Today we conclude our fifty-day celebration of Easter with the great Feast of Pentecost – our celebration of the gift of the Holy Spirit to individual Christians and to the Church of Christ.
            All of us who were baptized in Christ Jesus received the gift of God’s Spirit. In our baptism, we receive the same Spirit that Jesus received in his baptism in the river Jordan. Through baptism in water and the Spirit, we now dwell in God and God now dwells in us. Incredible! Our struggle is to cultivate that life of God within us so that our tendency to sin diminishes and our faithfulness to the life of God within us increases. We can only cultivate that life of God within us through a conscious effort to conform ourselves to the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, through a regular habit of prayer, and through our active participation in the sacraments. To diminish our tendency to sin requires our particular attention to the Sacrament of Reconciliation (confession). When we seek this sacrament regularly, we identify the areas in our lives where we most often sin so that with the power of God’s Spirit, those areas of sin in our lives can diminish as our faithfulness to the ways of God increases. God’s Spirit can transform us and enable us to reflect more faithfully the life of God in which we now participate.
            We must remember that Jesus promised that the Spirit would guide and protect the Church from all error. Our Church naturally emphasizes the protection and preservation of the tradition that we have received. This is good and necessary. But at the same time, we have to be open to the inspiration of the Spirit so that our Church can respond to new circumstances and new needs. We always have to keep in balance the legitimate desire to preserve the tradition that has been handed on to us, while being open to the changes that the Spirit may be inspiring us to make so that the message of the Gospel continues to speak to new people, new realities, and new circumstances.
            We thank God for the gift of God’s Spirit to us as individuals and to our Church!
 
 
 
 
 
                                                
                                                                                                                                                                                             Fr. Mark Hallinan, S.J