 This morning's talk was actually supposed to be given by Debbie Herbeck, Pete's wife. I am not Pete's wife. Thank you. Things are going so well. Actually Debbie's not feeling well, so she wasn't able to make it with us this weekend. So let's keep Debbie in your prayers and I'll do the best I can. So let's just take a breath. Now just as we begin our session this morning, I invite you to pray that you would hear what the Lord wants you to hear. What that really does is it takes the pressure off of me. So I can just basically say whatever I want. Lord, that your Holy Spirit would bless and anoint us, that we would be able to allow your spirit to speak to us this morning. Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning is now and never shall be, world without end, amen. See you later, Bob. So we pay attention as we're all aware, the theme that we've chose for this conference actually for all summer is from Luke, the fourth chapter of Luke. And I've mentioned, I think it might be, it's certainly in the top two or three of my favorite texts. But I think for us to have a better understanding of what's taking place, we need to take a look at just a little bit earlier. As Bob stated this morning, Luke was the Gospel of Luke and acts of the apostles were written by the same individual. And for us to be able to have a clarity about what we're talking about in the fourth chapter of Luke, it's important that we look at a couple of the chapters earlier. At the very beginning, we all know the story, right? The angel comes to Mary and says, guess what, you're pregnant, congratulations. Yay, woo, that's great. She says, how can this be? And it says, the power of the most high will overshadow you. All right, so from the very beginning, the Holy Spirit is present in Luke's story. And we're going to see that throughout the rest of the story. So there's a story we had just recently, the visitation, Mary goes to Elizabeth and the Holy Spirit inspires John and the Holy Spirit, there are John leaps in her womb, right? Leaps at her womb at the presence of Jesus. Zachariah says, the scripture says that Zachariah filled with the Holy Spirit goes to the temple. Praise, we know the story of Zachariah, Anna. Same thing. So if we take a look at the third, again, just this idea and this understanding that the Holy Spirit from the very first chapter of Luke is actually writing the story. So you get this sense that something's going on and you have these characters that are in the midst of this story and it's the Holy Spirit that's leading it. Amen? So third chapter, verse 15 to 17, we've got John the Baptist jumps in the scene and John the Baptist says that I'm going to baptize you in water but there's one who's coming after me, he's greater than I am, right? And he's going to baptize you in the Holy Spirit. Now I don't know if that's a term that's familiar with you, my suspicion is that some of you it is quite familiar but for me when I was 20 years old, it was not something that was familiar to me. I was spending a year with the organization called Net and one of the first days this guy, I mean it was just much like what we've seen, people that were singing and singing loud and raising their hands and continuing to shout and praise are really frustrating. I told my father it was a cult. This guy comes up to me and he says when were you baptized in the Holy Spirit? And I said, I've not been baptized in the Holy Spirit. I don't know what you're talking about. I was baptized as a baby, he goes, that's not what I'm talking about. And for the next three or four days, wherever I went, like he just wanted to pray with me. It was like this homing device. He would like kind of come, it's like just let me pray with you, right? But this is interesting because I took my faith very serious, much like Bob, although I never wished I'd killed somebody, much like Bob, I in fact was. I was always a pretty good kid. You know, the Lord was really always part of my life, but I'd never heard this term, baptism in the Holy Spirit. Meet with this other person a couple of days later. She goes, it's just Pentecost. I said, well, what do you mean it's just Pentecost? Is that Pentecost is something that each one of us should experience, not merely an event that happened 2,000 years ago. Amen. So John the Baptist says, there's one who's coming after me. And he's greater than I am. And what his mission is, is to see that you get baptized in the Holy Spirit. Amen. So we jump again to the very beginning of the fourth chapter. And the scripture says, in the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus is baptized. Scripture says that the heavens open up and the Spirit came in it look like a, or a goose, whatever, right? We can go either way, Holy Spirit came in. Let's say it's all about translation, depending what you're reading it in, right? Right, but just imagine this, this phenomenal image, the heavens open up and the Spirit comes upon them and the Spirit rushes upon Jesus in baptism. And at that point, we understand more clearly who he is. This is my beloved son. That is, as Bob said in Mass, that the being holy is not merely not having sin because I've met a lot of people who didn't weren't necessarily in serious sin, but there wasn't a holiness about