Saturday, May 26, 2012

Renew

Renew

May 27, 2012 
Pentecost 2012 B 
By Rev. Joe McCloskey, SJ 

Piety 

Piety is shown in our lives by the working of the Holy Spirit in the gifts we have received. The Spirit is the love of the Father for the Son and the love of the Son for the Father meeting in the personhood of the Spirit. The gifts of the Spirit are spelled out in our lives by the uniqueness of our love where the fruits of the Spirit find expression in whom we are in our service of one another. Galatians in chapter 5 lists the fruits of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control are the fruits of the spirit where the uniqueness of our love finds expression. These fruits are all expressions of the golden rule of Charity. “Do unto others as your would have them do unto you.”The victory of Christ won over death has its perfection expressed in gift of our lives which we give to one another. Piety is the obviousness of love. We have all been baptized into one body. We were all given to drink of one Spirit. Together we are the mystical body of Christ. 

Study 

We study how to make the Spirit welcome in our hearts. Our study allows us to fill out our lives with the gifts of the Spirit. Wisdom, knowledge, Counsel and Understanding are the sign posts of the Spirit in our minds. These gifts of the Spirit come to us through our faithfulness to love. Piety, fortitude and fear of the Lord are the gifts that touch our wills. Those who belong to Christ are willing to climb his cross and crucify their passions and evil desires with prayer, mortification and good works. How we push ourselves beyond our comfort zones shows forth our openness to the workings of the Spirit in our lives. 

Action 

For every need of the people of God there is a new coming of the Spirit which allows us to meet the crises with the freshness of the Spirit’s life within us. We need to be the line of strongest resistance to the works of the flesh. We need to stand up against immorality, impurity, lust, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies and the like. If we live in the Spirit, the gifts of the spirit will shine out in our lives in our restraint of our passions.  Pentecost is the source of what our world needs from us if we are going to make a difference in a world gone mad with indifference to the things of God. The Spirit of God lives in our love for one another. We are called by the Spirit to be God’s love for each other.

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