A June Reflection on the Weakness of Evil - Tenth Sunday Ordinary Time.
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A quote often repeated of Mother Teresa is “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” Not all of us can be Mother Teresa. Her ministry was a rare event and her sainthood a singular action of the Spirit in Kolkata. But her way of acting in the world is common and available to each person. With the Gifts of the Spirit, we can act every day, with great love.
In the Pentecost readings, something rare and beautiful occurs. The Spirit long promised by Jesus, comes to the disciples like a wind. The Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, is the love of the Father for the Son and the Son for the Father that is so tangible it is animated filling the world. Mother Teresa was encouraging us to be in the Spirit, even in the smallest things. If enough people do the smallest acts in great love, out of that Spirit will come the rare great events, such as we witnessed in Mother Teresa’s life.
This Spirit of love is an almost unimaginable person; the Spirit is of pure love. The scripture readings try to describe the effects of coming of the Spirit. It is wind and fire. It alters the disciples at their core such that they are emboldened and opened to all peoples in powerful and new ways.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus sends this Spirit by breathing on the disciples. It is an allusion to the power of Creation from Genesis, like a mighty wind sweeping over the waters.
In traditional Catholic teaching we often shift from trying to describe the Spirit and instead we talk about what the Spirit does. In Catholic catechesis these actions are the Gifts of the Spirit – Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety, and Fear of the Lord. In Summa Theologiae, Thomas Aquinas says that the intellect is guided by four of these gifts (wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and counsel). But we are guided in our being and will toward God by the other three gifts (fortitude, piety, and fear of the Lord).
Briefly, what are these gifts?
Wisdom is turning of the heart to ways of God.
Understanding is a perceptive intuition which illuminates the mind.
Counsel enables a person to judge promptly and rightly.
Fortitude is often defined as courage, but its meaning encompasses endurance, as well.
Knowledge: allows us to see the world more closely from God's perspective.
Piety is inner reverence that recognizes my total reliance on God and brings. humility, trust, and love.
Fear of the Lord is akin to wonder (or awe): With the gift of fear of the Lord, I am aware of the glory and majesty of God.
Each gift could be a subject for a homily. Let’s look at two of the gifts together. Wisdom and Fear of the Lord.
Fear of the Lord, is an awareness of power. It is an awareness of my radical dependence on God for each breath. And yet, I have so little understanding or power over God. This can be terrifying but also moving. At a general audience Pope Francis said that Fear of the Lord is “a joyful awareness of God’s grandeur and a grateful realization that only in him do our hearts find true peace”. A person with wonder and awe knows that God is the perfection of all one desires. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, because it turns our heart to the power by which we are awed.
Wisdom acts upon both the intellect and the will. According to St. Bernard, it both illumines the mind and instills an attraction to the divine. Wisdom is different from understanding. Understanding is a view taken by the mind. Wisdom is an experience of the heart; one is light, the other love, and so they unite and complete one another." Wisdom is the perfection of the theological virtue of charity.
These two gifts have been on my mind lately. Awe, is an openness to the larger world and universe. I realized recently my prayers were turning more inward and smaller. That is, I would pray about the large events of my life and the world. In those prayers, I would find myself going downward into the smallest and the most petty of motives. In my prayers, I only found my own shame at my inability to fix my world and my own anger at narrowness of the answers available to me.
Embracing Fear of the Lord came to me from another member of my prayer group. “Ed, you are worried of that thing at work, when God can change tomorrow or not but either way, you are within the Glory of this sunny day.” I happened to look around and realize that the sky was almost blinding that day. In awe, I could turn my failures to God for forgiveness instead of frustration for trying to solve the largest of things with the smallest of motives. So I grew a little in Wisdom because in awe my heart was turned to God.
The wisdom of the spirit spread through the world by a Fear of the Lord changes the world. Look around this church, which of us will be the rare event of a Saint Teresa of Kolkata? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Living in the Gifts of the spirit brings an awe that in turn brings us the wisdom of great love in the smallest of things. In that power moving through a people, as described in the Acts of the Apostles, the Spirit will raise up the rare events. It will renew the face of the earth.
Be well and God Bless,
Deacon Ed
If you found this homily helpful, you may want to read some of my other homilies.
Ascension and Purify My Heart
Other articles on the Pentecost feast can be found in Catholic 365. Check them out.
Dr Edward Souza is a permanent deacon presently serving in the Diocese of Salina at Seven Dolors Church, Manhattan KS. He has a long career in agriculture and the church and writes on rural Catholic life.