them. And I've met people who were in serious sin and you could just tell there's something about them that they're wrestling and they're struggling with that desiring ultimately to be holy. But baptism isn't just about that. Baptism is you becoming a daughter of the Most High God and me becoming a son of the Most High God. And the Spirit rushes, Scripture says rushes upon Jesus and everybody recognizes that. That you brothers and sisters, my suspicion is just about everybody here, probably everybody here has been baptized. And it baptized you are brought into the kingdom of God. You are made a son or daughter of God, but it's not just that the Spirit has rushed upon you at that moment. And it's that Holy Spirit that we hear in the Catechism that is the gateway to a life in the Holy Spirit. The Catechism says you're baptized and that baptism is a gateway that you've been drawn through from life to death to a life in the Holy Spirit, not just a moment in the Holy Spirit, not just an encounter in the Holy Spirit, not just a weekend in the Holy Spirit, but a life in the Holy Spirit. The question we have to ask ourselves, am I living that life? Jesus probably had seen in his mind some idea of what it was gonna look like for us brothers and sisters to live as his disciples, to live in the power and the anointing of the Holy Spirit. And we have to continually ask ourselves, am I living that? The Catechism tells us that that begins at baptism. And then we find it in the rest of the sacraments. The Spirit of God animates the sacraments of the church. Amen. Then the next thing we hear, all right? Jesus is baptized, the Spirit rushes upon them. And then the scripture says in the beginning of the fourth chapter, and again, the scripture we're using this weekend is about chapter 12 or 13, the very beginning it says the Holy Spirit again, the Holy Spirit drives Jesus to the desert. Nobody wanted to go to the desert. When Jesus was alive at the time, there were so many things. First off, there was the spiritual significance of the desert and the desert was where everybody messed up, right? If you pay attention to the Old Testament, so oftentimes the wandering, the brokenness, the idolatry, it takes place in the desert. And they go to the mountain and have this revelation of God, but not the desert. The desert also wasn't a safe place. Nobody would go to the desert. Who wants to live in a desert? So it's not just that it was spiritually not pure or not clean for the Jew, but it was also practically not a safe place to go. And the scripture says the Spirit drove. I like it in Luke, it says the Spirit drives Jesus. Almost this sense of he'd prefer not to go, but he knows that he has to. And it's the Spirit that leads him there. The desert, that place of difficulty, the place of struggle, the place of pain, the place of suffering, the Spirit leads Jesus there. My suspicion is we've all been there, right? Last year was a really terribly difficult year. COVID was just going crazy. And I decided we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna welcome the students back here, right? I also did kind of a crazy thing. I said, for the new ones, we're not gonna make them pay. I hadn't thought that went through, but it kind of worked out okay, right? At the same time, my brother was also sick. And there was all this stuff that was going on online about, you know, they're crazy at Franciscan. Why are they letting kids come back? They're putting them at risk. In the midst of that, my brother's sick. I remember I was sitting in the chapel one day and it was all by myself and there was just this weight, right? Because it was clear at this time that my brother was gonna pass and everything that was just going on and there was just this desert, this weight. And I just, I feel like everything was caving in on me. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do was I doing the wrong thing. Should I have let the students come back? Should I go home to be with my family? What am I supposed to do, right? And there's just becomes tighter and tighter. And I was just so, I was frustrated and I was anxious and I was in the chapel and I was just by myself and I said, Lord, I can't do this. I don't know what I'm supposed to do or how am I supposed to find you in this? How am I supposed to, and in this moment, the spirit of Jesus just rested on me and came upon me and it became real to me again. And I heard the Lord saying, it wasn't, it may not be the most comforting thing for you, but at the moment it was the most comforting thing. I heard the Lord say to me, you will not be crushed. It certainly didn't feel like it. And the spirit of Jesus breathed into my heart and said, you won't be crushed. I'm present with you in this. The spirit leads Jesus to the desert for 40 days. And what he does there is he fixes all of the mess that the desert represented. And then he comes out of that. And I wonder what it was like when he comes back because that's where we're gonna pick up now in the fourth chapter of Luke. And Jesus comes back and he was in the desert for 40 days and I'm gonna guess that there were actually some people that were wondering, did he make it? I mean, imagine if you go out by yourself and I'm sure Mary was like, you've got to be kidding me. You did this to me again, right? Every day she's looking, is he coming back? Is he coming back? I'll bet you they had a stern conversation. And then in the beginning at Luke 4 verse 14, it says, Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the spirit. You cannot read the scriptures. You cannot read especially Luke and miss the fact that it's the Holy Spirit that's animating and it's moving everything. Amen. Jesus returns to Galilee in the power of the spirit and news of him spread throughout the whole region. Everybody's talking about this guy. He's amazing. He's remarkable. 