How beautiful is the work of the Holy Spirit in today’s readings. Yes, it is Easter Monday, not the day after Pentecost. But we hear today in the first reading what the Holy Spirit did with Peter. Listen to him:
Peter stood up with the Eleven,
raised his voice, and proclaimed:
Jesus the Nazorean was a man commended to you by God
with mighty deeds, wonders, and signs,
which God worked through him in your midst, as you yourselves know.
This man, delivered up by the set plan and foreknowledge of God,
you killed, using lawless men to crucify him.
But God raised him up, releasing him from the throes of death,
because it was impossible for him to be held by it.
He “raised his voice and proclaimed.” In all the Gospel narratives, for all that Peter said, did it ever describe him as “raising his voice and proclaiming?”
No. It took the power of the Holy Spirit to move Peter to that…beginning, I would guess, right after that cock crowed on Good Friday morning.
What did the Holy Spirit do with Peter then? Probably tied him all in knots and let him any way but loose. Peter heard the cock crow. He remembered what Jesus had predicted, “before the cock crows, you will deny me three times,” and Peter wept in regret.
Where was he then on Good Friday afternoon? My guess is he was somewhere firmly in the Holy Spirit’s grip.
Nonetheless, Mary Magdalene knew where to find him on Easter morning, to tell him she had seen the empty tomb, had been told by angels to tell him specifically. Peter is mentioned by name in all four Gospel accounts of Easter morning. The Holy Spirit was moving, guiding…rearranging the furniture in Peter’s brain. He knew Jesus was the Christ, but he had never quite grasped the crucifixion and resurrection predictions. It took both the experiences of the Passion AND the Holy Spirit to begin to bear fruit in Peter. Jesus had to be resurrected in Peter’s heart.
Peter must have moved substantially toward understanding Resurrection on Easter Sunday night when Jesus appeared to them, though the doors were closed. “Peace,” Jesus said. And Jesus “breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive men’s sins, they are forgiven them; if you hold them bound, they are held bound.’”
So Peter had even more Holy Spirit in him on Easter Monday. How was the Holy Spirit working on him with “binding and loosing sins?” It must have been breaking open his heart. Yet he was not quite ready to reconcile. It took the experiences at the shore of Tiberius when Jesus asked Peter, “Do you love me?” to do that. And it took the Ascension and descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost before he was ready to stand with the eleven and proclaim, “God raised him up.”
The Holy Spirit and Us
This Easter Monday, does the Holy Spirit have you in his grip…or has he filled you…or is the Holy Spirit a not-quite-claimed Mystery to you? And where are you with the Resurrection?
The Holy Spirit IS a Mystery. The Holy Spirit comes to live in us when we are baptized. The power of the Holy Spirit active in us is meant to do with us what it did with Peter: be in our thoughts and struggles when we seek to understand; confront and convict us when we sin; move us to come to Jesus, to experience him—no matter what has happened in our lives. The job of the Holy Spirit is to bring us to say with Peter, “Lord, you know I love you;” and finally to send us out to “stand up and proclaim.”
The Holy Spirit in This Easter
I was a little (well, no, a lot) distressed on Holy Thursday night. We had Adoration “in the garden” after mass. I had the hardest time. I only wanted to go to sleep. My mind was cotton; my heart was wood. I felt nothing—though year after year on Holy Thursday in that Adoration time my prayer has been deep. My body was praying and my will was praying—but that was all. Finally, I thought. “Hmmm. I’m Peter tonight. I’m can’t pray because sleep has me.” I loved Peter anew. I wondered: How many souls has God saved because of Peter’s denial so publicly described in the Gospels? How good God is to us to let Peter, the leader and first pope, struggle and fall to show us how to persevere and recover!
I not only prayed to Peter, “Help me,” I also thanked him for letting the Holy Spirit lead him to say, “Lord, you know I love you.”
The Holy Spirit and the Resurrection
The Holy Spirit helped me pray better on Good Friday, though still with no emotion. But then, at the Easter Vigil, my heart caught fire. When our deacon sang the Exultet, my heart exploded. Our pastor had said earlier in the week, “Let the liturgy and Mystery of the Triduum break your hearts open.” I wanted that, prayed for that, but it took the Exultet to make it happen.
It was then I realized I need to be more like Peter and realize the absolute glory of the Resurrection. I take the Resurrection for granted. I can’t imagine not believing in it. Yet, do I see it as changing everything? In the absolute glory of the music and words of the Exultet I could imagine myself with Peter in the empty tomb, behind the closed doors on Easter Sunday night, by the sea of Tiberius, and even on the street on Pentecost STANDING and PROCLAIMING with the exaltation of piercing heart awareness:
Jesus rose from the dead. Sin, all the evils of the world were defeated. Evil waged war against God, and God let Himself be subjected to all the “wages of sin.” Even his disciples, even Peter, thought God was defeated. BUT…
Then Jesus arose! God triumphed. God triumphed in Jesus’ resurrected body. God triumphed in Peter’s reconstructed heart. God triumphed as the Holy Spirit came to give birth now to the voice of God speaking through Peter and Paul and Mary Magdalene and Matthew and…..our deacon…and you…and me.
The Holy Spirit, giving us grace, KEEPS God-with-us day in and day out. He still breaks open hearts and enlightens minds. The Holy Spirit comes to us in worship, in Sacrament, and even in cotton-headed, wooden-hearted prayers.
And because of that, it doesn’t matter how much evil seems to triumph today. God wins. God already won because Jesus, both God and man, rose from the dead.
Prayer:
May our hearts burn and glow and resurrect our spirits so that we, too, STAND with Peter AND PROCLAIM:
God raised him up, releasing him from the throes of death,
because it was impossible for him to be held by it.
And may it be impossible for death to hold us (or even our minds or hearts) because we have died with Christ and now live with him through the Holy Spirit. Come, Holy Spirit, enkindle the hearts of your faithful. And we shall be created and renew the face of the earth.
May Easter blessings wrap you in joy and explode your heart! May our hearts all be sustained by the Resurrection’s assurance that God triumphs.
