A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. On the evening of that first day of the week, even though the disciples had locked the doors of the place where they were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood before them. Peace, he said, be with you. And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The sight of the lord, the disciples rejoiced.
Peace be with you, he said again. As the father has sent me, so I send you. Then he breathed on them and said, receive the holy spirit. If you forgive men's sins, they are forgiven them. If you hold them bound, they are held bound.
And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord. There are different gifts but the same spirit. There are different ministries, but the same lord. There are different works, but the same god who accomplishes all of them in one. These words as you recall are from the day's second reading and are are from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians.
The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. It was one day that a Jewish young man who'd been brought up by a princess fled Egypt because he had murdered an Egyptian. He wound up by becoming the husband of a young lady who was very prominent in that part of the peninsula and became the son-in-law of her father, Jethro. It be befell this young man whose name was Moses, to become a shepherd for his father in law's sheep in the wilderness of Horeb, in the land of Midian.
And so day after day, night after night, this young man was out there with the sheep, a desolate place as it is today. It hasn't changed much. It's not a desert in the sense of the Sahara, but it's it's a place where there's something like Arizona. A lot of sand, a lot of scrub, and heat in the day, cold at night, and the the dangers that have always there to threaten his flock. And the same thing day after day after day, A monotonous life if you could ever think of one.
A pointless life, really, if you could think of one. Anybody could have done the job, really. So we can easily imagine how dull, how bored this young Jew was under these conditions until one day. Very same desert, the very same monotony, the very same boredom, the same the same hot sun, the same cold nights, he saw a bush on fire blazing, and yet the bush wasn't consumed. And then he heard a voice from that bush saying, take off your sandals because the ground on which you stand is holy ground.
Ground. The ground on which you stand is holy ground. And that was was the beginning of Moses' career of leading the people into the promised land. That is life. I don't care what you are, what kind of jobs we have.
There's a certain monotony. There's a certain aimlessness from time to time to we say, oh, what is it all worth? Because we even we either succeed in what we're trying to do, and we get what we want and worked and sweated and prayed for and find it's not at all that great, or we don't get it, and then we are crushed. Unless we realize that the ground on which we stand notice, present tense, not yesterday, and certainly not the future, not in some make believe fictional imaginative imagined world, but the ground on which we stand today because that's the only reality. And the only reality of the day is the moment that you're existing and you're living in.
That's the only reality. There's no reality to the past and certainly none to the future. And so that is the theme I want to lay before you today on this Pentecost Sunday. The ground on which you, individually you, stand is holy, h o l y, holy, because it can make you holy. And that's where God wants you to be made a saint on the ground where you are.
Anything else is fiction. Now on the day of Pentecost, whatever else happened, this did happen. It's the anniversary of the church. It's the birthday of the church. Notice I'm not saying people of God.
I'm talking about the mystical body of Christ. Why we have eliminated that from our terminology, I'll never know. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about the church coming into existence, incarnate, just as real as the day that baby took shape in the womb of a virgin Jewish girl. Just as real that we have Jesus Christ, the son of Mary.
Now we have Jesus Christ living in his members, in those who have become incarnate with him in his church with a capital c, which some publications now do not use. Everything's a small c. But there's a capital c for this meaning of church, which some people like to call the people of God. What we're talking about here is not just the people who are living in the battle of the present. We are talking about the church of Jesus Christ incarnate, given birth, given reality on that first Pentecostal day.
That's what we're talking about, and that is the church, which, of course, is composed of those Christians baptized who are in the flesh and on the battlefront in this life and struggling to make it. But we are also talking about those who have struggled, who have passed on, who have made it, and are with god face to face in heaven. And don't forever forget, we are also including those who are on route, who have left this world, who are in purgatory, on route to their heavenly reward. That is the body of Christ, the mystical body of Christ. We are bound as a unit.
Never forget this. You are never alone. Never alone. You are in a royal priesthood. Every single one of Christ's baptized faithful, everyone, never forget.
Never never allow your vision of the church to shrink to a parish, to a group, to a tiny handful. Never. The church, it goes beyond time and space because it's Jesus Christ's mystical body. We are the warriors. The saints have made it, and then you have those in between in some way preparing themselves so they can completely enjoy the rewards which come to being faithful to God.
Now Vatican two stresses this. This isn't some new doctrine. What I'm saying is the old doctrine, and you think that Vatican II had eliminated. Let me give you just two quotations even at the chance of boring. In the in the in the Vatican's document on the sacred liturgy, listen.
All who belong to Christ and possess his spirit make one church. Charity unites those who have reached their heavenly reward, those in purgatory, and those who are still pilgrims on the earth. That's a direct quotation. That's what the count that's the language of the council. They don't talk about the people of god, not in this context.