40 days, 40 nights and all this. His word is spreading. Everyone's thinking this guy's pretty amazing. And then this is really cool. He comes to Nazareth where he had grown up and he went according to the custom into the synagogue on the Sabbath day. I've been able to go to the Holy Land a number of times and each time I go, I go to Nazareth and I go to the synagogue and I just sit there and just read this scripture. And it's interesting because there's nothing impressive about this room except the reality that this is where Jesus grew up, that this is where Jesus prayed and this is where we hear in the scriptures today. He stands up and he reads this. They hand him a scroll of the prophet Isaiah and this is important. He unrolled the scroll and he found the passage where it was written. Okay, well, I think that's important is he didn't just like unroll the scroll. It's like, we've all done this right before. Let's see here. Let me just say if this is Isaiah 61, it's the coolest thing ever. That's not, okay. But what he does is he's not playing Bible roulette. We've all played Bible roulette. I actually just saw recently that there's this kind of new game that's going on. It's called Bible roulette and here's how it plays. You close your eyes, you kind of turn the pages, you open the Bible and you've put to one page. Everybody does that to go to one page and then the step two is you do exactly what it says on that page and the winner is the first one who doesn't go to jail. So Bible roulette, enjoy yourself, right? Scripture says the spirit, Jesus says the spirit of the Lord is upon me. Why this is important? This is the beginning of Jesus's public ministry and the first thing he says in the temple and the synagogue where he grew up, the first thing he says, the spirit of the Lord is upon me. And this is really important for us, right? Because this is not merely a proclamation. This is also an explanation, right? Because if we pay attention to the things that's happened in his life over the last many days, the spirit of the Lord is upon me, he says. That's why I've been able to do what I've done. That's why I was able to go to the desert for 40 days. That's why I was able to resist the evil one. That's why I was able to overcome temptation. That's why I was able to untie the knots that have been tied for 2,000 years. Why have I been able to do what I've done because the spirit of the Lord is upon me? And it's also a proclamation of what he's going to do. Why am I able to be able to heal those who are blind, to heal those who are sick, to free the captives? Why am I able to do anything like that? Because the spirit of the Lord is upon me. That's a bold statement, brothers and sisters, to say that the spirit of the Lord is upon me, but this is the beginning of Jesus's public ministry. He's here to proclaim something and that is the spirit of the Lord is upon me. The question we have to ask ourselves is can we say the same thing? Can we say the same thing? Are we comfortable to stand up here and to say the spirit of the Lord is upon me? And brothers and sisters, if you're a baptized Catholic Christian, we ought to be able to say that, amen? The spirit of the Lord is upon me. Brothers and sisters, it is impossible for us to be able to live the Christian life that Jesus had in mind for us apart from the power of the Holy Spirit. And my experience is that so often times we want to live virtuously. We want to live a holy life that we are hearing about this morning. We want to be faithful to the Lord. And we try and we make up our mind and we fail and we try and we make up our mind and we fail. And that's a recipe that causes ultimately despair because we think that we can do this by ourselves but the reality is it's impossible for me to be faithful to Jesus by myself. That I need the power of the Holy Spirit. We need to have this encounter, this encounter that transforms us, that changes us. Jesus says that the anointing of the Holy Spirit is upon me, that he's been anointed, the spirit is upon him and he's been anointed to preach the good news. In the Old Testament, this idea of anointing was that it was just this great image that you had poor oil. When I do baptism, I love to do baptism. I mean, you just pour as much oil as you can because you want that little guy to be just all greasy and oiled up, right? And then watch the mother not drop them but almost drop them, right? But that's the image of the Old Testament, right? The oil in the oil runs over Aaron's beard and all that, that's just a great, great image, right? But it's this anointing that the oil is rubbed on the individual. It's different from the New Testament. In