He has kept His promise and we read that in Philip the Evangelist’s experience in Samaria. That man, not St Philip the Apostle, was amongst the first few deacons. Subsequently, the community was scattered by persecution and despite the believers being displaced, he managed to convert the local population in Samaria. That occasioned an apostolic visit by Peter and John. Like Bishops at Confirmation, they prayed over those baptised and confirmed them with the gift of the Holy Spirit.
The season of the Spirit is upon us. In preparing for the Spirit’s descent, Christ will withdraw and later this Thursday, we shall celebrate His Ascension. The role of the coming Spirit is to accompany us. Christ had already done so by being with us until His death and even after the Resurrection. Just before the Ascension, He promised another Advocate to speak for Him and to continue His mission.
As such we are already living in the “end times”. The words themselves are evocative. They suggest that the world is coming to an end soon. But that is not the meaning of the words “end times”. Rather, ever since AD33, presumably, the year when Christ was crucified, died and rose again, we have officially entered into and still are in the end times. In other words, we have been living in the “end times” for the last 2000 years.
It is in this context that the post-Resurrection Christ made a promise to send the Spirit. But what need do we have for the Spirit? The end times is characterised by the “already” and “not yet”. We are still on the way to final consummation when Christ returns again. In this journey, we need to keep in mind the four realities which we must face and they are death, judgement, heaven and hell. We need the Spirit to guide us because Christ desires that we keep His commandments and He gives the Spirit to guide our path to heaven rather than to hell.
Our pilgrimage to heaven means that we still have to work out our salvation in the world and not in a vacuum. There is no doubt that evil exists in the world. This sounds like a statement which places evil out there, when in reality, evil runs through our hearts. Take a look around us. We all sin in many different ways. There is corruption. Scamming is on the rise. There are wars and we seem to be tethering on the edge of further destruction. What we encounter every day is that the good we desire is not always a matter of effort. That is, it is not a case where one puts in a bit more resolve and then things will be alright. St Paul describes this conundrum as “the good that I should do, I find myself not doing it and the evil I should avoid, I find myself committing it”.
Despite our struggles where evil exists, there are two things we can be sure of.
Firstly, evil, whilst ubiquitous is not triumphant. Christ is. He is victorious but the nature of the end times is that our journey in life must take us through the valley of the tears. The second thing we can be sure of is that Christ’s victory gives us hope. St Peter wrote this: “Reverence the Lord Christ in your hearts and always have your answer ready for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you all have. But give it with courtesy and respect and with a clear conscience, so that those who slander you when you are living a good life in Christ may be proved wrong in the accusations that they bring. And if it is the will of God that you should suffer, it is better to suffer for doing right than for doing wrong”.
Remember the year 1999? When we were approaching the turn of the millennium, we were technologically nervous for fear that 00 will not be interpreted by computers as 2000 but instead we may be set us back to 1900. On top of that, religious dread interpreted the turn of the century under the light of the Last Judgement whereby all disasters were considered to be portents of the final apocalypse. Many of our movies reflected the fear focussing on the same trope of a dystopian future marked by the undead or the collapse of civilisation.
The turn of the Millennium did feel like the world was coming to the end but the Church was unafraid because we have with the promise of the Holy Spirit. John Paul II told the Church to “put out into the deep” or in Latin, “duc in altum…”. Do not be afraid for out in the deep, the Lord is there. Sadly, when we think of evil and how children have to face them, we can be gripped by a certain paralysis. There are couples who do not want to bring children into such a world. The point to remember is this: we cannot shield our children or our loved one from the evil of the world. They will be touched by it or even sorely tested by it. Yet what is certain is that Christ has triumphed. He is victorious. In that way, St Paul is a model for the firmness of faith.
What more with the gift of the Holy Spirit?
Those who went for the pilgrimage especially when destructive drones were flying around were witnesses not only to the power of prayer but also the ultimate truth of our faith. It was not that we were gung-ho and unafraid of death. Rather, we acknowledge that Christ has defeated death. Thus, if we lived through the bombings in it would be because God has a purpose for our lives in this present world. And if we had perished, sadly due to the conflict, then the moment of our salvation had arrived. I dare to say this because the Holy Spirit gave us the strength to trust that everything we were and had, was always in God’s hands.
We dare to stand tall, hold our heads up and even when all around seemed defeated for we know that ultimately Christ will be victorious. He guarantees that through the Holy Spirit that will descend at Pentecost. We can become the warriors that the Sacrament of Confirmation is meant for… to make us walk confidently and to face the world without fear that we will be destroyed.