And then in the document on the laity, listen, on all Christians rest the noble obligation of working to bring all men throughout the world to hear and to accept the divine message of salvation. Salvation. That's my point. How do you do that? You and me.
We're not going to do it in the same way, but we are obliged to do it in this mystical body of Christ which is moving. That's where I am operating. I am not operate I am never operating alone in a one little tiny human being. Never. Never.
Never. I'm operating operating in the vastness of the mystical body of Jesus Christ. The warriors in the trenches, those who are preparing for heaven, and those who are in heaven. We are one. That's the company we keep, and that's the company I work in.
And there's where I have the obligation to go and teach all nations. Come to teach them everything that I have commanded you, our lord said. Notice on the ascension, his last message was one of action. Action. Going therefore, teach ye all nations, but teach them what I have commanded you, not your own stuff, not your own opinions, what I have commanded you.
And behold, I'm with you all days even to the end of the world. Now how do we do this? How can we be apostles? How can we be Lucifer's carriers of the light when we have our obligations to make a living, to be responsible members of a household, to see that our children get a chance in this life, which is no mean thing today? It's getting harder all the time.
How can I do that and at the same time carry out my obligation to be a follower of Jesus Christ carrying his message, bringing salvation to the world? I'll tell you how. By standing and recognizing the ground on which you stand. Where do you stand? There's where you will find salvation, and there's where you're going to carry out your mission.
And I'm I'm the same boat. We're all there. There are many ministries, Saint Paul says, but one body. One body. That's terrific.
There's nothing mystical about this. It's real. Everything we do is though is a gesture, is in reality a realization of our potential as Christians. Everything. The ground on which you stand is holy ground.
Not something, if only I were this, if only I had been that, if only I had this different upbringing, if only if only I had more money, if only I had less money, if only I was married, if only I wasn't married. This is all moonshine. As my great friend C. S. Lewis would call it, moonshine.
It's not even the reality of the moon. Of course not. It's just that moonshine. It's the foam on the beer. That's what it is.
The reality is my recognition. Take off your sandals. The ground on which you stand is holy ground. Realize it. And when that vision or whatever it was that Moses saw, when that disappeared, what did Moses see?
He was still the same man, and yet he was totally transformed. Totally transformed. As I came to know a man at Lourdes whose life was trans transformed, not that he was cured of his illness, but he was transformed to see that the ground on which he stood was holy ground. His disability, his invalidism was his ground. Now, of all people that I know who have sensed this and expressed it beautifully is Newman, John Henry Cardinal Newman.
I have two quotations from him, one from his discourses to mixed congregations on the end of life, the will of God, and then a meditation. Allow me to just to read a conflation from both of them. Remember, Newman knew what he was talking about. When Newman became a Catholic, he left his friends, he left Oxford, he left everything that he held dear and precious. Even as a Catholic, he became very much suspect.
He was nearly he was nearly condemned by Rome. Nothing that he ever tried to do succeeded, not a single thing succeeded, and he never tried anything except under the authority of the church. That's the new one who's speaking. He says, each man and woman has his or her special part at present. Present.
Present. Present tense. Sunday, June 3. Each has his work. Each has his mission.
Not to indulge his passions, not to make money, not to get a name in the world, not to save himself trouble, not to follow his bent, not to be selfish and self will, but to do what god puts on him to do. Isn't that bad news? I ask. Who has said that better? Maybe except Newman in what follows.
This is from to his discourse to mixed congregations. God has not created us for nothing. Therefore, I will trust him. Wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. God knows what he is about.
He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desperate. Make my spirit sink, hide the future from me. Still, he knows what he is about.
Keep that in mind. There's going to be many a time when you will be in darkness about that. When you'll say, my god, what is life all about? What in the world am I doing? What all of this is so nugatory.
It is so useless. It is so pointless. Where am I going? I'm not being fulfilled. I'm following my bent.
Of course, this is all egotism speaking, you know, all of it. Because we're forgetting that god didn't create me for me. He created me for himself. See, we forget that. God knows what he is about.
We have a work to do, and unless we do it, that work will never be done. So in conclusion, I want to briefly recall a story I've used from Luther Youngdahl, who was then in 1950 governor of Minnesota. And he told this story in 1950, never forgotten it. That's forty years ago. After the second world war, he says, in a German village, the villagers assisted by a lot of our own soldiers, we could try to rebuild the church, their little village church, and they did.
And then they tried to reconstruct the inside of the church. One of the main things was a a marble statue of Christ which had been over the altar. And they even gathered up the pieces of that statue and put them together, and they had the statue almost complete. They could not find the hands. So on the day of the reconsecration of the church, the statue was in its niche, but there was a plaque underneath the statue which said, I have no other hands than yours.
In the name of the father, of the son, and holy spirit. Amen.