Taking it Home: Our Catholic faith tradition tells us that we have access to the long ago events of Jesus' life through people, the people we call the Church. Though we have not seen him nor touched him, Jesus is still alive in Spirit through the hearts and minds of people like you and me who believe. And through the inspiration of the Spirit, we live the memory of Jesus and make that memory a living and real presence to our lives now. 
   Unfortunately, our sprits now appear listless. The old ways of identifying with our Catholic faith tradition have grown tired and tried. It is getting harder to experience the Jesus who lived so longago because so few seem to know how to make that presence come alive. We live such individualized lives that the experience of community is seldom felt. As we celebrate the Solemnity of Pentecost this weekend, the celebration which recalls the sending of the Holy Spirit upon the Church, how do we revive that Spirit? 
  We begin to revive that Spirit when we truly experience what it means to be loved. Unfortunately, we do not always see ourselves as loved, particularly by a good and loving God. The Catholic faith tradition that most of us have experienced is that of a God who judges between good and bad and, mostly we are bad. We see ourselves as flawed and broken. This is not to say that we aren't flawed and broken, but the thing is that God loves us anyway and such love is greater than our sin and subsequent separation from God. The Easter joy that we have celebrated these past fifty days is that God has given us the gift of new life and this is the life that connects us to God and each other. We are a chosen and holy people made into living stones who are now God's people, living the original grace which God freely bestows. 
   Another way to revive our spirits is to see that for us, faith is not just about individual salvation. In our Catholic faith tradition salvation is available to all and is possible to achieve in and through the Church, in and through the community and in and through our relationships with others. In other words, salvation is a reality that is possible in the here and now of our lives and not as some distant hope. Dorothy Day a convert to the faith, who throughout her life identified with the poor and disadvantaged, chose to become a Catholic Christian because it is a church of the masses, a church that embraces the nododies and tells them that together they are somebody. The wisdom of our Catholic faith tradition is that Christ has and always will be present in all people, but especially in the least of our sisters and brothers. In the new age, Christ offers all people salvation through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In this age of the Spirit-filled Church, all human beings are invited into communion with the Lord and with each other. Human beings can be trusted with unity when they are incorporated into the one body of Christ.
   Reviving spirits then, is not a matter of the head, but of the heart. It is not just about ideas, but relationships. It is not a matter of growing in knowledge as it is in growing in love. And it is not just a matter of thinking religious thoughts as it is about living like Jesus. See our Catholic faith is about a living faith, which is a messy faith because it is grounded not merely in doctrines and dogmas, but in people and action. We become faithful by how we live and by what we do. In the end our Catholic faith tradition will, if we allow it, invite and test our commitment by asking us to question our religious experience as it says to us: "You say you love God; show me that love by how you put that love into action. You say that you have been baptized into the Spirit; show me how you live in that Spirit. You say you like to pray; show me by coming and praying with us together." And in this way we have access to the Jesus who lived and died so that we might have life and have it to the full.              

                                                                                                                                  Deacon John