PRAYING FOR THE BREATH

OF THE SPIRIT

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is, "Praying for The Breath of the Spirit."

Today is the feast of Pentecost.

Pentecoste – is the Greek word for 50 days. Today is 50 days after Easter.

It's called the Birthday of the Church – hang onto that word "birth".

It's the day – we believe as Christians - that the Holy Spirit came into our world in a new way.

BREATH

The title of my homily is, "Praying for the Breath of the Spirit."

We know what breath is like. We're breathing in and out all day long –whether we're aware of it or not. When the weather is cold – we can see breath coming out of people's mouths.

I’ve seen the Grand Canyon and the Grand Cayman Islands, but I’ve never seen the breath taking scene a birth of a new baby is. I’ve heard a dozen times that when a new baby is born, one of the first things to do – is to get that baby breathing.

When a person dies, the breath of life goes out of them.

When a person drowns – or they stop breathing – EMT people – or doctors or nurses – or anyone with training – they try to get the person breathing –giving them artificial respiration.

One of the first teachings in various religions – one of the first steps – in many meditation programs – is to ask people to become aware of their breath.

Breathe in! Breathe out! Breathe in. Breathe out.

BOOK OF GENESIS

The book of Genesis begins very dramatically when it comes to the creation of the first person: Adam — meaning earth.

One story has God from afar — giving commands — and there is light, sky, stars, water, the birds and fish and trees, and all kinds of animals and wild beasts, and then God made us in God’s own image — and all is good.

Then there is a second creation account when God makes — sculpts  - creates the first man from the clay of the earth — and then breathes life into that sculpture.

Then realizing this person is all alone — and it's not good to be alone — God creates woman — out of the first man. God casts the first man into a deep sleep and pulls out his rib and then fleshes out of that — the first woman — Eve — the mother of all the living.

It's very poetic — very dramatic — very visual — and in a certain sense — a very real way of picturing how we came about.

The writers of Genesis didn't know what we know today — about how we evolved — and we still don't know exactly how life — started. We just know it took billions of years — in a slow crawl till we got to the first humans.

When we are young our lungs are great. Breathing is as easy as the A-B-C’s.

When we are older, shortness of breath sometimes stops us in our tracks and we have to stop to lean on a banister, a tree, or a wall.

We need air to live — to breathe — to make this planet work — and everything is interconnected — water, oxygen, lungs, life.

SPIRIT

The next big observation about life is that people have good days and bad days.

People lose their spirit.

People run out of gas.

People lose their breath.

People get tired — sometimes tired of living.

Just as someone can see a sail on a sailboat — stop — just sit still —because there is no wind — and the boat won't go anywhere — just drifting on the waters — so too human beings drift — drag — down, down themselves.

Then people see the wind pick up and the boat starts moving — full sail —ahead.

So too we see people who were down come back to life. They get a fresh breath of life — a second wind.

Poets, preachers, teachers noticed these things and pointed this out to people.

FIRE

People know about breath and wind — invisible — but we can feel our lungs go in and out. We can see — especially here in Annapolis — sails billow out with wind.

Anyone who has played or worked with fire — knows that fire feeds on air and itself.

Watch boy scouts trying to start a fire. Watch someone trying to get a fire place going. Air is a necessity.

Anyone who has watched altar servers blow out the candles after Mass have seen them blow the wind away from the wick — or put one of those candle putter outers over the flame.

Watch fire fighters and see how difficult it is to deal with a fire when wind kicks in and up.

SO WHEN IT COMES TO GOD

So when it comes to God, we can't see God — except in Jesus — but Jesus liked to tell us about his Father — and also about the third person in God: the And two key images for the Spirit of God is wind and fire — breath and fire.

So Jesus talked about lighting a fire under people. Red — fire — igniting —passion — is something God wants of us — to be passionate about love and service and making life better for others.

So Jesus talked about breathing and sending a new wind — to shake us —to enliven us — to get us moving.

So when it comes to God — especially God the Holy Spirit — the key thing is to pray to the Holy Spirit for life — for courage — forgiveness — peace —passion — strength.

