"Come, Holy Spirit": NST 2013

“I am a person first.  I am a Christian second.  I am a Catholic third.”  Those were some of the opening words I shared on stage at NST 2013 before two hundred and fifty staff associates recently hired by the mission of Young Life.  For many, so I thought, having a Catholic on stage would be uncomfortable.  I figured that some might even object.  But I soon came to realize that the young people responding to God’s call to serve the lost and build the kingdom today resonated deeply with the vision of unity and mission, together, as one body in Christ.  I was profoundly touched.

Those words were not my own, truth be told.  I borrowed them from a dear friend of mine, a Catholic priest, who is in the midst of a painful trial.  His own commitment to unity and reconciliation had put him at odds with some who would rather dwell in the divisions of the past than to embrace a common future together.  Standing valiantly in the face of persecution, even at the hands of the church that he loves so dearly, he stated, “I am a person first.  I am a Christian second.  I am a Catholic priest third.”

What he was saying is that all of us as human beings are bound by a deep unity that begins in our personhood.  We are bound, each of us from every country and creed, by our common identity as children of God, image-bearers of the One who breathed life into our very souls.  This is the unity that allows us to see the face of God in a glorious diversity of humanity: in a Muslim who gave his coat to an impoverished stranger without counting the cost, in Young Life staff (Evangelical, mainline, Catholic or otherwise) who sacrifice their lives daily so that teenagers might know the love of God, in the kind gestures of the woman who served me breakfast this morning. 

What postmoderns can see, what postmoderns are yearning for, is a universal church, a church that is truly “catholic” (small ‘c’), that can lift up and glorify the face of Jesus Christ wherever He is found.  What postmoderns are waiting for is a love that transcends the divisions and heals the wounds of our past.  What postmoderns are beginning to see within Young Life and the Catholic Church is the power of the Holy Spirit to inspire a new Pentecost where people gather from every nation to speak, in their own cultures and languages, about the “wonderful things God has done”(Acts 2:11). 

As the liturgical season of Christmas draws to a close today, the united chorus of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” anticipates the next movement in God’s redemptive symphony – Resurrection, Renewal and the irresistible Revolution of Pentecost - "Come, Holy Spirit."

Come Holy Spirit,

Fill the hearts of your faithful

And kindle in them the fire of your love.

Send forth your Spirit

And they shall be created.

And You shall renew the face of the earth.

O, God,

Who by the light of the Holy Spirit,

Did instruct the hearts of the faithful,

Grant that by the same Holy Spirit

We may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations,

Through Christ Our Lord,

Amen.

~ Catholic prayer drawn from Psalm 104 and the Gregorian Sacramentary of the ninth century.