Feast of Pentecost
Cycle C
May 19, 2013 9:00 and 10:30 AM
Saint Margaret Parish, Bel Air
God in the Bathroom
One
day a teacher was talking to her first grade class about God.
She
asked the children, “Where is God?” Little Christopher quickly put up his hand
and said, “I know where God is; he is in
our bathroom at home.”
The
teacher responded, “In your bathroom,
Christopher?” And the little boy
said, “Yes! Every morning my dad goes to the bathroom
door and shouts, ‘Dear God, are you still in there?’”
God Everywhere: The Holy Spirit
Of course, God is not just in the family bathroom.
But there is an insight here because we believe that
God is everywhere. The Spirit of God,
the Holy Spirit is present and at work in all of creation and all of humanity.
This is what today’s celebration of Pentecost tells
us. And this belief has always been very
strong in our Catholic tradition.
Sacramentality
One of our contemporary writers says it this way: “We Catholics are a sacramental people.”
Being sacramental means that we see God coming to us
through creation and we see creation leading us to God. In other words, we see the Spirit of God
everywhere.
Our Catholic tradition strongly affirms this sacramental
vision. And, as part of this, we also
believe that the Church as a community of faith is sacramental.
We as God’s believing people are in a sense the sacrament
of Jesus on this earth. This is what
Saint Paul means in our second reading when he refers to us as the body of
Christ – the living body of Christ on this earth.
Seven Sacraments
And then, there are what we call
the seven sacraments.
These are seven specific moments
when the Spirit of God enlivens us. In
each of these actions, we call down the presence of the Holy Spirit, usually
with some kind of imposition of hands.
For example, in the Eucharist,
which these children will receive for the first time this morning, the priest
imposes or extends his hands over the bread and wine and asks the Holy Spirit
to make these gifts holy – the body and blood of Jesus. We do much the same action in each of the
other sacraments.
These sacraments give us God’s
Spirit to strengthen us for specific needs, like an illness, or specific responsibilities,
like marriage. They also awaken us to
the truth that everything is sacramental.
All as Sacramental
For example, the sacraments
awaken in us a reverence for human life.
They awaken a reverence for the
life of every human being, from the moment of conception to the moment of
natural death. And so, the sacraments
move us to care for the unborn child, for those who lack food or medical care, and
for the very elderly who grow increasingly dependent and vulnerable.
And they lead us to do this no
matter who these people are, where they live, or how different they are from
us. Today’s first reading shows the
Spirit enabling the early disciples to bridge differences of language,
nationality, race, gender, whatever.
All of this comes from our being
a sacramental people. And the seven
sacraments awaken our sense of this.
They awaken us to a sacramental
vision and help us to allow the Holy Spirit to be the driving force of our
lives. This is what we celebrate today
on the feast of Pentecost.
