |
First Solemn Mass of Father Henry Finch
June 9, 2019
St. Mary’s Catholic Church
College Station, Texas
Acts 2:1-11
Psalm 104
Romans 8:8-17
John 14:15-16, 23b-26
Saint Cyril of Alexandria once said: “With the Holy Spirit within us, ‘it is quite natural for people who have been absorbed by the things of this world to become entirely other-worldly in outlook, and for cowards to become people of great courage.’” There is nothing more other worldly than flying. I have often thought of aviation as the experiment that failed. It is frightening to me to hurtle across the sky in a burning piece of aluminum or fiberglass, seated upon highly flammable and combustible liquid. Relying on the navigation of the ever-changing weather and fluctuating winds, it is an experience that is designed to terminate in a point described by experts as a “controlled crash,” or more colloquially called—a "landing." Yet, Father Henry Finch finds this endeavor to be highly relaxing and spiritually enlivening.
While Saint Cyril of Alexandria is not talking about aviation, he most certainly is discussing the other-worldliness of the Church’s true nature that is the grace-filled animation of the Holy Spirit. This other-worldly reality enlightens us to see that our final destination is not a controlled crash, but rather, the divine and selfless love that is communion with the Trinity — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. A priest makes present this destination in the here and now through the celebration of the Eucharist and sacraments, the pastoral care of the faithful and in the preaching of the Word of God.
Our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles proclaims, “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim…at this sound, they gathered in a large crowd, but they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language. They were astounded, and in amazement they asked, ‘Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans? Then, how does each of us hear them in his native language?’”
At Pentecost the Holy Spirit redeems the sin and punishment of Babel, the confusion of tongues and the ensuing rancorous entropy. At Pentecost the Holy Spirit does not erase the difference in languages by imposing a uniformity of speech; rather the Holy Spirit redeems the effects of these differences and enables understanding where before mistrust and confusion were the bitter fruit of sinful difference in language. Division is reconciled, and communion is fused from within through the power of the Holy Spirit that universalizes each and all peoples, Jews and Gentiles as one People of God.
The “People of God” is a consistent image used to describe the Church. The Church is precisely God’s people because of the animation of its life through the Holy Spirit. At Pentecost the Spirit revivifies the Church; the Spirit does not simply resuscitate the Church. In the Gospel of John, Christ resuscitated Lazarus, as His light shone into the tomb and Christ calls him to come out. Lazarus nevertheless would die again. It is the Spirit who gives life; the Spirit does not simply sustain existence as an artificial form of life support. The Spirit breathes through the Body of Christ, the Church; He does not merely push oxygen through a cadaver.
This means that we must trust the Holy Spirit working through the Church and through the members that compose the Church, including those entrusted with servant-leadership through ordination. When members of the Church, especially but not exclusively leaders of the Church, choose to live in fear, they settle for slavery and existence in place of Christ’s omnipresent gift of belonging and confidence. We begin to reform the Church in our own image, which is a form of idolatry.
At Pentecost, which is the beginning of the Church’s life, it is the Spirit’s initiative that compels the Apostles to understand and to speak in the languages of the then-known world. Each nation hears the Gospel preached by the Apostles in their own vernacular — even a language as “vulgar” as Latin. The understanding comes from above and it involves the active and graced response of human beings. There is a Divine condescension (coming down and toward) and a human participation in God's activity of gathering into one; it is the blossoming of the flower of salvation from the Cross, the tree of life. It is the conversion of sinners that becomes the fullness of love in community.
Saint John XXIII was fond to say that a bishop is given to a diocese instead of saying that a bishop was given a diocese. The priest in his life and ministry is fundamentally given to a community — a parish — and not the other way around. He is not a creator of a particular community, but rather an advocate of the life of Christ’s Holy Spirit in that community. The forces of the market and a particularly consumerist outlook fueled by social media could easily make one think that a parish or a church is “mine” and “I can do with it what I want.” This is just to perpetuate the effects of Babel, giving them a Christian veneer and subtly participating in the devil’s efforts at disunity and separation. The Advocate, the Spirit of Truth, advocates on behalf of the Church precisely as a people united and joined together in worship and service — precisely as a people who call upon Jesus’ Father as their Father: “Abba, Father!”
The language of the priest, conformed and configured to Christ through his ordination, is to proclaim lovingly to the parish and community to which he has been given the Word that his language conveys. The priest also witnesses to the Advocate, the Spirit of Truth, who will continue to lead the local church into all truth. The priest advocates for the Word, not a language…the Word that is proclaimed in all languages. When we emphasize language over and against the Word, we begin to dissect and dismember the Body of Christ and fall into a type of “indirect discourse.” The Word is always plainly spoken, and the Spirit advocates it as such. So must a priest. As Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew, “Let your ‘yes’ mean ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ mean ‘no.’ Anything more is from the Evil One” (Matthew 5:37).
