We come this Sunday to one of the great promises of the Easter season. Jesus is preparing his disciples for what looks like absence and is in fact a deeper presence. “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always.” The word he uses, Paraclete, means the one called alongside us. The Holy Spirit is not a distant idea or a vague feeling. The Spirit is a Person, the very life of God, closer to us than our breath, closer than our worries, closer than our sins.
What a moment, then, for our parish to receive this Gospel. On Saturday, Auxiliary Bishop Andy Ligot will lay hands on more than sixty of our young people and seal them with the Gift of the Holy Spirit. Confirmation is not a graduation or a polite farewell to faith. It is a sending. It is the Church praying that the Spirit of God will fall upon these young women and men with the same power the apostles received, so that they can live the rest of their lives as witnesses of Christ.
And do they ever need it. The world our young people are inheriting is uncertain in ways my generation could not have imagined. They are navigating a noisy and anxious culture, forming their identities under the gaze of social media, inheriting questions about technology, climate, and meaning of life itself. They need wisdom to see clearly, understanding to love what is true, counsel to choose well, fortitude to stand when the wind is against them, knowledge and reverence for God, and holy awe in his presence. These are the seven gifts the Church will pray over them this weekend, drawn from Isaiah and the long memory of Christian tradition.
We join in the ancient prayer of Confirmation, asking the Lord to send forth his Spirit, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, of right judgment and courage, of knowledge and reverence, and the gift of wonder and awe in God’s presence. It is a bold prayer. And yet Jesus assures us this is precisely what the Father wishes to give. The gift is on offer, continuous, held out to each of us at every moment of our lives.
Like every gift, the Holy Spirit must be received. God will not force the door. We have to open it. Sometimes that means choosing silence so we can finally hear. The Spirit speaks in compassion and empathy that we miss entirely if our lives are too loud. Other times it means letting the Spirit move us to courage, to speak when speaking is costly, to act when we would rather sit down. Listening is the most active thing a Christian heart ever does.
Our First Reading tells of Deacon Philip preaching in Samaria, a region that had every reason to ignore him. The early Church did not have an easy time. Their first attempts were not always successful, and even when they were, the work was not finished. Philip baptized the Samaritans, yet the Spirit had not yet been poured out on them. Peter and John had to come and lay hands on them. Evangelization takes a team. It takes patience. It takes faithfulness when results are slow and obstacles are real. What carried those first disciples was their fidelity to truth and love.
That is the same fidelity Jesus asks of us in today’s Gospel. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” And the commandment is one. Love God with everything you are and love your neighbor as yourself. Everything else flows from that. The Eucharist we share each Sunday is the food that nourishes that love and ties us to one another. We are a body, knitted together by the Spirit and fed by the Body and Blood of the Lord.
My prayer this weekend is simple and full of joy. May the young people confirmed this Saturday receive the Spirit with open hearts. May they know, deep in their soul, that they are never alone. May their wisdom grow, their courage rise, and may they be a witness to Christ in classrooms, friendships, and workplaces years from now in ways heaven will record.
I want to thank Kalena Moreira and her entire Confirmation team: For the past two years, you have walked with these young people through retreats, service, prayer, hard questions, and ordinary Wednesday nights. You have been instruments of the Spirit in their lives. The fruit of your labor will outlive all of us.
To our candidates: your parish family is praying for you. Hold Bishop Andy Ligot in your prayers as well, that the Spirit who acts through his hands this Saturday will fill him with the same gifts he is asking for you. Then go and be witnesses. Quietly, faithfully, joyfully.
Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love.
God Bless,
Fr. Brendan