Mass of the Holy Spirit

IT’S traditional in Catholic schools and other schools inspired by Christian faith to start the school year with a Mass of the Holy Spirit. I suppose the idea is to entrust the whole educational effort to the Holy Spirit who will guide us to the whole truth.

The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Blessed Trinity, the subsistent bond of love between the Father and Son, and whose mission it is to be with us always, since man, according to Christian faith, lives a shared life with God always.

The Holy Spirit therefore is the ultimate principle of life and love and everything else—knowledge, wisdom, understanding, counsel, piety, fortitude, fear of the Lord—proper to human and Christian life.

We just cannot live by bread alone, nor by some brilliant ideas alone, things that derive from us or from something else, but not from God. We have to live in the Holy Spirit.

This is a truth that needs to be spread around quite vigorously. There is a steady trend to remove religion from life, from one’s work, business and politics, and even from education.

In its place, some ideology is used to inspire these human activities. If not that, then some crude but generalized attitude of practical atheism, agnosticism, relativism, naturalism, rationalism, etc. This phenomenon, I’m afraid, is heading to disaster.

So, I had my share of saying these Masses in some schools. In each of them, I tried to encourage everyone to be aware of the Holy Spirit not only in their studies, but in fact in their whole life, in every aspect, situation, circumstance, state of life, etc.

The Holy Spirit is actually everywhere. In the Gospel, we are told that the “Spirit breaths where he will, and you hear his voice but you know not where he comes, and where he goes.” (Jn 3,8) He is everywhere—in one’s conscience, in the Church, sacraments, doctrine of Christian faith, signs of the times, etc.

Of course, in the school setting, this awareness and ability to deal with the Holy Spirit would have its basic foundation in the study and mastery of the doctrine of the Christian faith. And so, everyone in the school, staff, teachers and students, should try his best to take his doctrinal studies seriously.

We need to understand that the Christian faith is always relevant in all aspects of life. If we still do not see the connection and the relation between our faith and our concerns, for example, then we have a problem to solve. The Christian faith is not just a written word. It is the living word of God as well as a life-giving word.

The task, of course, is not easy. It will involve a continuing effort, ever deepening and extending in depth and scope. It will ask for an increasingly concerted effort as well, since this thing just cannot be done alone or by a few. Indeed, the faith is not just a personal, private affair. It needs to be made a culture.

We should try to avoid getting stuck at the kindergarten level, just memorizing and mouthing things we hardly understand, much less, use in real-life situations. We need to know how the faith figures prominently in our daily affairs.

Every situation in life carries with it a divine message which we should try to discern and act upon. We just cannot approach these situations purely from the point of view of economics, sociology or politics alone. God is always in the middle of things.

One of the tragedies of our times is to witness alumni of Catholic schools involved in campaigns that go against Christian faith and morals. Nowadays, for example, we have groups like Catholics for RH, Catholics for Free Choice.

It would not be farfetched to expect groups like Catholics for divorce, or for abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia, etc. These are clear indications that the Christian faith was not properly taught, studied and assimilated in the schools.

It’s not that the schools should manufacture Christian robots. Nothing can be further than what Christian faith demands. But things should be done in such a way that Christian faith is learned and lived freely and lovingly.

The challenge, problems and difficulties will be enormous. But if we humble ourselves and beg our Lord for help, we know nothing is impossible. We need to work on our humility to keep our learning and living of our faith going. The Holy Spirit comes to us to the extent we humble ourselves.