Homily for Solemnity of Ascension

Homily for the Solemnity of the Ascension

May 29, 2025
Acts 1: 1-11
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.

The Ascension (Rembrandt)

“Jesus … was taken up after giving instructions thru the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1: 2).

In all the years I’ve been reading the New Testament—since I was in high school, if not sooner—I never really noticed that line before this week.  I knew, of course, that Jesus had lingered with his disciples for 40 days, according to Luke’s timeframe, appearing to them now and again and speaking with them.

But what does “he instructed them thru the Holy Spirit” mean?  I suppose, in part, that he continued what he’d done during his public ministry, following the Spirit’s coming upon him at his baptism (Luke 3:22).  I suppose it also means that at this post-resurrection time he explained further why Christ had to suffer and how he fulfilled the prophecies, as he explained to the 2 disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-32).  All the disciples needed light from the Holy Spirit to grasp what Jesus’ life, teachings, passion, and resurrection meant.

St. Luke also tells us that they were to “wait for the promise of the Father,” waiting to “be baptized with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1:4-5).  That Jesus himself was Spirit-inspired was insufficient for his paschal mystery’s full impact on them and for their ability to carry out the commission he was giving them.  Luke here is in synch with John’s account of the Lord’s promise at the Last Supper to send them the “Advocate” (e.g., 14:16,26; 16:7-15) after he has departed from them, not leaving them orphans but remaining with them in a different presence (14:18).

His new presence will present them with a power they haven’t imagined—not the restoration of the kingdom of Israel (Acts 1:6) with them as his vice regents (cf. Luke 22:30), but with the power of the Holy Spirit for their mission of being Jesus’ witnesses in Israel and “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).  For that mission, they’ll need the wisdom, courage, and fortitude that they so evidently have lacked until this point.  How they were changed by the Spirit gives us hope.

The Acts of the Apostles will tell us—it’s been telling us thruout the Easter season—what the Spirit enabled the 12, the deacons Stephen and Philip, and other apostles to do to carry out their commission from Jesus.  Inspired ourselves with the gift of the Holy Spirit and the apostolic preaching handed down to us, we celebrate the sacred mysteries of the Lord’s passover and do our best to live as Jesus teaches and to hand on his Gospel of salvation.

Homily for Tuesday, 2d Week of Easter

Homily for Tuesday
2d Week of Easter

April 29, 2024
John 3: 7-15
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.

Nicodemus & Jesus on a Rooftop
(Henry O. Tanner)

“The wind blows where it wills…” (John 3: 8).

St. John is fond of wordplay, and his fondness is at work when he compares the Spirit to wind.  It’s the same word in Greek, pneuma.  It’s the same Spirit, the same “mighty wind” that “swept over the waters” when God began creating the universe (Gen 1:2), the same “breath of life” that God “blew into the nostrils” of the “man he formed out of the clay of the ground” (Gen 2:7) as his creation culminated in humanity.

The life breath of God, his creative wind, his Holy Spirit continues in the work of Jesus—a mysterious work that neither Nicodemus nor anyone can understand, any more than we can grasp “where the wind comes from or where it goes” (John 3:8).

We see and hear the wind’s effects—leaves swaying, windows rattling.  In Harriman last week I saw dozens of trees laid prone by violent storms.  Likewise, Jesus suggests, we behold the effects of the Spirit’s work.  Where did John XXIII come from, and where did God mean for him to take the Church?  Ditto Francis.  What’s next for God’s creative work among his people?  We certainly don’t want Jesus to say of us, “How will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?” (3:12).

“The Son of Man has come down from heaven” (3:13) to reveal heaven’s workings to us and to unleash the Spirit of God in the Church, in his saints like Catherine of Siena, and in us.  In these days, of course, we’re praying that the college of cardinals (we SDBs have 5 electors) are listening to “the sound it makes” and trying to perceive “where it goes” (cf. 3:8) so that Christ’s Church may continue to lift him up for the world to see and believe (cf. 3:14-15).

Homily for 26th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the 
26th Sunday of Ordinary TimeSept. 27, 2009
Num 11: 25-29
Christian Brothers, Iona College
Ursulines, Willow Drive, N.R.

“Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets!” (Num 11: 29).

Moses needs to share the burden of leadership. Guided by the Lord, he chooses 70 elders to work with him as leaders in Israel. The Spirit of God descends on those 70, including 2 who had inadvertently missed their official installation rite, as it were.

Joshua, young and relatively inexperienced in the ways of the Lord, is jealous for the prerogatives of Moses, as he’ll be zealous later to carry out whatever the Lord tells him when he leads Israel across the Jordan and into the Promised Land. But at this point he still has a good deal to learn about the ways of the Lord.

I suppose it’s useful to pause and note that. This future great leader served an apprenticeship under Moses, learning how to relate to Yahweh, learning how to lead. It wasn’t all inborn. So we shouldn’t be surprised that we, too, have to grow in the ways of the Lord, and our learning goes on, or should go on, all our lives regardless of our chronological age.

The 1st lesson in the experience of the 70 elders is that there’s no limiting the Lord; he’s not constrained by human beings, by time, by space. He’ll bestow his Holy Spirit on whomever he wishes, wherever he wishes, however he wishes.

The 2d lesson is that the Lord does choose to work within some human framework. It was Yahweh who instructed Moses to “assemble for me 70 of the elders of Israel, men you know for true elders and authorities among the people, and bring them to the meeting tent. . . . I will take some of the spirit that is on you and will bestow it on them, that they may share the burden of the people with you” (9:16-17). The Lord didn’t choose the 70; he left that to Moses and to the established institutions of Israel, the existing system of tribal leadership. Altho God sometimes breaks from established institutions—calling shepherds to become kings or prophets, inviting a maiden to become a virgin mother, for instance—he also works in a partnership with men and women, using the gifts and the limitations of them, their society, their culture.

The 3d lesson flows from Moses’ wish “that all the people of the Lord were prophets! that the Lord might bestow his spirit on them all!” (9:29). The Lord heard his plea, if not in Moses’ time, if not under the Old Covenant, certainly in the New Covenant, when, as Peter announced on Pentecost morning, quoting from the prophet Joel:

It will come to pass in the last days, God says,
“that I will pour out a portion of my spirit upon all flesh.
Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your young men shall see visions,
your old men shall dream dreams.
Indeed, upon my servants and my handmaids
I will pour out a portion of my spirit in those days,
and they shall prophesy.”

And Peter went on to link the fulfillment of this prophecy, and implicitly of Moses’ wish, to Jesus of Nazareth, risen from the dead, “exalted at the right hand of God, who received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father and poured it forth, as you both see and hear” (Acts 2:17-18,33).

God has anointed all of Jesus’ followers with the Holy Spirit, made all of us prophets (as well as priests and rulers). All of us are given the Spirit in Baptism and Confirmation, and sometimes, like Eldad and Medad, some are chosen for a special share of the Spirit, some special charism, some special prophetic work in the Church and for the Church (the institutional, establishment side of things) but not necessarily in a manner that the institutional Church right away recognizes and accepts (the Spirit blows where he wills, when, how, and on whom). The Spirit inspires a Pope to call an ecumenical council, inspires an [Irish widower[1]/Italian orphan girl[2]] or an Italian farm boy[3] or an Albanian missionary sister[4] to found a great religious family.

The Holy Spirit works more quietly in most of us, enabling us to prophesy by how we live out our vocations [as religious or as married people]: in such wise that we testify to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior when we teach, when we converse, when we lead, when we act, when we serve one another, when we make sacrifices of ourselves—“whether eating or drinking or whatever we do, doing everything for the glory of God” (cf. 1 Cor 10:31) for all the world to see, not that we be seen but that Jesus Christ be seen; “performing mighty deeds in his name” (Mark 9:39) or simply “giving a cup of water to drink” to one of Jesus’ people (9:41). We testify to Jesus Christ by bringing the Gospel and Gospel values to our public as well as our private lives, using whatever influence and power we might have to advance justice and peace, human life and human dignity, the common good, the preservation of God’s creation, the sharing of goods and opportunities by all.

[1] Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice, founder of the Christian Brothers.[2] St. Angela Merici, foundress of the Ursulines.[3] St. John Bosco, founder of the Salesian Family.[4] Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta.