We are Christians.  We are Easter people.  Our life is marked by the victory Passover of Christ Jesus from suffering and death to resurrection to new life.  We are Easter people because the victory of Christ over suffering and death is our own victory too.  The Gospel of Christ is not a denial of suffering and death.  It is proclamation of the good news that suffering and death have no final say over us.  The final word in the life of a Christian is life.  The final word is that love conquers hatred, and life conquers death.

       

We are Christians.  We are Easter people.  The victory of Christ Jesus over death shapes our consciousness and gives us hope.  It makes us see that this life has a meaning.  Whenever we offer the holy sacrifice of the Mass, our highest form of worship, in the words of the Memorial Acclamation, we proclaim the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, we profess his resurrection, until he comes again.  As Easter people, the holy sacrifice of the Mass is celebration of our victory of life over death, a victory that is already ours in Christ Jesus risen from the dead.  At Mass we celebrate a victory whose final manifestation will be when Christ comes again.

       

Every day is Easter for us.  Every day is a gift, a day to rise from our sinful past.  Every day, the victory of Christ is ours if we live in communion with Him.  And that Easter victory which is ours every day is what we celebrate with greater intensity during the liturgical season of Easter.  At all Masses during Easter, the priest says in the Preface, “It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, at all times to acclaim you, O Lord, but in this time above all to laud you yet more gloriously, when Christ our Passover has been sacrificed.”  In other words, we celebrate Easter “at all times”, but, “in this time [this Easter time]” we celebrate Easter “yet more gloriously”.

       

Today, Pentecost Sunday, the Easter season comes to a conclusion.  But our Easter joy continues.  And, that our Easter joy may continue, at Pentecost, Christ whose rising to new life marks our mortal life with immortality, Christ whose resurrection we celebrate, gives us the Holy Spirit. 

       

The Holy Spirit prolongs and preserves our Easter joy and gives us the wisdom and the courage to live as Easter people in the midst of distress, in the midst of so many horror stories we hear today, of police brutality in our country, of malicious accusations, of killings in Gaza, and of killings in the middle belt of Nigeria. 

 

We see this wisdom and courage in the life of the apostles in the story of Pentecost narrated in the First Reading of the Mass of Pentecost taken from the Acts of the Apostles.  When Pentecost day came, and they received the gift of the Holy Spirit, they who once were afraid, they who once ran away when Jesus was arrested, they who had locked themselves in a room out of fear and in fear received from the Holy Spirit wisdom and the courage to proclaim the good news of the resurrection.

 

For us too, the Holy Spirit is the Father’s gift to us through his Son who suffered, died, and rose from the dead.  We received this gift at baptism and at confirmation.  This Spirit is present and active in each of the seven sacraments. And at the ordination of deacons, priests and bishops, the entire Church, in the communion of saints calls down this same Spirit on those to be ordained so that they will be endowed with wisdom, courage and patience to serve the people of God.

 

The Holy Spirit is the gift of Easter.  That is why we celebrate the coming of this gift on Pentecost Sunday, last day of the Easter season.  That is to teach us that this gift that the Holy Spirit is, is the crowning of our Easter joy.  To use more familiar terms, the gift of the Holy Spirit is the icing on our Easter cake.

 

A gift is that which we receive from another source.  A gift is given without the intention of taking it back.  A gift is given out of love.  Indeed, love is the first gift because love is the gift through which all free gifts are given.

 

In the Gospel according to John, when the risen Christ appeared to his disciples, he showed them his love by giving them the gift of the Holy Spirit when he breathed on them, saying: “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

 

The Holy Spirit is love of the Father for the Son.  The Holy Spirit is love of the Son for the Father.  The Father and the Son love each other and love us by their Holy Spirit.  And this Holy Spirit, this love of the Father for the Son, this love of the Son for the Father, flows into us through the death and resurrection of the Son.  The Holy Spirit is gift, and the Holy Spirit is love.  The Holy Spirit is the gift of love given to us by the Father and the Son.  That is why we say in the Creed that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. 

 

Through this Spirit who is love, all other gifts are given to us.  Through the Spirit of love, creation was brought into being.  The Responsorial Psalm of the Mass of Pentecost Sunday sang of the love of the Holy Spirit bringing creation into being.  It says: “You take back your spirit, they die, returning to the dust from which they came.  You send forth your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth.”

 

The words of the Sequence of the Mass of Pentecost communicate this teaching too, that there would be no life in us without the Holy Spirit that God breathed into the clay that we were at creation.  It says: “If thou take thy grace away, nothing pure in man will stay. All his good is turned to ill.”

 

The gift of the Holy Spirit is given to us even though we do not merit it.  And that is how God loves us.  We do not deserve to be loved. But he loves us.  This love is a gift to be shared by being witnesses to love.  The love of the Holy Spirit is not superficial sentimentality.  It is instead a ceaseless impulse to will and to show goodness to others, even when they do not deserve it, just as our God loves us even when we do not deserve it.  That is why we who have received the unmerited gift of the Holy Spirit of love must bear witness to love.

 

The heart of the Gospel of Christ, the heart of the Gospel to which we Christians must bear witness is that God has offered humanity this gift of unmerited love in the Passover of his Son our Lord Jesus Christ from suffering and death to the resurrection.  And the sign that we too have risen with him is when we rise from selfishness to selflessness, when, like St Francis of Assisi, we learn that it is in giving of ourselves that we receive.  The sign that the Holy Spirit is in us is when we rise from seeking our own good at the expense of others to seeking the good of others at our own expense. The good news is that this is already happening.

 

The love of the Holy Spirit is already present in the lives of persons who are single, who are friends, who are dating, who love each other, who, in their love for each other have mutual sexual attraction without resorting to the sin of premarital sex.  The Holy Spirit gives them the gift of self-control. 

 

The love of the Holy Spirit is already present in marital fidelity whereby married persons who love each other even when it is costly to do so.  This love is already present in responsible parenting, that is, wherever and whenever parents make a lot of sacrifices for the good of their children, wherever and whenever parents pass on values to their children. 

 

The love of the Holy Spirit, the Love that the Holy Spirit is, is present in patriotism when we—citizens and leaders of our country—strive to be fair in our dealings with one another, that is, when we overcome the tendency to work for selfish interests, and replace that deadly tendency with the disposition to work for the common good.

 

“Send forth your Spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of the earth.”  Renew the face of Nigeria. At Pentecost, let this be our prayer: Send forth your Spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of Nigeria.  Holy Spirt, the Breath of God, blow away the thick dust of corruption and insecurity from the face of our land, Nigeria.

 

Father Anthony A. Akinwale, OP