Homily for Pentecost 2009

The plight of the cruise ship Pacific Dawn and its passengers and crew as it travelled up and down the coast is a good metaphor for the whole country. Here we are, a bundle of anxieties about swine flu, bird flu, sars virus, aids. Fears about all that, and what is happening to our money and financial institutions, companies and employment. Worries about violence and drugs in the community. All this along with our own personal and family troubles. Then the media keeps hammering home the dreadful state of affairs. We are all together on the boat. We can't get off! Sometimes our fears are acted out as we look for someone to blame or we take out our frustration on each other.

At the conclusion of Mass we say "The Mass is ended, go in peace," to which we all reply, "Thanks be to God." As you may know, our word "Mass" for the Eucharist comes from this proclamation by the priest. It comes from the Latin, "Ite missa est." It may seem strange to have the name of the Eucharist designated by the final remarks at the celebration. But not really. If you know your Latin you would realise that the word missa is the feminine form of the word "sent". This alerts us to the fact that what is being said here refers to the Church which is regarded as feminine, mother Church. A literal translation might be "Go, she is sent." That is the Church is sent. That is us. Just as Jesus is sent by the Father into the world, Jesus in turn sends his disciples.

One of the other translations of that phrase tries to capture more of that sense when it says, "Go in peace to love and serve the Lord." One translation the new Missal is proposing is "Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord."

So that brief dismissal is not just saying that everything is finished and it is time to go and have a peaceful Sunday rest. Rather, it is sending us on our mission for the coming the week. It is to nourish us for that mission that we have come to the Eucharist. Remember how Jesus sent the seventy-two disciples to preach the Kingdom, in Luke: "The Lord appointed seventy-two others whom he sent ahead of him in pairs to every town and place he intended to visit" (Luke 10:1). Afterwards they came back rejoicing and said, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us because of your name" (Luke 10:17). Do we always appreciate that what we say and do every day is preparing the ground for Jesus to enter the lives of those we meet? The dismissal is both our personal and communal commissioning for that vocation. We say thanks be to God for that mission.

In other words as someone has said, we don't just go to Mass each Sunday. Rather, we come back to Mass each Sunday. You might have noticed that there is no "Amen" at the end of Mass as at every other prayer. It is not an ending. We come back to Christ rejoicing after our week living the Gospel and witnessing to it by our lives. So the Mass is not just another religious practice or devotion like saying the rosary together or some private prayer. It is the Church gathered by Christ to be enlivened by the Spirit, and sent to be Christ for the world. We, too, can say to others by the way we live, "This is my Body given up for you."

To preach the Gospel is not principally to teach people about God. There are plenty of people out there prepared to do that. It is above all about freeing people to see God who is already with them. It is not threatening people or bible bashing people. It is letting them know that they and their life and all its struggles and joys are visible to God. They are not just cogs in the global economy. If we can recognise the least of Jesus' brothers and sisters by our love then surely God can recognise them too.

On this Feast of Pentecost we celebrate the beginning of this mission given to the Church. As the Father sent Jesus, so Jesus sends the Paraclete, the Advocate, to be with his Church to the end of the age. We speak of the seven fold gifts of the Holy Spirit, especially at Confirmation. The seven gifts take up the words of the prophet Isaiah(cf 11:2). The number seven of course in the scripture is a symbol of completeness or fullness. So the Church calls upon the fullness of God's gifts to be upon us. So that as Acts of the Apostles says of the disciples at the first Pentecost, "they were all filled with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:3). It happened at a meeting of all things! For most of us meetings can be a tiresome necessity. Yet there it was. The first Pentecost happened when the apostles had all met one one room fearful yet in prayer. Together they had that mystical experience of the Holy Spirit that was so difficult to express in words.

The disciples gathered in fear in the upper room but left it full of joy and the power of the Holy Spirit. We go on our cruise ship "Pacific Dawn" not just with all our fears and anxieties which enslave us, diminish us, make us less than human. We also carry the Spirit of Christ within us. A Spirit of peace the world cannot give who calls us together as the Church as on the first Pentecost. Not as dramatic perhaps but just as surely we can leave this room, this Church, with the same renewed vigour and joy those disciples.

All religions have a spiritual tradition in which people encounter the divine in solitude. In Christian and Jewish spirituality there are two privileged places where we meet God: both when we are alone, and when we are together in a family, or community. It is not one or the other, it is both. We keep coming back to Mass bringing our individual experience of Christ during the week to build up the rest of the Body of Christ. This is our upper room. We may experience God in solitude contemplating a beautiful sunset. But we always come back together to be reminded that we are the Body of Christ. We gather as disciples to listen to the Master. We are nourished and we go from the Eucharist as apostles, sent by God. That is our identity as we have celebrated the mysteries which tell tell the story which shapes and gives direction to our lives. Today we extinguish the Easter Candle that was lit and celebrated at the Easter Vigil. We are to be that light of Christ now wherever we go.

We are not trapped on the "Pacific Dawn". We have embarked on the "Barque of Peter". We have a destination and a mission to proclaim the Reign of God.

Over the weeks of the Easter Season I have tried to reflect on the Mass under the headings of faith, hope and love. Certainly what I have said does not exhaust the mystery.

Fr Graham