Pentecost Sunday

May 11, 2008

Homily for the Anglican Usage Mass

of the

St. Thomas More Society

celebrated at

St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church , 1013 Wood Street

Scranton, PA

John 20:19-23

            In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.  Amen

            During the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, our current Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI, when he was still Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, served as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  The responsibility of disciplining those Catholics who had departed from Church teaching fell to him when he served as the head of this office.  And during his time at this post, he disciplined only twenty-four people, less than one per year for the more than two decades he worked in this capacity.  Despite the incredibly small number of people who were disciplined, the fact that he disciplined anyone at all earned him the label “God’s rottweiler”, applied by those who hate to see the Church enforce any discipline or define any doctrine.  The real story, however, was his incredible patience, his incredible charity.

            Each person who was disciplined by the then-Cardinal Ratzinger received repeated warnings and the opportunity to recant before any action was taken.  And when action was taken, it sometimes amounted to little more than a slap on the wrist, when far more likely was called for.  Take, for example, the case of Father Charles Curran, who has spent almost his entire priesthood denying the eternal truths contained within the 1968 encyclical of Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae.  His rejection of Catholic teaching on the immorality of contraception has been constant for forty years.  And when he finally was disciplined, all that was taken from him was the privilege to teach at a Catholic school.  He was not even prohibited from preaching, much less deposed and denied the opportunity to exercise his priesthood.  What this demonstrates is that, over and over again, the Church chooses to err on the side of excessive charity, rather than err on the side of too stringent an enforcement of Catholic doctrine.  If you have often wondered why more professors are not kicked out of Catholic schools, why more priests and religious are not silenced after publicly and repeatedly denying the Truth, if you have wondered why so few people are excommunicated each year, there is a simple one word answer:  charity.

            Charity is what the disciples were shown when Jesus appeared to them the day He rose from the dead.  Though each of them had denied Jesus in some manner by running away; though they continued to deny Him by their failure to believe the women who had told them of the Resurrection; though they could not summon the courage to come out from behind locked doors to face the same potential fate Jesus Himself had suffered; despite all these shortcomings, Jesus came to His beloved disciples and greeted them with words of peace, “Peace be with you.”  At the moment they were reunited, Jesus did not desire recrimination or vengeance for the way the very men He had chosen had failed Him.  What He desired was to bring them greetings of peace and the assurance that He had forgiven them.

            And He wanted to give them more than that.  He wanted to give to the disciples the same ability to forgive their transgressors.  He wanted them to be able to forgive others the same way He had forgiven them.  He wanted to give them this gift of charity from which they had so greatly benefited.  So He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven.  If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”  In this way the apostles received not only the same ability to forgive transgressions, the same Christian charity, but they also received the same authority to forgive sins that Jesus Himself had demonstrated in healing those sick with various diseases.

            In sending them forth, the disciples were to be apostles of charity, able to forgive injuries they themselves had suffered, as well as sins penitent converts had committed against others.  That is, all the sins that Jesus could forgive, the apostles could forgive.  The men who Jesus sent were sent on a mission of forgiveness, having experienced firsthand the forgiveness the world so desperately needs.  The Good News they had experienced, they were to share with the world.  “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.”

            Thus, we see that what undergirds the evangelizing mission of the Church is the forgiveness of sins.  All of our evangelism, all our sharing the Good News of God in Jesus Christ, is premised upon this simple truth:  the Church exists to forgive sins.  Moreover, the peace that comes with being a Christian, the same peace Jesus offered to the apostles, comes only by the forgiveness of sins.  We cannot preach peace, joy and love unless we first preach forgiveness, for peace, joy and love proceed from forgiveness, the forgiveness that one can receive only from those sent by Jesus Himself on the mission to forgive sins.

            Why is the Church so charitable towards those who have been so uncharitable to her?  Because Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church, is charitable to those who are uncharitable to Him.  And what does all this have to do with Pentecost?

            What holds the Church’s mission of forgiveness together is the Holy Spirit.  Sure, we know that in the Blood of Jesus Christ we have been forgiven, but it is the third Person of the Trinity Who is charged with the responsibility of getting this message out and implementing Jesus’ plan for His Church.

            Even as the Holy Spirit has given each of us different gifts for the up-building of the Church, His sanctifying presence lives within the heart of each Christian, gradually transforming men of the flesh into men of the spirit.  By the power of the Holy Spirit, those who denied Christ become vessels of grace; those who killed Christians for sport become men willing to die for Jesus Christ.  Without charity, and the patience that comes with whose who possess true charity, such transformations are not possible.

            You see, Jesus could have given the mission of forgiveness to men who never had committed any sins.  After all, He preserved from the moment of her conception His own mother from the effects of original sin.  But He chose instead to effect transformation through those whom the Holy Spirit had transformed, men who went from being cowards locked behind closed doors to men speaking in tongues and performing other miracles that by their own strength were impossible.

            Thus, the reason the Church does not discipline her members as readily as we might like, is that she is looking for today’s sinner to be tomorrow’s saint.  She knows that charity changed the lives of the Apostles, and she expects that charity can transform even the likes of Charlie Curran. On this the Sunday of Pentecost, recognize that your fellow Catholics are all on the same journey of sanctification that you are.  And when you are tempted to grow impatient with them for their style of life and their false beliefs, instead show them charity by the power of the Holy Spirit.  And remember the Apostles who were locked in that room together.  Sanctification took hold of them, and now they are in Heaven.  So we must pray shall it be for the ones we would like to excommunicate now.  If they need to be excommunicated, trust the Pope to do it.  And let the Holy Spirit help you to accomplish the impossible:  forgive those who do not seem to know they need to be forgiven.