Breathe in

A homily for Pentecost Sunday, May 28, 2023, Mass During the Day

Acts 2:1-11, 1 Cor 12:3b-7, 12-13, Jn 20:19-23

When I was a Boy Scout, the quarterly Parents Night extravaganzas invariably meant each patrol was responsible for putting on a skit, a skit that usually pushed the boundaries of taste and wit. In other words, something a dozen pre-teen through mid-teen boys would find funny and parents would find off-putting, like Mad magazine.

The recent passing of a Scouting friend’s younger sister reminded me of a skit their dad, a creative genius in the advertising racket, helped script. Dan and his patrol buddies staged a mock television newscast that poked fun at our troop leaders and included a forecast predicting the weather for Evanston, Illinois — headquarters of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union — would be dry. Dry today; dry tomorrow; dry forever.

Of course, only the savviest members of the gathering got the joke, which is to say not too many attendees did. True genius can puzzle some people, and Dan’s family’s genius was writ large.

We all have our strokes of genius, our moments of clarity, our dalliances with prophetic wisdom.

All of us have ventured outside the box, outside our comfort zones, and produced something new under the sun.

Each of us at one time or another has said of an idea or insight, “Wow! Where did that come from?”

Where? How? Huh?

We were inspired.

Maybe something deep within us burst forth. But if that’s the case, how and when did that “something” get deep within us? Were we born with it? Did we absorb it somehow?

Was that something — that spark — given to us at the moment of our inspiration?

Let’s start with yes to all of the above and have a little fun with vocabulary.

“Inspiration” and “inspire” have their roots in a Latin word that refers to breathing. Medically and scientifically, inspiration equates to inhalation, and when a person exhales they’re expiring. When they exhale for the last time, they’ve expired permanently.

So inspiration is as simple as breathing in whatever is all around us. Air, right?

Well, sort of.

Because a critically important word related to “inspire” is “spirit.” Yes, when we are breathing in whatever is all around us, we are breathing in God’s Holy Spirit of wisdom and love.

We inhale God’s grace and strength. By the way, the “hale” part of “inhale” comes from the root word for healthy.

This intersection of medical-scientific with theological-philosophical makes perfect sense. We cannot and must not figuratively slice ourselves into body and soul competing with each other. We are complete beings, even if we are prone to paying more attention to oxygen than to the Holy Spirit.

Each of us has a personal Pentecost at our Confirmation, and all of us share an annual religious feast of Pentecost to conclude the Easter season. At Pentecost, we’re reminded that love, the essence of the Holy Spirit, is as tangible as the wind the Apostles heard and felt when the Paraclete descended upon them and gave them the gift of tongues.

When the Paraclete inspired them.

When the Paraclete inspires us.

At our personal Pentecost, our communal Pentecosts, and every day of our lives.

Inspiration prods us to contribute to the greater glory of God.

Think how good each of us must feel when we cross a finish line, when we spot the bird we’ve always wanted to photograph, when we write the poem or song or love letter that encapsulates how we feel about someone. Think how doubly good it feels when we surprise ourselves by how amazing and excellent what we crafted is. When we help to change somebody’s life for the better.

Wow. Where did that talent come from? Did we even suspect we could achieve something like that?

The cynics in our modern world can point to brain chemistry or external stimuli or even genetics as the source of ingenuity and creativity. May be. Could be.

But they miss the joy of what we know in our hearts: The Holy Spirit, the source of love and inspiration and the grace to act for justice and peace, the source of seven gifts and even more fruits, is all around us, always around us like the air we breathe.

Let’s breathe deeply, and be deeply inspired.

A quick note

Thank you, as always, for spending a few minutes with my online homily. My family and I will be taking a long-anticipated, long-overdue trip together and I will not be posting again until June 18, 2023.

In fact, that weekend I will be preaching at all the Masses at our parish. Please join us if you can.