Come Holy Spirit and fill the hearts of your faithful. And kindle in them the fire of your love!

Pentecost is often referred to as the birthday of the Church. But unlike most birthdays we celebrate, this is not a celebration of the Church being born 2,000 years ago, but ongoing celebration of the Church continuing to be born right here and right now.

Back in 2015, my youngest child Rebecca and her husband Charlie were expecting their first child. About half way through her pregnancy, Rebecca came to a stark realization that between being pregnant and being parents was this thing called birth, and it involved pain. Never the one to understate things, Rebecca had a few interesting conversations with various people about this. The birth of the Church is no different.

I suggest that the St. Isidore community knows a thing or two about this pain associated with birthing. 20 years ago, Pentecost was the Sunday after we heard the news that St. Isidore parish was being suppressed but the church would remain open as a mission church of one of the surrounding parishes. That weekend it was easy to identify with the disciples huddled in fear and confusion in that upper room. That Pentecost story was no longer something that happened 2000 years ago but one that we were living in the moment. And while I was not aware of any great wind or tongues of fire (well maybe some of those), over the next 13 months, we let the Spirit guide us to a point where in June 2005 the decision was made to leave St. Isidore parish intact.

Here we are again at Pentecost. We are at a point in our collaborative, in the Archdiocese, and in the Catholic Church in general where the lessons of today's feast are again something that we are experiencing here and now. So how do we open ourselves to the Spirit, and where the Spirit will lead us.

I think it is hard to understand who the Spirit is. Jesus is easiest for us to understand because he is a human being, like us. Jesus gave us a very human metaphor of parenting to help us understand God the Father. But who is the Spirit?

Like any person of the Trinity, the Spirit is a mystery. But just as Jesus used different stories and metaphors to try to help us begin to understand who the Father is, we can use our human experiences to begin to understand something about the Spirit, always remembering that no matter how much we start to understand, there is more about the Spirit we don't understand.

As anyone who has known me for more than a few minutes knows, I love language and especially that construct of language we call puns. I only half jokingly explain that one of the differences between my wife Betsy and I is that she loves children in a special way when they are infants, and I love children in a special way when they are old enough to understand puns. When my great granddaughter Rose was a little of over 4, she came up to me one day when I came to pick her up, and said, "PopPop ask me if you are a good grandfather." So I did, and she shook her head and said, "NO! You are a great grandfather!" and burst out laughting. In that joyful moment, I recognized some little bit of me in Rose. One way of understanding the Holy Spirit is that the Spirit is that experience of God that lives within us, that shapes us into the image of God in which we were made, by opening our hearts, minds, and souls to the reality of how much God loves us, loves me, loves you.

We are to let the Spirit transform us so that God, and maybe more importantly, others, can see a reflection, a recognizable bit of God in the way we live. In a way, our mission is to be punsters in the Spirit. We are to show the world around us a different meaning for almost everything that's important. Start with God: most people understand God as strict and judging and demanding; we are to show them God is loving and forgiving. Most people think that to overcome evil we need to use force and to dominate and control it; we are to show them that the only way to overcome evil is by loving and forgiving. Most people think the ideal person is independent; we are to show them that we humans are made for community and interdependence. We are to turn the groaning of creation from one of pain and suffering to that groan that comes from a deep recogition of the pun that God is speaking by His Word.

Pentecost is a feast for real disciples, such as all of us gathered today. We can celebrate Christmas and Easter in a way that puts all of the focus on what God is doing but ignores what we are called to in response. But Pentecost puts a lie to all the rationalizations we use to avoid being disciples. Pentecost reveals that it is not just about knowing Jesus, or being good, or just praying or going to church once in a while. Pentecost is about being filled with the Spirit Jesus has sent to us so that the Good News spills out of our hearts and lives in a way that people are affected; yes some will make fun of us, or worse. Pentectost demands we respond to the gift of the Spirit by building up the Body of Christ so that the kingdom of God comes here as it is in heaven.

All of that sounds exciting, and it is, just as the birth of a child is exciting. But we first have to go through the pain of childbirth or in the case of St. Isidore and St. Elizabeth of Hungary, churchbirth. No one but my daughter Rebecca could have given birth to my 7th grandchild Lincoln. And I dare say that no one experienced as much joy as she did by that birth. No one else can bring this collaborative community to the birth that the Spirit is leading us to. And if we enter fully into that birthing, no one will have greater joy at what the Spirit will bring to life. So I invite each of you, and all of you. to a wonderful birthday celebration this Pentecost.

Come Holy Spirit and fill the hearts of your faithful. And kindle in us the fire of your love!