Most of you have been
faithful Catholics throughout your lives. You have attended Mass weekly from looong time ago. You have lived moral
lives and searched for ways to serve our Lord, particularly in your families. Most
of you do not just come to St. Vincent on Sundays, you pray everyday! As human
beings you fall, but you also rise up again through the sacraments. Most of you
are very happy to be members of the Catholic Church. You see how the Holy
Spirit continually works in our Mother the Catholic Church. Of course you have been
disappointed by those priests and religious who have not been faithful to their
vocations, but for every one who has caused scandal you know of hundreds of
others who have been good servants of the Lord. In short: you know that the
Catholic Church is the Church founded by the Lord and has been faithful to Him for
two thousand years[1].
But then you also
see how the Lord is working in other faiths. Just right here, very close to our
community there are Christians,
Methodists, Baptists, Pentecostals, and any other church, people who are
living for God, serving Him in the poor… We have to be very conscious to the fact
that the Spirit of God is alive and working through those within the Catholic
Church, and those who themselves do
not share in the seven sacraments or might not even believe in Jesus Christ.
We just heard something
similar in the first reading: Eldad and Medad were not in the tent. They
weren’t present with the 70 who received the Spirit back in the days of Moses. Yet,
Eldad and Medad still received the Spirit and he Spirit still empowered them.
My brother, my sister,
the Spirit is present in the Church. Jesus is present in the Blessed Sacrament.
But the Spirit is also present where we, foolish human beings with our feeble
attempts to limit God’s power, least expect to find Him.
Eldad and Medad,
the man baptizing in Jesus’ name: no one can control the Spirit. He is God, the
action of Love that has been unleashed upon the world through the Gift of the
Father and the Sacrifice of the Son is so huge!
The salvation
brought in Christ through the Spirit works beyond the Church's frontiers.
So, Father, what
then, is the Catholic attitude towards the followers of other religions? Well, we
accept them as fellow human beings and we respect their religious faith and we
seek to understand and appreciate all that is beautiful, good and true in their
religion. We also wish to share the fullness of the Christian faith with
them–not obliterating their culture and religion, but allowing it to be
fulfilled and completed in the belief and practice of Christianity. In this process we do not wish to impose
anything on anyone. We propose we do not impose. Neither do we condemn
anyone to hell. No Catholic–not even the pope–can pronounce judgment on
anyone’s eternal soul. That is God’s job. This allows us, therefore, to be
perfectly tolerant and accepting of all.
The invitation
for this Sunday is to be simple of heart, and not think that we own the
monopoly of salvation. It's great to think that God's Spirit blows where it
wants and gives salvation to whom He wants.
This evening [morning]
we thank God today for the wonders of the Holy Spirit, in our lives, in our
parish and in the world. We thank God for being born in the Catholic Church or
received into it there; we also thank God that He continues to pour out His
spirit around the earth and calling everyone, absolutely everyone, to Him ■
[1] Sunday 30th September, 2012,
26th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Readings: Numbers 11:25-29. The precepts of the
Lord give joy to the heart. Ps 18(19):8, 10, 12-14. James 5:1-6. Mark 9:38-43,
45, 47-48 [St Jerome].