The Eponymous Flower

 A Pentecost Sermon.  By Walter Cardinal Brandmuller

 Rome (kath.net/wb/as) 

“Pentecost, the lovely festival had come, fields and forests were green and blooming;  on hills and heights, in bushes and hedges practicing a merry song - the newly enthused birds.  Every meadow sprouted flowers in fragrant grounds...”

 So says the poet…

And now the Acts of the Apostles.  It does not speak of the lovely festival.  There is talk of fire and storm.  Yes - both, spring of nature like storm and fire were and are images of the spirit of God, who creates life and fills his bride, the church of Jesus Christ, with his light and his power.

 So today we sing “Come Creator Spirit...” and we should sing it loudly and enthusiasticly, because today everyone is concerned about creation, but there is hardly any talk of the Creator.

 Before all creation, however, it is important to think of “HIM”, “without whom there is nothing, what is, from whom we have everything”, as the poet says, the Creator Spiritus, the creative spirit.

We say of artists that they have their own creative power, which allows them to produce good, true, and beautiful things, and we marvel, admire, and delight in their works.

How much, much more is this true when we consider the works of the Spirit of God, His creation - and we never come to the end of it.

The children sing: "Do you know how many little stars there are - the Lord God has counted them" - no one will ever be able to do it.  Astronomers and astronauts are also far from knowing or even measuring space and its innumerable Milky Way systems.

But let us return to earth, where we find plants and animals in unimaginable abundance.  There are the birds that populate the forest, the sky.  Did you know that nine thousand seven hundred different species have been discovered so far?  And when we then hear from experts that there are thirty-two thousand five hundred species of fish, of all kinds of see creatures, in the see, in the river, in the lake, then all that remains for us is amazement and admiration.

 The crown of creation remains: the human being.  Of all the millions of people who inhabit the earth, there is not a single one whose biological genome - we speak of DNÅ - the genetic code - resembles another.  The uniqueness of an individual can be recognized unmistakably by their fingerprint.

 "Lord our ruler, how mighty is your name in all the earth."  And the psalm goes on to ask:

 “What is man that you, O God, think of him?”

 And now the answer:

 "You made him a little inferior to God, crowning him with glory and honor."

This is also what the prayer from the Christmas Mass means: “God, you created the human being wonderfully in his dignity and - after the original sin of the first parents - renewed it even more wonderfully.”  Even more marvelous is this restoration, because in it not only is the human being made partakers of the divine nature, but his inmost being is conformed to Christ.  He is, as Jesus said to Nicodemus, “born again of water and of the Holy Spirit.  “So if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation: the old has passed away, the new has come.”

 So the apostle Paul - can ask the Christians in Corinth: "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?"  Born again from the waters of baptism and the Holy Spirit - meaning - that the baptized born again Christian is no longer a mere creature.  He is no longer just God's image, he is God's beloved child, in whom the father recognizes the features of his only begotten.

 Let's not just accept this with faith.  Let's build our believing self-confidence on it.  The baptized Christian is much more than just a human being.  And precisely this is the work of that spirit, which descended on the group of disciples in the storm and fire and has since stayed and worked with them.

 Of all that has been said, of this working of the Spirit of God in the soul of the redeemed, baptized, I experience so little, we experience so little in the church and in the world.  Just as a ship with slack sails does not gain speed when there is no wind, so does the Church of our day in our lands and times.  Hardly a breath of the storm and fire of the day of Pentecost can be felt for a long time.  What happened to those ninety percent of baptized and confirmed German Catholics who can no longer find their way to church on Sunday?  When even shepherds flee from the wolf, yes, open the door to the sheepfold for him?  - For decades, dull materialism, indifference and weary resignation have been spreading in the church in the German-speaking area and we are in the process of ignoring the warning of the Apostle Paul and extinguishing the spirit.  The church tax is still bubbling up and keeps the rattling apparatus “church” going.

 But - friends - in spite of everything: the spirit blows where it wants - says Jesus to Nicodemus.  And - it blows!  Even in Europe, which has become so spiritually weary, he is still at work, on a small scale, but who knows how soon on a large scale. Wherever a faithful, zealous priest is at work, the church fills up - and there are more of them than you think.  A young spiritual elite is growing up, which has heard the call to the priesthood and religious orders, and has begun to form communities and - where well managed - to populate seminaries.

 But first, let's look at ourselves.

 Despite the darkness, drought and cold, God's Spirit rules in each one of us.  That we believe despite everything, place our hope in God, try to love God and our neighbor - all of this is the work of the Holy Spirit in us.  "Without me you can do nothing" says the Lord.

 So if, despite our poverty, we believe, pray, try - to avoid evil and do good - then this is only possible because the Holy Spirit lives and works in us.

 Wherever there is faith, conversion, deeds of selfless love, we recognize the Spirit of God at work.  Just as we see and experience the power of the electric current in the glow of the lamps, in the rotation of the machines, so we see the work of the Holy Spirit in everything good that we do ourselves, that we see happening around us.

 He, the Creator Spirit, creates, works in us the gracious faculties of believing, hoping, loving.  Abilities that we therefore call “divine virtues”.

 In the beginning, back then in Jerusalem, the Spirit of the Lord came in storm and flames.  How many times since then has there been a rather quiet, gentle breeze—the way God's Spirit moves hearts and worlds.

 Two hundred years ago a poet prayed:

 "Lord have mercy on me

 that my heart will blossom again - no one has taken pity on me yet

 from the springs of the earth!”.

 Let us make this request our own today - in view of the world and church of our day.

 It is indeed that request of which the Lord says: “... how much more will the Father in

 heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him”.

 So come the Holy Spirit, fill the hearts, make them bloom again