Words on the Word
6. Sunday of Easter
Acts 15.1-29: Some men came down from Judea and taught.
Revelation 21.10-23: The angel showed me the holy city, Jerusalem.
John 14.23-29: The Spirit will remind you of all I have said.
Dear confirmandi!
In the sacrament of confirmation you receive ‘the seal of God’s gift, the Holy Spirit.’ Before you present yourself one by one to be anointed with sacred chrism, the bishop prays a magnificent prayer over you all. He extends his hand in an ancient gesture. Moses stood like that, with hands outstretched, when the Israelites passed through the Sea of Reeds; and again when they fought Amalec, their archenemy who wanted to destroy them. One doesn’t stand like that that while just waiting for the kettle to boil. The body’s posture shows that something momentous is going on. A connection is made between heaven and earth. God’s power is invoked on a people exposed.
In your case, today, the bishop calls down ‘the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and piety, the Spirit of the fear of God’.
If we have the rudiments of Biblical culture, our inner eye will see a procession of kings and prophets, of holy women and men who show us what it means to receive the Spirit. We think of King David dancing Spirit-drunk before the Ark; or of Elijah who, on Horeb, sensed the Spirit like a gentle breeze once the stormwind and thunder had passed. We recall that the Spirit ‘in the beginning’, while the earth was formless and void, ‘hovered upon the waters’. And of course we think of Mary ‘overshadowed by power from on high’, who by the Spirit conceived the Son of God, our Saviour. In this context, in the light of so many extraordinary happenings, the description of the Spirit’s work in our Gospel may seem a little tame.
For what is the promise given us? That the Spirit will help us to remember.
You find yourselves at a stage of life that naturally invites you to look ahead. It is a rich, exciting time. There are lots of questions to be answered. What will I do with my life? What will I aim for? Which profession will I choose? Will I meet someone I can love wholeheartedly, with whom I can start a family? Does God call me to his service?
One can feel quite dizzy standing like this, questioning, face to face with apparently limitless possibility. In such a setting it may seem pointless and dull to think of what lies behind. And does it really matter what happened, what was said, yesterday when what concerns me is the course I’ll follow tomorrow? The times in which we live tell us firmly that, no, it matters not. The times encourage us to forget in order, instead, to dream.
But that is an error.
We can all work out why from experience, whether we’re young or old. Think, for example, of what happens when conflicts arise in a family or group of friends. Someone we trust does or says something ugly. We feel hurt, humiliated. Trust withers. Suspicion spreads in us like an acid fog. In order to live such experience well, what’s needed is not forgetfulness. On the contrary: we must remember. Not in order to nurture grudges; but to engage with what is. If injustice has occurred, it must be evidenced. Only thus can we lucidly deal with it and forgive. If we pretend that what happened did not in fact take place, we shall never finish with things. We shall drag them along, then, as overweight luggage. They will condition our movements even should we take the wings of the dawn and settle at the far end of the sea.
To distinguish between what is and what is not, between mendacity and truth, reality and illusion, is fiendishly hard right now. The media feed us with impressions that often cannot be tested. How are we to know what is, and what isn’t, fake news? How are we to know where certain assertions come from, especially when so much discourse is generated artificially by blind algorithms? The problem is a real one. You young people are exposed to it all the time.
It will only get earnester. You will have to position yourselves before bullish politicians who maintain their countries’ ‘greatness’ on the basis of seductive slogans and wishful thinking. In Europe we rearm because we fear, even here in Norway, an attack from the East, where it is held that boundaries which define us do not really exist. We need, then, people who remember where these boundaries came from, why they were set. More generally, we struggle ever more to define and describe what a human being us; what constitutes us as women and men; when a person is allowed to live and when he or she is signed off to be put down. Here, too, remembrance is called for — clear remembering of life’s origin and goal, of the purpose of existence.
The agency of the Spirit, our Lord says in the Gospel, will especially recall all that hehas said. Jesus, the living Son of God, incarnate of the Virgin Mary, is Truth. By him, God’s eternal Word, all things were made: ‘apart from him nothing of what is came to be.’
To ‘recall’ the words of Jesus is about more than learning a few pious phrases by rote. It is about acquiring a true perception of reality, about seeking stable criteria that let us understand, discern, and choose well in order, thus, to contribute to a society founded on rock, not on shifting sands or in the middle of a sinking, fetid swamp.
My friends, today you position yourself publicly. It is an honourable thing to do! You declare yourselves Catholic Cristians. You affirm that there is a division between truth and untruth, that not everything is relative; and you place yourselves squarely under the banner of truth. Stick to that banner.
Be women and men who remember where you come from, where you are going. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Then you yourselves will walk securely. You will be a blessing to others. Christ mentions, in the Gospel, two character traits that will mark those who ‘remember all that I have said’: fearlessness and peace. That’s rare fare these days. But fare the world is hungry for, anxious and restless as it is.
Boundless is the Father’s gift to us in Christ, bestowed by the Holy Spirit. Let yourselves be gifted freely. Live good lives based on freedom, justice, reason, truth. Show yourselves worthy of God’s grace poured out upon you. Amen.
Sometimes we must pass through thickets, or whole woods, to get a view of the horizon.