Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Welcome to the Blessed Sacrament Homilies podcast, where our mission is to help everyone recognize and experience the presence of God. We hope you are nourished and encouraged by the Word. Thank you for joining us.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: The Lord be with you and with your spirit. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: Glory to you, O Lord.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, peace be with you.
When he had said this, he showed them his hands in his side.
The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord Jesus said to them again, peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me, so I send you.
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, receive the Holy Spirit.
Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.
The Gospel of the Lord.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: One of the images that is often used to describe the Holy Spirit is that of breath.
And the thing about breath is that as long as everything is going well, as long as we're not struggling to breathe, we rarely, if ever, pay attention.
It is just there.
But if we have a lung disorder or, heaven forbid, for me, a head cold, you know how hard it is to breathe, and you have to concentrate on it, and it becomes a struggle.
Well, what I'm about to say to you, I need to remind you I did not stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, and I am not a doctor, so do not try this.
But it is my understanding that it is impossible to hold one's breath to the point of passing out, because your body gets to a certain point and you will gasp, you will breathe, you can't stop it.
And I think that continues that metaphor of breath in the Holy Spirit, because in the same sense that we can't live without oxygen entering into our system, we really can't live without the presence of the Holy Spirit either.
We need the Spirit not just to enliven us, not just to inform us, but also to guide us.
And I'm going to give you some examples.
If you have ever offered forgiveness, even though every instinct in your body tells you not to forgive, that was the Holy Spirit directing you.
If you have ever reached out to someone who needed your assistance, even though every instinct you had told you to move along, pretend you don't see it, that is the Holy Spirit.
If you've ever embraced someone who was deeply suffering and wrapped them in love, even though it made you feel extremely uncomfortable.
That was the presence of the Holy Spirit.
It's the Holy Spirit in us that gives us the ability to do something that is seemingly impossible and that is manifest God's love for one another.
And without that presence of the Spirit inside of us, we're not capable because our instincts tend to be selfish.
Our instincts tend to be very much self absorbed.
But that spark of the Holy Spirit, that breath of the Spirit that's in each one of us, gives us the capacity, and I would hope you agree that that is such an amazingly powerful gift to know that each one of us have the capacity to make God present in the world.
And we do so with the breath of the Spirit in each one of us.
Now, in just a couple of moments, we've got a young man who is going to share in the Sacrament of Confirmation, the sacrament that reminds us and includes us in the gift of the Spirit.
And as we pray along with him, we remember that the Spirit that is a part of who he is is also a part of us.
And that Spirit unites us in love.
