HEARTS ON FIRE – OUTPOURING SPIRIT

“The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,
‘Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,
and whose sins you retain are retained.’” John 20:20-23

Pope Francis says in “The Joy of the Gospel” (2013): “Life in the Spirit, which has its source in the heart of the Risen Christ is . . .  a dignified and fulfilled life.” It is a joy-filled life like the one Jesus lived, and asks us to live.

HEARTS ON FIRE

When was the last time your heart was on fire about something?  What was it that triggered the fire of that fervor? Was it a spectacular meal at a new restaurant, a really insightful or enjoyable movie, noticing the pure joy of a child engaged in play?  Like many of us, you probably told someone about it and perhaps even mentioned the joy, the heartfelt fervor that welled up inside you.

That’s what evangelizing is: a sharing of the fervor we experience in encountering,  being moved and changed by something.

FORGIVENESS AND PENANCE

Pope Benedict XVI, in 1991, before becoming Pope, wrote something about forgiveness and penance in Called to Communion” which, at first, I found confusing, but with persistent, thoughtful consideration (something too few of us take the time to do), I found deep meaning and a better understanding of forgiveness, penance and how we – our inner selves, our true selves – are triggering our own sanctification, when we  let ourselves become aware of our own psychological and physical mechanisms of transformation. It is what happens in us as we live our everyday experiences that can, if we let it, move us closer to reaching our full potential, the fullness of the life that God intends and has equipped us to attain and enjoy. How much effort do we put into this?

What I had to do to understand Pope Benedict’s message was apply what he had to say about forgiveness and penance to what wells up inside me (real penance) and transforms me into a better person, when someone forgives me for my having hurt them.

The indented text below contains my thoughts on the Pope’s message.

The future Pope Benedict XVI wrote, “When we read the New Testament attentively, we discover that there is nothing magical about forgiveness. But neither is it a fictitious forgetting, a refusal to accept the truth. It is, instead, an entirely real process of change carried out by the Sculptor. The removal of guilt truly gets rid of something. The proof that forgiveness has come to us is that penance springs up from us.”

So, the penance that the confessor gives is an indication of the hoped-for true penance that “springs up inside of us.” And why and how does that happen? He goes on,

“Forgiveness is in this sense an active-passive event: the creative word of power that God speaks to us produces the pain of conversion and thus becomes an active self-transformation. Forgiveness and penance, grace and personal conversion are not contradictions but two sides of one and the same event.”

Let’s see how this forgiveness-penance self-transformation happens in a purely human situation of me hurting someone I love and that person forgiving me for having committed the offense. What happens in me is not only a sincere acknowledgement of my guilt, but also a realization of how my “sin” hurt the one I offended, and that, I now recognize that my inflicting that pain on them is offensive to me, too. This realization triggers something in me. It is perhaps a God-instilled, emotion-producing response that also triggers a change in me. See, the forgiveness by the loved one leads me to allow it to enter into me and it takes me to a higher level – to being a better person than I was when I committed that hurtful act. “Oh, happy fault.”

The real penance is experiencing this transformation. The forgiveness-penance of this human-with-human encounter led me through grace to become more of the God-like person that I am destined to be!

“This fusion of activity and passivity expresses the essential form of human existence, for all of our creativity begins with our having been created, with our participation in God’s creative activity.”

Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal. “Called To Communion” (pp. 149-150). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

Pentecost is about receiving the Holy Spirit, about letting the Spirit “trigger” something in us (our hearts on fire – inner conversion-transformation). My own Pentecosts occur whenever I let the Spirit make clearer to me the truth about myself – that I am not yet the “me” that I could be, that I am still a bumbling sinner in need of forgiveness and penance.

And when I go to Confession, it is this new “me” who does the Confessor-assigned penance, fully aware of and grateful for the inner conversion-transformation. I,  forgiven and with joy and heartfelt fervor welling up inside me, go back to my everyday life and people bringing the Good News about evangelizing love and forgiveness.

Let’s open ourselves to the Pentecost Spirit of God. Let the Spirit set our hearts on fire!

May you have a blessed and joyous Pentecost.

Sister Loretta