This Sunday, in the middle of Advent, is referred to as Gaudete Sunday, which means rejoice! The First Reading resounds with the good news that the spirit of God is upon us because we have been anointed as His children. The Second Reading from Thessalonians then proclaims that we should “Rejoice always….without ceasing”. But amongst the number of directives that follow, Paul tells us “Do not quench the Spirit”. What does this urging mean for us and how do we carry it out?
First, we should note that Spirit is capitalized, so we know he is talking about the Holy Spirit. Second, quenching the Spirit (subduing him or suppressing him as its definition would indicate) must inherently mean (if we follow that logically) that the Spirit must have been there, within us, from our beginning, from the time of our Baptism. So what this is telling us is that the Holy Spirit is (as we know) is the voice of God that was gifted to us to live inside all of us in order to produce God’s character within us. Our tasks are twofold: 1) recognize that he is there (which is more than half the battle), and 2) Given that he represents the voice of God, listen to him and don’t impede him from showing through. When he is enabled to show through, he shows through as love, joy, patience, kindness, peace – all those important qualities.
As an illustration of task #1, recognizing that the Holy Spirit is dwelling inside us, there is a story that is told of Yates Pool, a famous oil field in West Texas. During the depression, this field was a sheep ranch owned by a man named Ira Yates. Mr Yates was not able to make enough money on his ranching operation to pay the principal and interest on his mortgage, so he was in danger of losing his ranch. With little money for food or clothes, his family, like many others of that time, had to live on government subsidy.
Day after day, as he grazed his sheep over those rolling West Texas hills, he was no doubt troubled about how he would pay his bills. Then a seismographic crew from an oil company came into the area and told Mr Yates that they’d like to have permission to drill a wildcat well on the property and he signed a lease to let them do it. Well, they struck oil.
At 1,100 feet they struck a huge oil reserve. And Mr Yates owned it all!
The day he purchased the land he received the oil and mineral rights. Yet, years after the discovery, he was still living on relief. He was a millionaire living in poverty! The problem? He wasn’t aware (he didn’t know) that oil was there. He owned the oil, but he did not possess it.
This is an illustration of the Christian life for many. The moment we become children of God through our Baptism, we become an heir of God, and all of his resources are made available to us. Everything we need - love, joy, patience, kindness, peace – all those qualities. We own them all, we just need to possess them. We just need to claim them!
That second task we have, once we acknowledge the Holy Spirit’s presence inside us as the voice of God, is to not impede him. We impede him, or “quench” him by not allowing the Spirit to show through in our words and actions. Gaudete Sunday reminds us to rejoice, to let out the Good News that we are owners of the richness of a Christian life.
Think about it- What do you do when you have good news? When your first child is born? When you get a new car? When you get an "A" on a test, or a promotion at work? What do you do? You go out and tell somebody about it. You probably tell many people about it! That is what we are called to do with our Catholic faith - let the word out. Can we ask ourselves today, to what extent does the way we live our lives demonstrate our conviction of faith, to share the Good News of Jesus?
A couple of years ago, while I was making a deposit at a teller station at the local bank, there was another man at the next station over, bantering with his teller while submitting his deposits to her. It so happened that his last deposit didn’t have a deposit ticket to go with it.
So the teller kiddingly said to him, “Oh, I just assumed that this last one is my tip!” To that, the man chuckled and said, “No, that wasn’t a tip. But” he said, “I’ll give you a tip…. Trust Jesus.”
Wow! At that point, I turned to the guy and said, “Hey, that’s one heck of a tip.” The teller, a fellow parishioner, agreed as well. After that exchange, both of us finished our transactions and went on our way.
As I was walking away from the bank, the thought occurred to me, ok deacon, would have I ever be so bold to make a comment like that? Would any of us dare to make a public witness to Jesus in that manner? Though this guy might have been a little over the top, it’s worth pondering.
We’ve all been gifted with different types of personalities, some of which are more likely to be more “aggressive” than others. But within all personalities, each of us have the ability to show more outward conviction of our faith, even if it’s just a modest measure like a religious article of clothing we wear, the way we decorate the house, or verbally, telling someone that you’ll pray for them, or asking for their prayers.
I was reading an article this week where the author, a pastor, was lamenting over the term “social distancing”, which we know implies that people should maintain a certain distance from others. In his mind, he’d much prefer to use the term “physical distancing” because the idea of “social distancing” implies in a subtle way that isolation is ok. His article, entitled, “Mask your face; don’t mask your heart” encouraged his readers to focus on what we can do, rather than what we cannot do. With a little technology and creativity (a phone actually works quite nicely) we can do a lot to be a witness to Christ. So, if we begin to see the Holy Spirit as the voice of God that has been gifted to us to live inside all of us, in order to produce God’s character in us, and if we embrace our two tasks: 1) Recognize that the Holy Spirit is, in fact, inside us, and 2) Don’t quench the Spirit – don’t let worldly conformities impede him from showing through… (If we do those things), I think we will have made a large down payment toward living out our ultimate calling, to make disciples of others.
Like John the Baptist in the Gospel, we will be giving testimony to the light – we will be joining the chorus of voices crying out in the desert. Because we have the Holy Spirit within us, our very lives are our voice. How we handle trials, revealing our faith in Jesus – that’s a voice that is audible to those who are lost in the wilderness.
So, we rejoice today because of the promises that we’ve been given. We pray for God’s assistance throughout the remainder of this Advent, to help us be more aware of our anointing as his sons and daughters.
We pray for his guidance to help us shed those worldly conformities that harden our hearts, so that we can receive the Holy Spirit more fully. We know that on our own, we can do nothing, but with the help of the Spirit, we can go forth with the confidence of knowing that we will be a reflection of God’s love, his joy, his kindness and his peace.
And may God’s peace be with you the remainder of this Advent Season!