Jesus speaks to His disciples in today’s Gospel reading from John, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him…the Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.” The same temptations of Babel remain in our fallen yet redeemed world of today. There are voices in education, politics, law, the media and arts, and even the Church who reassert the arrogant claims of Babel as ideologies and reassert programs that dehumanize persons by a systematized pretense that God does not exist or at least that He does not care.
We are gathered here in this Eucharistic assembly to ask the Advocate again that we remain a stronger part of the Church’s mission, to forgive and redeem our sins, and to bring us order out of chaos. We pray that we be a part of Christ’s plan, not that He might be a part of our plan.
We read in today’s second reading from Paul’s Letter to the Romans, “For those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a Spirit of adoption, through whom we cry, ‘Abba, Father!’” We celebrate the Solemnity of Pentecost and the first Solemn Mass of Father Henry Finch at a time when those who think in the order of this world, the order of flesh, are fearful and are fomenting resentments. We celebrate these two celebrations today as adopted heirs of God — sons and daughters through the gift of the Holy Spirit. In the practical manner of our lives, this translates into confidence.
As the theologian Joseph Ratzinger wrote, “Paul and John agree essentially on yet another point. John calls the Spirit ‘Paraclete,’ that is, advocate, helper, defender, comforter. He is thus the adversary of the devil, the ‘prosecutor,’ the ‘slanderer’ who accuses our brethren day and night before our God” (Rev 12:10). The Spirit is the Yes, just as Christ is the Yes. Correspondingly, Paul emphasizes joy very strongly. We may say that the Spirit is the Spirit of joy and of the Gospel. One of the basic rules for the discernment of spirits could be formulated as follows: Where joylessness rules and humor dies, we may be certain that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, is not present. Furthermore, joy is a sign of grace. One who is serene from the bottom of his heart, one who has suffered without losing joy, is not far from the God of the Gospel, from the Spirit of God, who is the Spirit of eternal joy.”
This joy is born of our "yes" to Christ, and not simply saying "no" in the multiple ways that people say "no". We don’t affirm the culture of life simply by decrying a culture of death. In the calculus of the Gospel, a double negative does not make a positive. We only receive the gift of joy through our saying "yes" to Christ as Father Henry said "yes" to him yesterday at his ordination.
In order to hear the invitation of Christ to follow Him, the life of a priest requires moments of silence to discern the promptings of the Spirit and to revel in the joyful gift of vindication of which the Advocate constantly reminds us that Christ has won for us at the cost of His own blood lovingly poured out. The Advocate drags into the light the festering infection of sin and puts the lie to the liar, who seductively employs blackmail to scare us into slavery and fear. As we chant in the sequence before today’s Gospel reading: “Heal our wounds, our strength renew; On our dryness pour your dew; Wash the stains of guilt away; Bend the stubborn heart and will; Melt the frozen, warm the chill; Guide the steps that go astray.”
It is cause for reflection in this full light of the Holy Spirit, that many in the life of the Church who have heretofore manifested a spirit of entitlement and arrogance, are now showing forth a spirit of cowardice and abdication. Arrogance and cowardice always enmesh with each other in the spirit of slavery of which Saint Paul writes to the Romans in our second reading today.
It is confidence and fortitude that issue forth in the life of one imbued by the Holy Spirit — the same confidence exhibited by Christ throughout His life and ministry and most especially through His passion and death. The Holy Spirit that Christ bestows on each and all of us as members of His Church on the Feast of Pentecost conforms us to the character of Christ enabling us to see as He sees, to listen as He listens, to know as He knows, and to love as He loves.
The life and ministry of a priest is paramount for nurturing and developing this Christ-like character in his own life and in the life of the faithful members of the Church. This is the experience of the disciples as the Holy Spirit comes upon them in the upper room in the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. They are purified and changed as fire purifies and changes what it burns. The Spirit is even said to come upon them as fire. And with that change, they become bold and fearless (parrhesia) instead of timid and cowardly.
Thus, the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, the Word proclaimed, is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. And we end where we began not in a controlled crash, but with the words of Saint Cyril of Alexandria once again: “With the Holy Spirit within us, ‘it is quite natural for people who have been absorbed by the things of this world to become entirely other-worldly in outlook, and for cowards to become people of great courage.’”