2024 7th Sunday of Eastertide (B)
Did you notice how that first reading began? It said, ‘One day Peter stood up to speak to the brothers – there were about and hundred and twenty persons in the congregation.’ I ask this question because we are about the same number. So, the idea is you must close your eyes and imagine I am Peter! It shouldn’t be too difficult… I don’t think. Peter goes on to talk about the Holy Spirit. The second reading also speaks about the spirit, how Christ lets us share his spirit. The gospel doesn’t mention the holy spirit, but he is always present.
Next week we celebrate Pentecost; the coming of the holy spirit. Yesterday I baptised a child and told him that he would be filled with the Holy Spirit. I suggest it will take a long time for that baby to realise the significance of his baptism. It probably won’t happen when he is a teenager or a young adult, but hopefully will happen when he gets older. Who does fully understand the significance of their baptism? Most of us were baptised as babies; we didn’t know what the priest was saying, even though what he was saying was life changing. However, that was not apparent at the time. It is something we discover in the course of our lives.
As a child I used to listen attentively to what the priest was saying, but I don’t remember ever hearing about the importance of our baptism. I didn’t hear about the gift of the holy spirit. I didn’t hear that we have a mission. But we have, each and everyone of us, not just priests but all baptised Christians. In the gospel we’ve just heard Jesus talks to his Father and says, “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.” The “them” is all of us. If the Church is to grow today, then there has to be a deeper understanding of our baptism. We have to realise that the Holy Spirit is calling us all to be missionaries. I don’t mean foreign missionaries, but missionaries who work in their home and workplaces.
I didn’t hear this as a child. I heard that we should go to mass on Sundays and holydays of obligation. That it was a mortal sin to miss mass. That I should go to confession on a regular basis. And that was it. There was nothing about the spirit working in me to make me a disciple of Christ, to spread the gospel and to make the world a better place. If I had heared this I would have said to myself: “That’s, surely, the priest’s job. He is holy and I’m not. So how could I do the job of a priest? “
It’s not that the church’s message has changed but there is a growing awareness of the role of the laity in the Church. And it’s not because of any shortage of priests. But rather, like me, because you were consecrated in baptism and you have been sent. All of this is the work of the Holy Spirit who will come to us anew next Sunday. We didn’t understand what God was asking of us when we were baptised, all those years ago, but we do now. God is asking you, through the power of his Spirit, to preach the good news of Jesus Christ to the people here in Chalfont St Peter, Gerrards Cross, Stoke Poges, Denham and even Beaconsfield.
carmelitevocationsocd 