Let there be a new Pentecost - A fire across the earth

The Catholic Church is Pentecost in America. It's Memorial Day, and we have all our American traditions. What was that commercial that used to be? Baseball, hotdogs, apple pie and Chevrolet? Well, we're happy to have baseball well-represented here on this Memorial Day weekend. We have the junior varsity and varsity titans from Lumen, Christi. They're having a great baseball season and their fight continues against Napoleon.

 

Gentlemen, stand up. And just in case there's anybody from Napoleon here, leave it all on the field. But we wish you well. Yes. Thanks for coming. Good luck. Go get them. Yes. I said in the email that I set out on Friday afternoon, if there wasn't the Holy Spirit, there would be no Catholic Church, there would be no Bible, and there would be no believers.

 

And all we need to prove that is to look at the Apostles before and after Pentecost. Up until Pentecost, the Apostles were afraid of their own shadow. They were not preaching or teaching or baptizing. They were afraid that those who killed Jesus were coming for them. And even though Jesus showed his risen body to them time and again in various places, they still weren't convinced or convicted that it was really him.

 

Maybe it was just a ghost. Maybe it was just a cruel trick. But unless or until they themselves were convinced, Victor, that this was the risen Christ, just as he promised, they weren't going to be able to convince anyone else. And therefore, between Jesus resurrection and the day of Pentecost, not a single soul was added to the faith.

 

And yet, with the rushing of wind and the tongues of fire, when the Holy Spirit of God came down on Jerusalem, 3000 people were baptized that very day. And the Catholic Church has been making disciples ever since to the ends of the earth and until the end of time. And let's put that to the test. I sometimes tell you that the Catholic Church exists in every continent and in every country.

 

Well, since you don't fact check me, I decided to fact check myself. And I've been lying to you for years. There is no Catholic Church in Antarctica. But it's also the case that the Catholic Church isn't active in every country. And that surprised me in the United Nations in 2023. They recognized the sovereignty of 197 countries on planet Earth.

 

And sadly, the Catholic Church is only active in 195 of those 197. What are the exceptions? Saudi Arabia, where they banned everything but Islam. In North Korea, where the Catholic Church was thrown out in the communist revolution of the 1950s. But everywhere else, we have a footprint and we're making a foothold for Christ. Even in Afghanistan, where there's only one little church and only 200 Catholics, we're still in it to win it.

 

And that's us keeping and carrying out Jesus. Great command as he was ascending last Sunday. What did he tell those disciples? Go out to all the world. Make disciples of all nations. Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son or the Holy Spirit. And the Catholic Church has been doing that, teaching and preaching and loving and living the gospel message of Jesus Christ ever since.

 

For 20 centuries, for 2000 years, all over this world. But we're not only moving horizontally. The Catholic faith has also been spread vertically. It made some headlines on Easter Sunday, April the ninth this year, when for the first time ever the Catholic mass was celebrated on Mount Everest in the Himalayas in Nepal, 29,000 feet above the earth, five miles above sea level, as high as the jets, the fly over the Jackson sky.

 

The Catholic word of God was preached. The Catholic Eucharist was celebrated. But it's gone even higher than that. Twice in the last 25 years, the Blessed Sacrament, the Catholic Eucharist, has been taken into space once on the space shuttle and once on the International Space Station. And we continue to spread the word further and broader to new audiences.

 

That is why on that Pentecost day, everybody was speaking a different language, but everybody could understand the message in that same spirit. The Catholic Church leads the effort to translate the Bible into more and more languages. The Catholic Church is overseeing the translation of the Old and New Testament into 700 of the 7000 languages spoken on planet Earth.

 

The New Testament is now in 1500 of those languages, and parts of the Bible are now translated to 3300 different tongues, so that people all over the world can know the story of the God of Jesus Christ. But on the church's birth day, which is today, we want to hear some good news. That's what gospel means, the good news of Jesus Christ.

 

And yet, so often when we read or hear about the Catholic Church on the Internet and the newspaper on the television, it's all something bad or bother. It's a bankruptcy. It's a scandal. It's a closure. But we have a story to tell. And it is a compelling one. And we tell it well and we tell it to anyone who will listen.

 

So let's share some uplifting statistics about what the Catholic Church does on planet Earth every day in 2023. Right now, the Catholic Church operates 150,000 Catholic schools. We're proud the Jackson schools are four of those 150,000, but they're educating 54 million young people every year. And what about looking after the sick so near and dear to the heart of Jesus?

 

The healer. The divine physician? The Catholic Church on planet Earth is currently operating 5000 hospitals, 16,000 outpatient clinics, mostly in places where people don't have access to good or affordable health care. And yes, even 600 leper colonies. Strange to us in the developed world, but in developing countries, leprosy Hansen's disease is still very much a problem. And the Catholic Church is kissing lepers just as Jesus did so long ago.

 

But we look after the least among us. The Catholic Church operates 16,000 homes for the elderly, the chronically ill and the disabled. 10,000 orphanages. 10,500 nursery schools. 13,000 marriage counseling centers. 31,000 Catholic, not for profit charities. And the St Vincent de Paul Society that feeds so many people each week. Right of our pantry across the world. The Society of Saint Vincent de Paul helps 20 million people every year.

 

We don't force any of these people to know God or to love God or to know Jesus. So to love Jesus or even to become Catholic. We help them because we have been helped. We love them because we have been loved. We feed them because we have been fed. Yes. My friends in the churches birthday let the fire fall.

 

Let there be a new Pentecost in the Catholic Church. Because we still have a story to tell. We're loving it, and we're living it as the greatest story ever told. It's his story. And we will tell it till the end of time when he comes again. Let us stand and profess our faith and.