the New Testament, the anointing is an indwelling. It's not merely this external manifestation but in the New Testament, when Jesus is speaking about the anointing, that the anointing he's been anointed to do something, it's this anointing that's taken place on the inside. That something has changed on the inside. I love taking a look at the relationship that we have with the Holy Spirit because in my mind that oftentimes it's the forgotten person of the Trinity. I think Chris said last night that it's the part of the Trinity that's shy, that just is okay without being in the limelight but the one that's actually drawing everything. But we as Catholics can't live like that. It can't be the forgotten person of the Trinity. I love in the Acts of the Apostles, it says when Apollos was in Corinth, Paul traveled to the interior of the country and he came down to Ephesus where he found some disciples. He said to them, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers? And they said, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit. We have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit. For all too many, that's their story. Is that they haven't even heard that there is a Holy Spirit. So do me a favor, just close your eyes for a second and take a breath. The Spirit of the Lord is upon you. I love the quote that Pope Francis offers. He says that this baptism in the Holy Spirit is an encounter with the love of God that changes us. I remember when I was again on net, I was looking around and there were some things that were going on around me that made me uncomfortable, that made me nervous, that wasn't familiar to me. And a danger in that is that we let that, those external manifestations stop the Lord from doing what he wants to do internally in us. Or we stop only with the external manifestations and we sing and we la, we raise our hands and we cry out but it's not actually causing a transformation or a change inside me. And this is at the heart of what we want to be able to experience. Bob said this morning in his gospel that after the resurrection that the disciples were satisfied and at one level, yes, maybe they were satisfied but they weren't equipped. And this is that from the very beginning, we're hearing the scriptures that Jesus came, yes, He came to free us from our sin, yes, He came to die and to rise for us but He also came to allow us and give us what it was necessary so that we could live this life. So we pay attention to Peter that Heather spoke of last night and Bob spoke of this morning that we find Peter and Peter had had these wonderful encounters with Jesus. I mean, he's amazing, he literally sits at his feet for three years and takes all of this in but it's still, once Jesus died and before the Holy Spirit was sent, he was in a room with the doors locked. And it wasn't brothers and sisters until the Holy Spirit was empowered him until the Holy Spirit was poured forth and that's why I love to be able to celebrate this weekend on Pentecost weekend because we remember that. The church isn't born until Pentecost. We celebrate the birthday of the church on Pentecost because something changed in their life on that day. The Peter is in this room, the doors are locked, he's surrounded with a bunch of people and they come out of that, right? And they come out of that changed. And I think what the Lord invites us and what the church invites us and what the scripture invites us is to allow that same change to happen to me, right? 20 year old kid sitting in this chapel saying all of these people are really strange and I don't understand, I don't understand what it means Pentecost and I don't understand what the baptism of the Holy Spirit is and I don't know and understand what it means to be anointed but I was sitting there by myself and I said Jesus I don't understand all this but if you want the Holy Spirit for me then I want this. And my life has never been the same before since that moment that the spirit of Jesus becomes real to me. I become, I understood after having that experience I understood what the scripture says that Mary was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, right? I understood that the change and the understanding of anointing is not an external manifestation but an internal reality because God was close to me and my life was different. I was changed. Perfect, no. But for me so much of my story is the seventh chapter of Romans. Why do I do the things I don't wanna do? Now why can't I do those things that I wanna do because I was trying to do this under my own anointing on my own giftedness, on my own power. But brethren and sisters it simply isn't possible. This is, think about this. Jesus himself was not able to do what he did apart from the Holy Spirit. That's why I stressed at the beginning of this each of the things that was the spirit that was leading Jesus. If Jesus the son of God omnipotent to a holy one isn't able to do the works of his father apart from the Holy Spirit, why do you think you can? Why do I think I can? Right? The spirit of Jesus wants to come and become real to us and animate our life and change and transform and renew us so that we can be faithful disciples. Amen? One of the images I love reflecting on is one of snorkeling. I love to