Today, we’re celebrating Pentecost — the day when the Holy Spirit fell in POWER upon the Church in the Upper Room and the disciples suddenly exploded onto the scene — somehow convincing the entire world that God was real and Jesus was really risen from the dead.
And I want to propose to you today a very important principle of Catholic theology:
The Holy Spirit… is FUN.
In fact, He is the FUNNEST Person I know.
By far.
And if you haven’t had any fun with the Holy Spirit yet — then you are totally MISSING OUT, and you absolutely need to get to know Him better.
I recently picked up a new book that was recommended to me by a priest-friend. It’s written by a woman named Catherine Price and the title is:
“The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again”
In the opening pages, the author talks about how easy it is for us to forget how to have fun! How easy it is for us to slip into a sort of distracted, anxious, aimless, worried way of life — a life in which we waste most of our time scrolling, self-medicating and just sort of vegging out.
That’s where the Holy Spirit needs to come in. Because guys… the HOLY SPIRIT is FUN.
Not in a superficial, flash-in-the-pan sort of way. But in profound, life-transforming sort of way. The Holy Spirit invites us to have the kind of fun we were MADE FOR… the thrilling exhilaration of HEAVEN…
In her book, I think Catherine Price is talking about this sort of fun…when she coins the term “true fun”. I’d like to share her definition of “true fun” because when I read it, ALL I could think was: THIS is what the Holy Spirit does… THIS is what the apostles experienced on that first Pentecost morning… THIS is the POWER FROM ON HIGH that Jesus said that He would clothe His Church with!
“True Fun” she writes “is the feeling of being fully present and engaged, free from self-criticism and judgment. It is the thrill of losing ourselves in what we’re doing and not caring about the outcome. It is laughter. It is playful rebellion. It is euphoric connection. It is the bliss that comes from letting go. When we are truly having fun, we are not lonely. We are not anxious or stressed. We are not consumed by self-doubt or existential malaise: True Fun makes us feel alive.”
That last line perhaps sums it up best: True Fun makes us feel alive. We could easily rephrase it to say:
“The Holy Spirit makes us feel alive.”
I remember I had a particularly powerful encounter with the Holy Spirit at a Catholic conference several years ago, and that was exactly what I experienced: I felt alive. I experienced that playful bliss of letting go. The thrill and freedom of totally losing myself, and yet at the same time FINDING myself. I became overwhelmed with an insane joy — so insane, in fact, that I just started to LAUGH and LAUGH and LAUGH — and in that moment, I knew for ABSOLUTE CERTAIN that none of this was coming from my own imagination or my emotions.
To put it bluntly: It was the MOST FUN that I had ever had.
It was Divine, in fact. It was the closest I’ve ever come to experiencing what I have to imagine Heaven is sort of remotely like.
…The Holy Spirit… ROCKED me.
And it was a whole lot of fun!
But this shouldn’t really surprise us.
When we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we really ought to feel “alive!” Because the Holy Spirit IS the life of God — the very LOVE of God — poured out into our hearts.
Catholic theology puts it this way:
The Holy Spirit is the SOUL of the Church.
The soul is the principle and source of LIFE in a body.
In philosophy, people like Aristotle say that the soul enables a living body to move around and be what it actually is. Separated from the soul, the body immediately begins to break down and fall apart. It has nothing to hold it together, so it promptly decomposes. Apart from the animating principle of the soul, the body is actually just… a corpse. It’s dead. It’s lifeless.
So, when we say that the Holy Spirit is the SOUL of the living, moving, growing Body that is the Church, then what we’re saying is that we can’t do ANYTHING apart from the Holy Spirit!
Vatican II says that God “has shared with us his Spirit who, being one and the same in head and members, gives life to, unifies and moves the whole body.”
Without the Holy Spirit, therefore, the Church breaks down. In fact, it’s more accurate to say that the Church literally cannot exist apart from the Holy Spirit. That’s why we say Pentecost is the “birthday of the Church!” It is on THAT day in history that the Spirit first fell upon the disciples in the Upper Room — the Body was ENSOULED — and the Church CAME ALIVE.
When we were baptized, we were PLUNGED into this very same LIFE of God — we were given the same GIFT of the Holy Spirit. Or as St Paul puts it in our second reading: “We were all given to drink of one Spirit.”
And this Holy Spirit is childlike.
He is spontaneous.
He is infinitely creative.
He is beautiful.
He is kind of crazy.
