Jesus Constitutes His Church in Fire

Today, I will concelebrate and preach at the mass of thanksgiving for the newly ordained Fr. Daniel Dillard. The mass will be at Holy Name parish in Henderson, Kentucky.


It was the day of Pentecost.

They were all gathered together in one place.

Men and women of every race and language had come to Jerusalem for the feast.

Parthians, Medes, and Elamites,inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia,Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia,Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene,as well as travelers from Rome,both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs

The Holy Spirit came upon them in wind and fire.

How very dramatic. The whole thing, the wind, the fire, the tongues, the preaching. How very dramatic. The birthday of the Church, the constitution of the Body of Christ, the arrival of the Holy Spirit.

It was good stuff really, powerful, cinematic stuff, better than Terminator, better than Batman, better than Star Trek.

And yet, what happened?
How can such auspicious beginnings have landed us where we often are today?
Yawning
Deadly preaching (and not in the good way)
Complacency
Tedium
Low interest
Low numbers
Tired
Worn out
Boring
A fire extinguisher

Do you ever think that Church is boring?
Do you ever wonder if the whole thing is really worthwhile?
Do you ever wonder if your carcasses are getting anything out of all of this?

And if you think you are bored, you should see what we see from up here. Glazed over, head nodding, bulletin reading, watch watching, tedium.

How can it be?
How can we have the Holy Spirit, the Eucharist, the teachings of the Church, a two-thousand year tradition, a liturgical reality, the presence of the living God, the life-giving Word and still be bored?

And how can our lives seem so meaningless at times?

It is not just the Church we find tedious, its life itself, dragging ourselves zombie-like from activity to activity, striving after un-satisfying goals, wondering how everything can be in such a mess when we have modern medicine, modern technology, modern manners, modern credit, modern values?

How often do we find ourselves defined by our vices?

Immorality, impurity, lust, idolatry,sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy,outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness,dissensions, factions, occasions of envy

What is needed to give some spirit to this place, to this Church, to our world?

The Acts of the Apostles reminds us of the dramatic reality that Jesus constitutes his Church in fire.

And in the face of all of the blatant realities of the world and the Church and, perhaps the reality of ourselves, we might rightly ask, do we not need a fire?

Do we not need a fire, a Holy Spirit fire, Pentecostal fire, a purifying fire, in light of so much indifference, a cleansing fire in the face of horrors of war and the violence of school and home, a warming fire in place of the enduring chill that threatens us with the harsh pointing of the cold, skeletal finger of cynicism.

Sisters and brothers, gathered here in this Church today on this Day of Pentecost, I wonder if we are not in desperate need of a fire?

Because when faced with the stark realities of life, sometimes there is a chill in us, a lukewarm ness, a curdling of the blood, a half-heartedness.

Perhaps on this Day of Pentecost, we need a fire because we are sometimes cowards and we need to be heroes. We are sometimes tiresome and we need to be tireless, we are sometimes pitiful and we need to be passionate. Jesus says if you want to belong to me you have to stand up and be counted, taking that final, dangerous leap over the precipice of self interest and not just stand around waiting for someone else to get things going.

Jesus constitutes his Church with fire

We need a fire because
There is an iciness in us sometimes that makes us like those hapless women and men of so many places hanging around Jerusalem on that first Day of Pentecost, living on the fringes of discipleship. Half membership, half interest, half love.

For them, Jesus constituted His Church with fire and…

We need that Pentecostal fire because
Sometimes we still like our faith in small doses. We still cringe in the face of too much religion. All he can talk about is God, we say. It’s like she has no life outside of the Church. Too much religion spoils anyone.
Sometimes, we are embarrassed about prayer, by the very Holy Spirit we are supposed to be inviting daily into our lives.

Pentecost testifies to us, those apostles testify to us, the early Church testifies to us there is no religion without complete devotion, there is no life outside the Church of God.

Jesus constituted his Church in fire
Faith is not a comfort, it is a call to action. The Church is not a place for complacency. It is a rallying place for those called forth by the sound of God’s trumpet, ratified in the Holy Spirit and steeped in the blood of the lamb.

Jesus constituted his Church in fire and we need a fire in our lives because

Sometimes we like to divvy up our selves between the sacred and the secular, pick and choose Christianity is the order of the day. But take it or leave it, Christ teaches through the living teaching and spirituality of the Church. The Holy Spirit guarantees that Church, that teaching, that spirituality and our love for it.

For Catholics faith in Christ is faith in the Church. We believe that or we fall into the ultimate, insidious and damnable trap of pleasing ourselves with a second-rate, egotistical Christianity, a Church of our own making, made in our image, designed to suit us and a Church we will ultimately abandon as useless

Jesus constituted his Church in fire and brothers and sisters we are in need of a fire in our lives

A fire kindled deep down, in the recesses of our bodies, our souls, our hearts, at the heart of this community of Holy Name Church and Jesus is that fire

Jesus is that fire that burns steadily at all our bigotries, our prejudices, our hypocrisies like cotton under a magnifying glass.

His sent his spirit upon them as fire Jesus is that fire that reduces to ashes all false pride, all isolationism, all rankness, all sourness, all doubt, all boredom.

Jesus is that fire that erodes the conceits of the human imagination, that tears away at the foundations of our ideologies, our treasured opinions, that sometimes reflect not the living reality of God, but the narcissism of the human intellect.

Jesus constitutes his Church in fire and

He is that fire that instils in the hearts of all that follow him that passion that is uniquely his own, that passion that he bore with courage and perseverance along the dusty roads of Palestine.

Christ loved us so much, he cared so much that he became a slave, obediently driving the fire of his passion without compromise all the way to the windswept hill of Calvary where he laid down his life and ignited in us the fire that cannot be quenched, the fire of a man who was willing to give all for the sake of those so needy, so powerless, so frightened – abandoned as they were and are in the boredom of our own condition.

And we, brothers and sisters are the inheritors of that fire, the people of that passion, men and women of Pentecost.

Father Daniel Dillard is here today as a witness to the Holy Spirit’s Power, because he has made a radical choice and decided to turn his life over to the Church, the Body of Christ.

He knows the cost of discipleship and yet he has decided to stand up and be counted, to be a man who, through his ordination to the priesthood desires with all his heart to make a difference in an indifferent world.

Because the ordination of Fr. Dillard is not about status and power, it is not about prestige and authority. It is a new Pentecost of the Church. It is not about lording over. It is about a man whose all consuming love for God must be contagious. It must start a fire. Fr. Daniel, be that fire for us because Jesus constitutes his Church in fire.

Fr. Daniel, your ordination yesterday made you an ambassador of that fire, a man of Pentecost. Be alive, be passionate, be a fire in this diocese, in the communities that you will serve, a fire to burn throughout this town, throughout this state, throughout our world, the fire of Jesus.

On the day of Pentecost they were gathered all together in one place.

And gathered here today, we say Come Father, Come Divine Son, Come Holy Spirit, enkindle in us the fire of your love.