That's the stuff in the readings for this feast.

The disciples — the apostles — the friends of Jesus had lost Jesus. It was like the fire went out, the air was knocked out of them, they were filled with fear and this mighty wind shook the house where they were hiding out —and new life, a new fire came into them —and they burst out of that locked upper room and changed the world.

Their bodies got moving again — as if they were reborn — a new Genesis hit them.

In today's gospel they discovered that when we forgive ourselves and others — when we do that we receive a new Spirit —new life — but if we hold onto the past, the mistakes, we are dead.

CONCLUSION

This morning I preached a different sort of a sermon.

But let me end the same way.

I like to stress using our rosary – not just for Hail Mary’s.

Today I would suggest taking your rosary beads and simply pray on the 59 beads of one’s rosary, “Come Holy Spirit!”

Close your eyes and slowly try it. It takes about 4 minutes.

Or take your rosary and just say a one word prayer – 59 times.

What one word prayer. Today’s sequence for Pentecost has the famous Vene Sante Spiritus prayer. Notice it contains a whole bunch of one word prayers. Close your eyes and with rosary in hand, pray slowly these same words: Light, Shine, Comfort, Welcome, Solace, Renew, Heal, Forgive…..

VENI SANCTE  SPIRITUS

INTRODUCTION

The title of my reflection for  today  is, “Veni Sancte Spiritus.”

This will be an information type sermon.

Relax – I am aiming for 6 minutes – whereas I usually aim for 10 minutes with a Sunday homily.  This will be a bit much – appealing to the mind – more than the heart – and our minds can only take so much. If this is a bomb, it will only be a 6  minute bomb. Relax. I spent  my preparation time doing some research on this Latin hymn, “Veni Sancte Spiritus.”

SEQUENCES

Veni Sancte Spiritus  is the Latin name for  this  hymn – called a sequence - for Pentecost  found here in the missalette on page 173.

It’s in Latin and English.

It’s the sequence for today’s Feast of Pentecost.

It’s one of the 5 sequences  we find in the liturgy – established with the Roman Missal of 1570 – a new Missal that  was called for by the Council of Trent [1545 to 1563]. 

The 5 sequences are:

1.    “Victimae Paschali Laudes ”  It’s for Easter -  (To the Paschal Victim give praise)

2.    “Veni Sancte Spiritus” - Come Holy Spirit – the one for today.

3.    “Lauda Sion”  - (Praise O Sion) – the one for Corpus Christi.

4.    “Stabat Mater” - (Stood the Mother sad and weeping)  for the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows – September 15.

5.    “Dies Irae” (Day of Wrath) – for All Souls Day – November 2^nd.

It’s my experience that these sequences  are rarely used here at St. Mary’s – with the exception of the Stabat Mater – which Harry Thomson plays every Friday night during Lent  at the Stations of the Cross – and Lauda Sion – which we sing at the 12:30 Corpus Christi Mass and Procession – which is coming up in a two weeks – June 22^nd.   You can find that sequence in the Missalette on pages 178-179.

Sequence means “following” – as in the fancy avant-garde word "segue"  [seg way] – a word I’m sure you’ve  heard various people use in the past few years – meaning “what follows without pause” – and the sequence was a hymn that followed the reading before the gospel.

Before Trent  there were many more of these sequences – but with the new Roman Missal following Trent,   it seems the 5 best were picked.

Down thought the centuries  various famous musicians and composers came up with beautiful  renditions of these sequences.

If you like to do Google or computer search,  you can listen to various compositions in Gregorian Chant  and other types of music the Veni Sancte Spiritus as well as the other sequences.

As you know from time to time – big time changes are made in Church prayers and practices and music .  As you know the Council of Trent was the reform council by the Catholic Church – in answer to the Protestant Reformation  of Christianity  that started with Martin Luther and John Calvin and others. 1517 is the usual date given for the start of the Protestant Reformation – when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg, Saxony, Germany.