He quickens us, accelerates our joy and love — He emboldens us and propels us to do things we never thought possible, to take holy risks for Jesus — to step out confidently in faith and actually have FUN doing it!!!! Why? — Because we’re doing it with the Lord who loves us!!!!
So I guess my question for us today on this Pentecost morning is:
Are we having “true fun” with the Holy Spirit yet?
If not, He is inviting us to do so. The Lord has a particular set of gifts designated precisely for YOU… Yes, YOU are an indispensable member of this Body filled with the Holy Spirit, the Soul of the Church! Gifts meant to help the Body of Christ be what She really is…
There are three basic elements that I think are signs that we are having this sort of “true fun” in the Holy Spirit:
- We lose track of time — a taste of eternity! Hours fly by!
- We aren’t thinking about ourselves — Not self-conscious at all.
- We don’t want to be anywhere else, doing anything else, with anybody else… there’s a kind of intense “presence of the moment.”
These three elements, I believe, find their climax right HERE in the Sacred Liturgy, which is of course the supreme work of the Holy Spirit:
Think about it:
At the liturgy, we’re suppose to lose track of all time. Instead of checking our watch to make sure Father doesn’t go over an hour — we ought to remember that God is actually OUTSIDE of time. And when we come to Mass, we are entering into that beautiful TIMELESSNESS of the Divine Liturgy! Worshipping God — praying to Him is a taste of eternity! The saints often talk about how HOURS fly by while praying without them even noticing…
At the liturgy, we’re also not supposed to be thinking about ourselves at all! When we’re really having fun at mass, we aren’t self-conscious or embarrassed or worried about what other people are thinking at all. Why? — Because we are so intensely focused on God together! He’s all that matters! And we love Him!
Lastly, at the liturgy, we’re supposed to not wanna be anywhere else, doing anything else other than THIS. There’s a certain intensity to the moment. We’re zeroed in. And we want to be here. We want to be with these people — our family, our friends, our neighbors — all looking at the Lord together. Distractions and passing thoughts about other random things are sure to come… that’s very normal. But we do what we can not think about anything else. We surrender ourselves. We become present. We participate fully. We sing. We respond! We are reverent. We are ENGAGED…
This is all a gift, of course. We can’t make any of this happen by our own effort or design.
It’s the Holy Spirit who makes the Liturgy work. It’s the Holy Spirit who guided the development of the Mass over the course of the centuries, inspired and shaped all the beautiful traditions and rubrics we follow down to this very day. It’s the Holy Spirit who first inspired the Scriptures we just heard — It’s the Holy Spirit we call down upon the gifts of bread and wine that they become for us the Body and Blood of Christ.
In short: the Liturgy is where the Holy Spirit comes to play!
So let’s have some fun with Him, shall we?
Let’s invoke the Holy Spirit, our friend, our Advocate, our Helper:
COME HOLY SPIRIT!
HELP US TO WORSHIP YOU, LORD.
HELP US TO LOVE YOU!
HELP OUR HEARTS AND SOULS RISE UP TO PLAY AT THIS LITURGY!
HELP US to dare to have a little FUN at Church.
HELP OUR HEARTS AND SOULS RISE UP TO PLAY AT THIS LITURGY!
Would this be like Joab and Abner’s men rising up to play?
And Abner said to Joab: ‘Let the young men, I pray thee, arise and play before us.’ And Joab said: ‘Let them arise.’
II Samuel 2:14
Of course you of all people know that the young men ended up killing each other.
Then there is the other moment of “rising up to play”
And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt-offerings, and brought peace-offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to make merry.
Exodus 32:6
Of course you of all people know that this is the scene of the golden calf and “rising up to play” is to engage in sodomy and fornication.
Then we have another “rise up and play”
Sarah saw the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham playing.
Genesis 21:9
This playing is obviously enough to get Ishmael kicked out of the house. Scripturally we know this is also a matter of fornication and idolatry.
So it is awesome how you have managed to link the Holy Spirit in with the concept of rising up to play — which those of us who make it a point of studying Scripture (like yourself I assume when you are not engaged in the most limiting aspect of existence i.e. roller coaster riding) know that “rising to play” is Biblical code for fornication. I bet that was one interesting liturgy….
More time studying! Less time trying to be a star on the travel channel 🙂
Good thinking!!!!
Just seeing this now. You have clearly missed the point of this homily and every other homily I ever have preached. I’m sorry. When children “play” it has nothing to do with the blasphemy you have just articulated. Also, I will go on riding roller coasters. Thank you for your thoughts.