Pentecost Sunday
Group Confirmation
May 28, 2023
Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
Don’t Lose Your Joy
God has blessed me in many ways, but one thing he didn’t give me is a poker face. When I’m not happy or something is troubling me, it’s not hard to tell. Some weeks ago, I was standing in the back of the Cathedral after Mass. A parishioner here greeted me and said, “You look troubled, Archbishop! Don’t let anyone rob you of your joy!” It was the best advice she could have given me.
Perhaps when you’re going through a hard time, people have said to you, “Cheer up!” Or as the old song would have it, “Put on a happy face!” – But happiness or joy isn’t something we can put on or fake, like a cardboard happy face that we use to disguise how we really feel. In fact, joy is a lot more than an emotion, a lot more than just a feeling. … Because we’re always going to have problems in life … some of them of our own making, some of them beyond our control. There are a lot of things “out there” and “in here” that rob us of our joy.
Joy in the Holy Spirit
Why would I bring up “joy” or the lack of joy on your Confirmation day? What has joy to do with the Holy Spirit or, for that matter, with the Catholic faith? A lot of people think that religious faith is more a source of misery than joy. They see the Faith as just another set of rules on top of life’s usual rules. They see it as a moral straitjacket and they think of Mass as somber and boring. Maybe some of you think of your Catholic Faith in just that way.
I hope not. But just in case, I thought I’d speak about joy in the Holy Spirit. To repeat: joy is not just an emotion. Emotions are fragile. They come and go. But to be the healthy, happy human beings God created us to be, we need to have a joy that is deeper and more enduring than our problems, illnesses, disappointments, insecurities and fears. But where do we find such joy? Eventually most people find out the hard way that enduring joy isn’t found in drugs, pleasure, power, or wealth. Those things end up causing us misery, not joy.
It turns out that joy is not something we manufacture, something we create. Joy is one of the outcomes, one of the results, one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. If you really open your hearts as you receive the fullness of the Spirit in Confirmation, the result with be a joy and a peace that nothing and no one can take from you. Joy is a something that the Spirit creates in our souls … if we let him. So, joy is a “fruit” of the Holy Spirit, along with “charity, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, and chastity”. And you may say, ‘I get the part about love, peace, and patience, but can I be happy trying to be modest, self-controlled, and chaste?’ Can modesty, self-control, and chastity really make me happy? Isn’t that simply another way of imposing old and worn out rules?
Could be, but not if we really understand who the Holy Spirit is and what the Holy Spirit offers us. The Spirit of God guides us from looking for love and joy in all the wrong places, in trying to find joy and satisfaction in things that will let us down, usually pretty hard. But the Spirit of God also opens us up to a new world where we find the love and the joy we are looking for deep down. Because all of us want to be loved and without love there is no joy. And yes, we may find joy in friendship, in marriage, in healthy relationships, but whether we admit it or not you and I were created for a deeper love, an infinite love, a love that does not fail, a love that does not expire. Only God can love us that way. And only Jesus revealed that love to us. And only in the Holy Spirit can we experience that kind of love. When we let the Holy Spirit take possession of us, then we belong to God and to one another in the Church. Then is when we start experiencing that joy no one can rob us of.
In Medias Res
This afternoon, you’ve come here from many parishes and from many different experiences of life. Some of you are young people whose confirmations were delayed. Some of you are getting ready to be married. Others of you are simply decided not to put confirmation off any longer. Those of you in this Cathedral church today may speak languages. You represent different cultures. You are engaged in different occupations. Some are in the workforce. Some of you are in school. Some recently arrived.
Preaching to you is like preaching to the audience Peter had on the first Pentecost – people from many different places, speaking different languages. But when Peter spoke in the power of the Spirit, those people were surprised. Because they all heard Peter in their own language and they understood what he said, and more important than that, they took what he said to heart. That’s what I hope will happen to you. In the middle of whatever it is your are doing with your life, I hope you will be surprised and overjoyed as the Spirit comes upon you, and that after today you will never be the same.
Jesus Is Lord
The joy of all the saints for more than 2,000 years had been to profess “Jesus is Lord” and to do this in the power of the Holy Spirit. I hope that will be your joy – to know the Person of Christ not as a mere figure of history but as you present friend and Savior who loves you and gave his life for you. I hope you will experience the joy of his true Presence as you attend Mass each Sunday and receive his Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. I hope you will also know the joy of forgiveness. Jesus breathed his Spirit on the Apostles, enabling the Church to forgive sins in the power of the Holy Spirit, in the Sacrament of Reconciliation or Penance. I, for one, could not imagine my life without this sacrament of God’s mercy. If God loves me enough to forgive my sins, what is there to be unhappy about?
So rejoice in the Lord always! Again I say it, rejoice! May you open your hearts to the Holy Spirit and experience for the rest of your life that joy which opens out to the everlasting joy of heaven. God bless you and keep you in his love!