Our big council – Vatican II – 1962-65 – after years and years of calls for changes  called for a reform on that same Roman Missal. Then  the new missal was called the Sacramentary. Two years ago a new translation of that came out, called once again, “The Roman Missal.”   

At present there are calls for a reform of this new Roman Missal – because of complaints of a  too literal translation from the Latin. If you hear us priests mixing up words – and getting tongue tied at times – it’s not just creeping dementia and old age.

THIS SEQUENCE: VENI  SANCTE SPIRITUS

Okay – having said all that, how to come to a helpful conclusion?.

Besides listening to some religious  music, what else?

Okay let me make once more a plug for a very practical spiritual practice. I love to say, “Rosary beads can be used for more than Hail Mary’s.”

I would assume everyone here has a rosary.

Simply during the next week – it’s called the Octave of Pentecost – take your rosary and pray on the 59 beads the simple prayer, “Come Holy Spirit” or if you love Latin, “Veni  Sancte Spiritus.”

It takes 3 minutes to say, “Come Holy Spirit” or “Veni Sancte Spiritus” – with the 59 beads of the rosary.

Close your eyes in prayer and say that prayer – 59 times - praying that the Holy Spirit come into your life.

Or you can go through the Pentecost Sequence and pick out just  one word  from the sequence and say that word for 59 times on the beads. There are some nice words in this sequence.  For example pray any one of these words 59 times on your beads: comfort, welcome, refresh, renew, strengthen, heal, wash, forgive, enrich, rest, cool, warm, melt, guide, save.

Try that for prayer – and getting lost in prayer – in God – in the Spirit.

CONCLUSION

Come Holy Spirit. Veni Sancte Spiritus.

COME HOLY GHOST!

Poem for Today - June 8, 2014

GOD’S GRANDEUR

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil:

And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

© Gerard Manley Hopkins

THANK YOU GOD,

FOR CREATING ME!

Poem for Today - June 7, 2014

BEFORE I WAS BORN

Before I was born your love enveloped me.

You turned nothing into substance, and created me.

Who etched out my frame? Who poured

Me into a vessel and moulded me?

Who breathed a spirit into me? Who opened

The womb of Sheol and extracted me?

Who has guided me from youth-time until now?

Taught me knowledge, and cared wondrously for me?

Truly, I am nothing but clay within your hand.

It is you, not I, who have really fashioned me.
I confess my sin to you, and do not say

That a serpent intrigued, and tempted me.

How can I conceal from you, my faults, since

Before I was born your love enveloped me?

© Solomon Ibn Gabirol

(translated by David Goldstein)

D-DAY - JUNE 6, 1944

Poem for Today - June 6, 2014

CARENTAN, O CARENTAN

Trees in the old days used to stand
And shape a shady lane
Where lovers wandered hand in hand
Who came from Carentan.

This was the shining green canal
Where we came two by two
Walking at combat-interval.
Such trees we never knew.

The day was early June, the ground
Was soft and bright with dew.
Far away the guns did sound,
But here the sky was blue.

The sky was blue, but there a smoke
Hung still above the sea
Where the ships together spoke
To towns we could not see.

Could you have seen us through a glass
You would have said a walk
Of farmers out to turn the grass,
Each with his own hay-fork.

The watchers in their leopard suits
Waited till it was time,
And aimed between the belt and boot
And let the barrel climb.

I must lie down at once, there is
A hammer at my knee.
And call it death or cowardice,
Don't count again on me.

Everything's all right, Mother,
Everyone gets the same
At one time or another.
It's all in the game.

I never strolled, nor ever shall,
Down such a leafy lane.
I never drank in a canal,
Nor ever shall again.

There is a whistling in the leaves
And it is not the wind,
The twigs are falling from the knives
That cut men to the ground.

Tell me, Master-Sergeant,
The way to turn and shoot.
But the Sergeant's silent
That taught me how to do it.

O Captain, show us quickly
Our place upon the map.
But the Captain's sickly
And taking a long nap.

Lieutenant, what's my duty,
My place in the platoon?
He too's a sleeping beauty,
Charmed by that strange tune.

