I recently was at the St. Charles Retreat Center near Lake Charles for a week-long retreat with our seminarians who are about to be ordained priests.  This was my third time at this retreat facility and I love it.  It sits on a tiny islet right in the middle of a swamp; it is surrounded by swamp on three sides.  One of the outstanding features is a boardwalk which extends 300 feet or one football field directly over the swamp.  Retreatants can walk on the boardwalk and view the swamp below:  cypress trees and stumps, unique foliage and flowers, and the swamp’s wildlife.  On prior visits, I saw a gigantic turtle laying its eggs on the edge of the swamp; I also saw a sizeable alligator resting perfectly still in the water.  Unfortunately there wasn’t any wildlife to see this year.  There have been drought conditions in the Lake Charles area, with negligible rainfall between December and May.  The swamp was almost completely dry:  it was stunning to behold actually.  There were large patches of dry ground and only a few pools of water here and there.  It was sad to watch tiny fish trying to live in a couple of inches of water:  fighting one another for space and for survival.  There were dead fish visible in several places.  The reality is:  fish can’t live without water; neither can a swamp.  Water is essential for life in a swamp.

Today we celebrate the Great Power from on High that is ESSENTIAL to our life as spiritual beings:  the Holy Spirit of God.  The Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, is the ESSENTIAL person of God for our spiritual lives.

There is a saying in our faith in Latin:  lex orandi, lex credendi.  Literally that means, “the law of prayer, the law of belief.”  Translated it means, “How we pray indicates what we believe.”  For example, praying the Hail Mary shows our belief that Mary is an intercessor with God.  Praying “Lord I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed” proves we believe that we’re not receiving a piece of bread but the Body of Christ.  Similarly, if we listen to the prayers from the Masses of Pentecost, we readily see what we believe about the Holy Spirit.  Here’s a sample of what we believe about the Holy Spirit:

Opening Prayer, Vigil Mass:  “May the Spirit unite the races and nations on earth to proclaim God’s glory.”  We believe that the Holy Spirit is the unifier of humanity (And Boy do we need that!).

Alternate Opening Prayer, Vigil Mass:  “Strengthen us, O Lord, with your Holy Spirit and fill us with your light.”  We believe that the Holy Spirit is the source of spiritual strength and light.

Opening Prayer, Mass during Day:  “Let the Spirit continue to bring the gospel to the world through the hearts of all who believe.”  We believe that the Holy Spirit gives us the power to evangelize the faith.  Look at how the first disciples, Peter et al, were transformed by the Spirit from terrified men into courageous witnesses for Christ.  Similarly, we see the Spirit as intent on using us for the spread of the gospel.

Alternate Opening Prayer, Mass during Day:  “Send the Spirit into us with the power of a mighty wind, and by the flame of your wisdom, open our minds and loose our tongues to sing your praises.”  We believe that the Holy Spirit gives us power, wisdom and speech to praise God.  This is certainly true in the Charismatic Renewal where we celebrate the gifts of knowledge and tongues.

Prayer over Gifts, Vigil Mass:  “Send your Spirit on these gifts to transform them.”  We believe that it is the Holy Spirit (not the priest) who changes ordinary bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.

Prayer over Gifts, Mass during Day:  “May the Spirit you promised lead us into all truth.”  We believe that the Spirit guides us to the Truth about our lives and our faith.  Boy, do we ever need that Truth in a world which says that up is down and down is up – with all its confusion and distortion in areas like material possessions, sexuality, marriage and family, and the meaning and value of life itself.

Prayer after Communion, Mass during Day:  “Keep within us the vigor of your Spirit.”  We believe that the Spirit is the source of our spiritual energy, vitality, vigor, spark and sizzle.

Solemn Blessing, Mass during Day:  “May the Father give you the gifts of the Spirit forever and may the fire of the Spirit burn out all evil from your hearts and strengthen your faith.”  We believe that the Spirit is the source and giver of all the spiritual gifts and provides the grace to fight against sin and evil through faith.

