June 09, 2019 Homily for Pentecost Sunday - Why Is Our Church Not on Fire?

Today is Pentecost, the birthday of the church. Today the Holy Spirit came down on the Apostles like flames of fire. The first reading reported what happened, “When the day of Pentecost came, all the believers were gathered together in one place. Suddenly there was a noise from the sky which sounded like a strong wind blowing, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then they saw what looked like tongues of fire which spread out and touched each person there. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to talk in other languages, as the Spirit enabled them to speak” (Acts 2:1-4). Pentecost completes the saving work of Christ and enables the Apostles to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. The Holy Spirit set the Apostles on fire to preach the Gospel without fear of intimidation and transformed them into martyrs of the faith. Peter’s pedagogy on Pentecost day, was so powerful that those who heard him “were deeply troubled and said, “what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37). Many of those who heard him “believed his message and were baptized, and about three thousand people were added to their group that day” (Acts 2:41).

The apostles needed the fire of the Holy Spirit to shake them up and transform them into warriors for the faith. Christ is present in his apostles through his spirit. Like Charles Shultz once said, “The whole trouble with you is, you don’t know what the whole trouble with you is”. This feeling of not knowing our need for the Spirit makes us weak in faith. Our Church does not resemble the Church of the day of Pentecost. If it does, how come the Church is on fire and we are not consumed? One of the reasons, in my opinion, is that there is too much emphasy on money. We spend fewer minutes talking about spiritual things but a whole lot of time is spent on talking about money and raising money. This, for sure will take away the power of the spirit from the church. To the lame beggar, Peter said: “I have no money at all, but I give you what I have: in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth I order you to get up and walk!” Now we have too much money and no fire of the Spirit to effect changes in the lives of our people.

We need the Holy Spirit to put into our hearts the fire for tolerance, fire to fight indifference, fire that is constructive and fire to build the community of God’s people. The fire we need in our hearts is not a destructive fire of pettiness, apathy and jealousy, not a fire for bigotry or hatred, not a fire burning to destroy one another nor a fire for mistrust and misunderstanding: it is the fire of love that will recreate the face of the earth: Come Holy Spirit and fill the hearts of the faithful and renew the face of the earth. Come and conquer the indifference in the world, to fight the battles of our hearts, the internal battles of the flesh such as: “immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies and the like” (Gal. 5:19-21).

Send us the fire of the Spirit to plant in our hearts the fruit of the Spirit such as: “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal.5:22-23). The fire of the Spirit will guarantee us its seven gifts of: “…wisdom and understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge and fear of the Lord and his delight shall be the fear of the Lord” (Is. 11: 2-3) This is the fire that we need and until we have this fire in the church we will be ineffective; the oxygen will be withdrawn from our lukewarm fire and it will be blown away and instead of heat we have coldness, in place of warm we feel weak, empty, miserable, sad, unhappy, lifeless and dead. Erma Bombeck told a story about a little boy at church with his mother. He was a good boy, quiet and well behaved. He didn’t cause any problems. But every once in a while he would stand up in the pew, turn around, look at the people behind him and smile at them. His smile was infectious, and soon everybody behind him was starting to smile back at him, too. It was all going fine until the mother realized what the little boy was doing. When she did she grabbed him by his ear and twisted it a bit, told him to sit down and remember that he was in church. Then he started sniffling and crying, and she turned to him and said, “That’s better.” That’s the kind of church many of us are comfortable with, a sad and lifeless church, a church where everyone would sit with drawn and sad faces as if we are in mourning. And that is why our churches are dead, empty and uninteresting.

People no longer go to church because we don’t seem to have something to offer them, we preach a gospel without good news. Our preaching is without content and poorly delivered, putting everyone to sleep instead of putting fire in their stomach for action. The joy of the gospel is not on our faces because we have no fire of love in our hearts. Those who go to church are no more burning with zest, zeal and fire, the type that was blazing on the day of Pentecost. When the apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit they went out and preached the Word, living the life of the Spirit and bearing the fruit of love. People saw their lives and the audacity of hope they preached, they followed the Lord and were converted to the faith. They listened, they heard, they saw the joy of the Gospel in their lives and the hope in their eyes, being filled with joy at all times, they were impressed by what they saw and heard and so were convinced that the Lord was calling them to change their lives and experience what they apostles had: they wanted Jesus in their lives. They heard the apostles as they spoke in tongues and realized that they were speaking the language of love in praise of God. That is what we need in our church today without which our church cannot and will not be on fire.

Let us pray that we may be filled with the fire of the Spirit and be transformed into people of faith; courageous preachers, lovers of God and lovers of God’s people. Help us to go out and make a difference in the world, for a different world cannot be built by indifferent people and same is true of our church. If we do not have the fire of love in ourselves, what was said of Christ will be said of us: He saved others, but he cannot save himself. God bless you!