B Cycle – 6^th Sunday of Easter 24

Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48.

Today’s gospel can easily be construed to make one believe keeping the commandments are critical to our salvation.  Our faith formation since infancy has stressed obedience to the laws of God.  If we do that faithfully, we will be in right standing with God.  We also believe that since we do not commit “grave sins we are not in jeopardy of losing salvation.  Have we ignored Jesus as He constantly criticized, he Pharisees.  If adherence to the law determined anyone’s “standing’ with God, the Pharisees would be our models of holiness.  But Jesus told them “…their hearts were far from God, and they miss understood the spirit of the law.
                                                                                                                                                      Instead, Jesus called the Pharisees “whitewashed sepulchers” (Mt. 23:27).  Perfect looking on the outside but decaying and ugly on the inside.  Remember the great commandment God gave to Moses after the Exodus. “You shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and all your strength (Deu.6:5).  The psalmist understood that commandment and tells us God does not delight in our offerings, or our sacrifices but God desires a “contrite heart” (Ps.51). That psalm was written by King David after he had sinned with Bathsheba.  That fact should help us understand how important our hearts are to God.   

We instinctively know we must do more than obey the commandments. We need offer God something more than adherence to some rule.  All that takes is discipline.  We need to reveal to God the wounds which motivates us to sin.  Offering sacrifices, adhering to the law, does nothing to change us.  Perhaps what we need to be confessing as we seek reconciliation is how we have failed to give God our hearts.   Because we have never been taught that following that “great commandment” is the answer to all sin.  The truth is we do not understand God’s mercy.  He wants our hearts because He promised to do something to help us by changing our hearts.

God does not just offer us forgiveness for our sins! He offers us something greater than forgiveness. He offers us a new heart and a new way of responding to God when we sin. God wants us to understand His plan, His desire, has always been for us to be “God Like.”  Created in His image and likeness, we were destined to reflect the image of Jesus Christ to everyone we encounter.  We cannot do that by only concentrating on obeying the commandments.                                                                                          

We need help to become like Christ.  It is not a do it yourself project we can accomplish if only we follow the correct syllabus. That will only make us righteous and Pharisee like.  We need something more and that is what we see happening in the household of Cornelius in our first reading today. 

Cornelius, a centurion, a gentile, an outsider whom the Jews considered unclean and unworthy.  Yet the scriptures describe him as a “God fearing man” who was charitable to the Jews.  The scriptures tell us “God saw his heart” (Acts 10:1-2).     That description of Cornelius reveals to us all we need to know about God’s mercy.  God responds to a contrite heart.  God sent an angel to Cornelius and tells him to send some men to Joppa and summon Simon to come with them to his home. 

Talk about scandalous.  Peter would be breaking the law by entering the home of an unclean gentile. By preaching the gospel to them and witnessing the Holy spirit descending upon the entire household.  Unbelievers who had never entered a temple, never observed the Sabbath, never offered a sacrifice, and never followed one of the six hundred and thirteen laws. Yet, they were filled with the Holy Spirit.  Manifested the same gifts that the hundred and twenty experienced in that upper room on Pentecost. 

Pentecost is coming.  It is a Sunday we celebrate fifty days after the Resurrection.  It comes and goes each year without any of the grand celebrations we experience during the Triduum. We have missed something in our faith formation because we fail to understand the how critical a component the Holy Spirit is in our transformation into becoming like Christ.  The Holy Spirit was promised to us by God to change our hearts.  Jesus said the Spirit would glorify Him and teach us and remind us of all He said and did. 

The Sprit is our source of wisdom, understanding, prayer, and opening our minds to the scriptures for us to grow in the knowledge of God.  Without the Holy Spirt we depend on ourselves to follow God. The Holy spirit will change us so that our hearts become centered on God.  The Spirit will remove barriers within us allowing us to feel God’s presence, to hear His voice, and to know we are loved and cherished not condemned.  When that happens, we begin living our faith with the Holy Spirit guiding us, instead of practicing our faith by our own sense of what pleases God.   With the Holy Spirit guiding us, we know we are pleasing to God because the Holy Spirit knows the heart of God.

With two weeks to go, here are some suggestions to prepare ourselves for the Holy Spirit to fill your heart.  Pray the novena to the Holy Spirit, it is easy and can be found online.  Listen to my Pentecost podcast on our parish website www.basilthegreat.org.  The podcase link is on our website’s home page, just scroll down until you see the link titled Podcast on the left side of the page.  Enter Pentecost or enter the podcast number 195, 197, 199 in the podcast search window).  But as you are praying the novena or after the podcase pray for the Holy Spirit to fill your heart.   

May the Spirit flood you and pour God’s love into your heart.