In addition to what these prayers from the mass tell us about our belief in the Holy Spirit, today’s readings have something to say about this too.  The responsorial psalm asks the Holy Spirit to renew the face of the earth.  It’s pointless to pray that psalm unless we believe that the Spirit has the power to bring new life from death.  And the gospel tells us that the Spirit is the source of forgiveness, reconciliation and true peace.

My dear sisters and brothers, to summarize, the Holy Spirit is the unifying, sanctifying, evangelizing, reconciling, energizing, empowering, strengthening, transforming, truth-giving, gift-giving, peace-giving, evil-thwarting, grace-filled power of God!    Amen!  (Perhaps I should make that into a rap song!)  How can we survive without the Holy Spirit?  We can’t!  We need the Holy Spirit as much as fish need water to survive.

The Holy Spirit truly IS the Lord, the Giver of Life, as our Creed professes.  The Holy Spirit is the living, breathing, active presence of God in our world, in our church and in us.  And the Holy Spirit is with our world forever.

In the early days of Christianity, shortly after Jesus died, the Roman Empire tried to snuff out Christianity by destroying its churches and martyring its followers.  That effort failed because the Church had the Holy Spirit.  In the last century, Communism tried to destroy the Church and erase it from existence by creating the perfect nation state to fulfill all human needs.  That effort also failed because the Church had the Holy Spirit.  Throughout the centuries, countless despots, tyrants, kingdoms, regimes and ideologies have tried to bring down Christianity.  All have failed because the Church has the Holy Spirit.

Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was very angry with the Catholic Church in his native France and once boasted to a cardinal that he would succeed in destroying the Church where others had failed.  The cardinal replied, “Good luck, Your Majesty.  We church officials have been attempting to do that for centuries without success!”  That cardinal was tipping his hat to the Holy Spirit.  The Church can’t be eradicated from without or from within.  Try as anyone might, the Church and Christianity will not go away precisely because the Holy Spirit is on the clock 24/7.  That’s the promise of Christ.  History tells us that Napoleon did take on the Church.  He was dethroned; the Church survived.  Napoleon spent the last years of his life in exile on the remote island of St. Helena swatting mosquitoes and dealing with tropical illness.  Before he died, he requested and received the sacraments of the church – penance, extreme unction and Holy Communion.  Thank God for the Holy Spirit!

The Holy Spirit gives us the power to be the best disciples of Christ we can be:  the best parents, spouses and children, the best neighbors, teachers, priests and religious.  The Holy Spirit gives us the power to reconcile and resolve differences, to be courageous witnesses for the faith, to overcome temptation, sin and addiction, to embrace the Spirit gifts of wisdom and discernment, to maintain trust and hope in times of illness and loss, to have inner peace even when there’s outer turmoil, to experience supernatural energy when we are humanly depleted, and even to rebound from hurricanes and exploding oil rigs in the Gulf!  All this is possible by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Jesuit priest and poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, in his magnificent poem, “God’s Grandeur,” gives a wonderful image of the Holy Spirit looking out for this world of ours.  He writes:

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

“And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”

We live in a bent world, but we have a brooding, nurturing, hovering Holy Spirit which has a warm, comforting breast and bright, flapping, energized wings.  What a great image to help us comprehend the Spirit’s gifts and glory!

If you are in trouble, pray to the Holy Spirit.  If you are confused as to which of several ways to go, pray to the Holy Spirit.  If you are at odds with a loved one and need to be reconciled, pray to the Holy Spirit.  If you need strength, courage, healing, help or hope, pray, pray, pray to the Holy Spirit.  Why?  Because the Holy Spirit IS God’s lasting gift to us and God’s continuing presence with us, and because the Spirit truly does brood over our bent world with warm breast and with ah! bright wings!

Let us conclude by invoking the Holy Spirit in our Church’s great Spirit prayer:  “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful; enkindle in them the fire of your love.  Send forth your Spirit and you shall be created and you shall renew the face of the earth.”  Amen.