Pentecost 2012

Rev. John Rogers Vien 

Today, I could greet you many ways... I could say “Happy Easter!”  It is, after all, the final day of the Easter Season.  For 50 days we have been celebrating the Resurrection of Christ and the gift of springtime and new life.  So, Happy Easter!

I could also say, “Blessed Pentecost!”  This final day of the Easter season is the day the Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit upon the disciples as tongues of fire, as we heard in our first reading, giving them the courage, wisdom, and zeal to carry out the last command to “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations....”  This is the day that Jesus appeared to the disciples, as we heard in our Gospel, and breathed on them and gave them the Holy Spirit.  So, Blessed Pentecost!

But I could also say, “Happy Birthday!”  If you went to Catholic school or PSR, no doubt you learned that Pentecost is the “birthday of the Church.”  This is the day the Church began, two millennia ago, and for thousands of years, up till today, the Church is being born again and again.  Saying that this is the birthday of the Church is nice, but do we really have a feel for the gravity of such a phrase: birthday of the Church?  Those women who have embraced the vocation of motherhood know better than anyone else what it means to give birth, physically and emotionally.  Just as a mother experiences the pains and hardships of carrying to term the child in her womb, in a similar way, the Body of Christ, the Church, experiences some pain and hardship.

Let’s face it, the Church, our Church, we are in some pain right now.  The Church around the world has been reeling for over 10 years from its sexual abuse scandal, the sins of some of its priests and the ineffectiveness of some of its bishops.  Many religious women and those who love and support them are sad and angry about the Vatican’s decision to investigate and reform the major leadership organization of women religious in our nation.  Many gay men and lesbians and divorced and remarried Catholics and those who love and support them are sad and angry about rhetoric they hear and treatment they receive from some in the Church.  Many are confused and sad and angry about the Bishops’ reactions to the Affordable Care Act and what they perceive as the Church dabbling in politics.  Many in the Church are sad and angry that others are so sad and angry.  And even if you are not at all sad and angry, because the Church is an organic entity, because we are all connected, because we are all one body, as St. Paul reminds us in our Second Reading today, if one person hurts, the whole body hurts.  So, yes, we, the Church, are hurting.   

Are these hurts just growing pains, labor pains?  Possibly.  As people who believe in the Paschal Mystery, we must believe that good things will come out of seemingly bad events, just as the Resurrection of Christ followed his suffering and death.  Or maybe it’s just the way life is.  We all experience good and bad, joy and heartache.  At their wedding, couples promise to be true to each other in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health.  Could we really think that life in the Church would be any different? 

At the Mass of Chrism last Holy Thursday, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York quoted an Italian spiritual writer of the last century named Carlo Caretto, who wrote this:

How much I must criticize you, my church, and yet how much I love you!

You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe more to you than to anyone.

I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence.

You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness.

Never in this world have I seen anything more compromised, more false,
yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful.

Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face
-- and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your sure arms!

No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely.

Then too--where would I go? To build another church?
But I could not build one without the same defects, for they are my defects.

And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ's church.

No, I am old enough, I know better.

Like Carlo Caretto and Cardinal Dolan, I’m getting old enough to know better, and I hope and pray that you, all of us can move through our growing pains to know better.  Friends, I am so proud to say that I am a Catholic, a member of the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church.  I am a son of the Church as much as I am the son of Rogers & Shirley Vien.  I could be nothing else.  Yes, sometimes the Church drives me crazy, but in the end I love the Church, its history, its tradition, its Scripture, its sacraments, its ritual, its community, its saints, its popes, its values, its grace, its mission... and I suspect that very many of you feel the same way.  Today is our Feast, the Feast of the Church!

Our faith, our Church, goes back to Jesus, His Mother, His Apostles, His Spirit unleashed at Pentecost.  Blessed John Paul II once said, “Love for Jesus and His Church must be the passion of our lives!”  Today, this week, every week, let us cultivate a deep, passionate love for Christ and the Church.  Happy Easter!  Blessed Pentecost!  Happy Birthday!