Homily, Pentecost Sunday B
There’s one question I would often ask the Confirmation students each year that gets to the heart of this Feast of Pentecost: What is the specific difference between the grace of Baptism and the sacramental grace of Confirmation with respect to the Holy Spirit? “Well,” the students would offer a guess, “in Confirmation we receive the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit,” maybe because they’d just been learning about these in their classes. But we receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit in Baptism as well, so that’s not a real difference. “Maybe it’s the fruits of the Holy Spirit, then.” No. The main difference between Baptism and Confirmation is like the difference between receptivity and then proclamation, the difference between discipleship and then mission and evangelization, between sitting at the Master’s feet and being able to learn from Jesus to then going out and sharing that faith with others.
In Baptism, the first sacrament we receive, the Holy Spirit sanctifies us, makes us a new creation in Christ, and places God’s seal upon us, especially to enable us to take part in divine worship, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Church’s liturgy. Baptism makes us receptive to the grace of the other sacraments, receptive to the Word of God proclaimed at Mass and handed on to us through religious instruction. In Baptism, the Holy Spirit prepares us to receive every grace we need towards salvation, to continue to grow and be formed by God into His own image and likeness. So the graces of Baptism largely involve making us receptive to the actions of God.
The sacramental grace of Confirmation, on the other hand, strengthens us not only to continue receiving the helps and guidance of the Holy Spirit for ourselves, but especially so that we can bear public witness to the Gospel of Christ to the people around us, even amidst trials and persecution. Not just to receive the graces of God, but to share that grace with others. The grace of Confirmation is the grace of this Feast of Pentecost. When the Fire of the Holy Spirit took these frightened Apostles, who—the Gospel tells us—even after they had witnessed Jesus Risen from the dead, they were often gathered together in the upper room behind locked doors for fear of the Jews, for fear of what they might have to suffer as followers of One so recently crucified. But at Pentecost the perfect love of the Holy Spirit casts out all fear from their hearts, and they go out beyond those doors to proclaim Jesus to the crowds gathered in Jerusalem. And thousands are baptized on that very day.
The Acts of the Apostles go on to tell us that after Pentecost they would even have the strength to rejoice in their sufferings, in their sharing of the Cross of Christ, being jailed and put on trial before the same Sanhedrin that condemned Jesus, being flogged and scourged as Jesus was when they refused to stop telling everyone about Him, ultimately bearing supreme witness by the shedding of their blood in martyrdom for the sake of His saving Gospel. This is the grace of Pentecost. This is the grace of Confirmation, not just to receive the grace of God, but to bear public witness to Christ, without or at least in spite of any fears we might have in doing so.
Do we believe that God still sends upon us the same Holy Spirit that He sent to His Apostles on the day of Pentecost? God has no other Spirit to give us, and He’s not stingy. He does not ration His Spirit. The Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit upon us whole and entire, in all the fullness of His power and divinity, “the Lord, the giver of life,” as we profess in the Creed each Sunday. The other conviction I have about Confirmation more and more in recent years is that we tend to wait far too long to request this sacrament for our children. If we’re really called to be Lifelong Catholic Missionary Disciples through God’s Love as our Bishop tells us, lifelong missionaries, and if the sacrament of Confirmation strengthens us specifically to bear public witness to Christ even in the midst of adversity—like the Apostles did at Pentecost—then it seems to me that even young kids could really benefit from the graces of Confirmation. If they’re old enough to talk, they’re old enough to tell others about Jesus. And they are often among His greatest witnesses. Not to mention all the filth, temptations and trials of faith that children are exposed to today at younger and younger ages. Could they not benefit from the grace of strengthening provided in Confirmation?
The world around us is in desperate need of the Light of Christ. Our homes, our schools, our workplaces, every relationship, and every human being need the Light of Christ. The Holy Spirit wants to help us as He helped the first Apostles to let the Light of the Gospel shine to everyone we meet. How well are we doing in our work and mission of spreading that Light through the spiritual and corporal works of mercy? God grant us the grace to be stirred into action, by the Fire of the Holy Spirit as those first Apostles were, to stop waiting around for someone else or for some other saint, but to become saints ourselves and fulfill our mission of bringing the Light of Christ to everyone we meet, not just to receive God’s love for ourselves, but to share it with others, bearing public witness to Christ in our daily lives with courage and zeal for the Gospel.
The Word Proclaimed 