Carentan O Carentan
Before we met with you
We never yet had lost a man
Or known what death could do. 

© Louis Simpson

MARY KARR

Poem for Today - June 5, 2014

A  PERFECT MESS 

For David Freedman

I read somewhere

that if   pedestrians didn’t break traffic laws to cross

Times Square whenever and by whatever means possible,

      
the whole city

would stop, it would stop.

Cars would back up to Rhode Island,

an epic gridlock not even a cat

could thread through. It’s not law but the sprawl

of our separate wills that keeps us all flowing. Today I loved

the unprecedented gall

of the piano movers, shoving a roped-up baby grand

up Ninth Avenue before a thunderstorm.

They were a grim and hefty pair, cynical

as any day laborers. They knew what was coming,

the instrument white lacquered, the sky bulging black

as a bad water balloon and in one pinprick instant

it burst. A downpour like a fire hose.

For a few heartbeats, the whole city stalled,

paused, a heart thump, then it all went staccato.

And it was my pleasure to witness a not

insignificant miracle: in one instant every black

umbrella in Hell’s Kitchen opened on cue, everyone

still moving. It was a scene from an unwritten opera,

the sails of some vast armada.

And four old ladies interrupted their own slow progress

to accompany the piano movers.

each holding what might have once been

lace parasols over the grunting men. I passed next

the crowd of pastel ballerinas huddled

under the corner awning,

in line for an open call — stork-limbed, ankles

zigzagged with ribbon, a few passing a lit cigarette

around. The city feeds on beauty, starves

for it, breeds it. Coming home after midnight,

to my deserted block with its famously high

subway-rat count, I heard a tenor exhale pure

longing down the brick canyons, the steaming moon

opened its mouth to drink from on high ...

©  Mary Karr

WENDELL  BERRY

Poem for Today  - June 4, 2014

A POEM ON HOPE

It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old,

For hope must not depend on feeling good
And there is the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight.
You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality
Of the future, which surely will surprise us,
…And hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction
Any more than by wishing. But stop dithering.
The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them?
Tell them at least what you say to yourself.

Because we have not made our lives to fit
Our places, the forests are ruined, the fields eroded,
The streams polluted, the mountains overturned. Hope
Then to belong to your place by your own knowledge
Of what it is that no other place is, and by
Your caring for it as you care for no other place, this
Place that you belong to though it is not yours,
For it was from the beginning and will be to the end

Belong to your place by knowledge of the others who are
Your neighbors in it: the old man, sick and poor,
Who comes like a heron to fish in the creek,
And the fish in the creek, and the heron who manlike
Fishes for the fish in the creek, and the birds who sing
In the trees in the silence of the fisherman
And the heron, and the trees that keep the land
They stand upon as we too must keep it, or die.

This knowledge cannot be taken from you by power
Or by wealth. It will stop your ears to the powerful
when they ask for your faith, and to the wealthy
when they ask for your land and your work.
Answer with knowledge of the others who are here
And how to be here with them. By this knowledge
Make the sense you need to make. By it stand
In the dignity of good sense, whatever may follow.
Speak to your fellow humans as your place
Has taught you to speak, as it has spoken to you.
Speak its dialect as your old compatriots spoke it
Before they had heard a radio. Speak
Publicly what cannot be taught or learned in public.

Listen privately, silently to the voices that rise up
From the pages of books and from your own heart.
Be still and listen to the voices that belong
To the streambanks and the trees and the open fields.
There are songs and sayings that belong to this place,
By which it speaks for itself and no other.

Found your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground
Underfoot. Be it lighted by the light that falls
Freely upon it after the darkness of the nights
And the darkness of our ignorance and madness.
Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you,
Which is the light of imagination. By it you see
The likeness of people in other places to yourself
In your place. It lights invariably the need for care
Toward other people, other creatures, in other places
As you would ask them for care toward your place and you.

No place at last is better than the world. The world
Is no better than its places. Its places at last
Are no better than their people while their people
Continue in them. When the people make
Dark the light within them, the world darkens.

© Wendell Berry