go down to the Caribbean or wherever and just to be able to go snorkeling. And if you've ever done that before you put the mask on your face and you put your face in the water and you discover a whole new world. I mean it's gorgeous. It's beautiful with plants and fish and animals and sharks and things like that. Right? But a whole new world that's been there from the very beginning. It's the same experience with the Holy Spirit. Is that when we experience the spirit in our life and we experience that Pentecost when we experience that baptism in the Holy Spirit it opens up a whole new world that's been there all along. It's the world of grace. It's the world of power. It's the world of holiness. It's the world of the sacraments. I mean, when I experience this grace and it's not something that's merely happened once, it's happened lots of times since and before. But that experience that I shared with it after that, the scriptures became alive to me. It wasn't just a dead word but it actually had something to say to me. The sacraments became alive to me. A greater love of the Eucharist. A greater love of the sacrament of reconciliation. A greater love of the church. That it opened up a world that in many ways, I, again, I was pretty faithful but it was small and what the Spirit did is it opened and it made it immense. And it brought about change in my life. Again, that's why I love Pope Francis' definition. The counter with the love of God that changes me. That there are things that I don't do that I used to struggle with that I've been changed. People who often come to me and they'll say to me, you know, Father, how do I know that God's really working in my life? How do I know that he's real as if there's this dipstick, right? You can just kind of check it. It's like, wow, you really don't believe, huh? It's evident. We pay attention to the scriptures. Speaks of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. It contrasts two ways of living in Galatians. Those who live according to the flesh and the markers are frustration, anger, jealousy, envy, drunkenness, sexual impurity. Those are the things if you're living according to the flesh. Then Paul goes on and don't blame me. I'm not the one who wrote that. He said, if that's the way you're living, you're not gonna inherit eternal life. I didn't say it, he said it, deal with him, all right? Those who are living according to the spirit, peace, joy, gentleness, kindness, right? How do I know? Well, I'm more patient with the friars. They look all nice. They'll drive you crazy, live with them, right? Just live with them, right? I'm kinder, I'm more generous. I love at the end of John, Jesus comes and he breathes on them and he says, receive the Holy Spirit. And he also says, peace. I mean, there's all these great charisms that are wonderful, we'll talk a little bit about more later. If this is awesome, that's kind of new to you. Go to John Bulley's workshop this afternoon about the life and the Holy Spirit. But I think peace, we undersell it. Who here wouldn't like to experience more peace? He says, peace be with you and he breathes on them. He breathes the spirit of Jesus upon them, right? So how do we get this? People ask me, how do I get what you've got? Well, there's no special magic sauce. The only thing that's required, and for some it's really, really difficult, is to say yes, to say yes, to give the Lord permission. To say that that same spirit that anointed Jesus, that I want that to anoint me, that same spirit that empowered Jesus in the midst of the desert, in the midst of everything caving in on him. I want that too. That same spirit that came upon Mary in a situation that she didn't know and understand and she didn't know how this was all gonna work out, but she still said yes. That same spirit that animates. The same spirit that doesn't just heal, but takes brokenness and restores. The same spirit that takes people who are dead and makes them alive, that's what I want. I want to live different. I want to live in an anointing. I want to be comfortable to stand up and say that the spirit of God is upon me. And to own that reality. That the spirit of God is upon me and anointed me and filled me and consumed me and overshadowed me and saturated me. That's the life I want to live because I can't do this by myself. I'm just so tired and frustrated and I just can't do this by myself anymore. So we ask and we give permission. Amen. Stand up. Do me a favor, close your eyes and ignore the person in front of you, behind you and next to you. And just in a really, really simple gesture, open your hands in front of you. Oftentimes we go before the Lord and our hands are closed and they're clenched or we've got our own agenda and the Lord can do really pretty amazing things if we're willing to give up our agenda, our plan, our will and allow him to be present and allow his will to be done. So really, really simply, just say come Holy Spirit. Now for a moment, say that not because I told you to but just speaking to the Lord, come Holy Spirit. Jesus, breathe on us. The spirit of the Lord is upon us. Jesus, you've anointed us in baptism. You've send out the power of your Holy Spirit in Pentecost. It's been confirmed in the sacrament of confirmation. It's been sealed.