The Work of the Holy Spirit

My name is Father Juan Rios.

It is a long-standing tradition that the Ordinandi, the new priest,

asks another priest to be the homilist.

So if you were expecting Father Gemmerich to preach, well, if you decide to

leave, make sure you leave after the collection.

Because we have to keep Father David happy and paying the bills.

So there's no money back. So I'm a priest from the Ashutoshis of Miami.

As you can tell, you will not be hearing a Polish accent this morning, but something else.

We are so filled with joy today.

It is Pentecost. The coming of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit made everything happen.

Yesterday at the cathedral, it was an outstanding, wonderful,

profound, spiritual, joyful ceremony.

The joy was very most present because the Holy Spirit was present.

I'm visiting priests from South Florida. that, and as I walk into this beautiful

church, and I see the congregation, I say, the Holy Spirit is very much present here.

So, this is the time that we are celebrating and rejoicing on the birth of the church.

Notice that the disciples in the first reading in the Acts of the Apostles,

they were astounded and in amazement.

Because they saw, they listened in their own language. They understood everything

that was said by Peter and they were filled with wonder and amazement.

But the wondering amazement was that they were able to understand the mighty acts of God.

What we experienced yesterday, because the theodore was filled us with amazement and wonder.

We should never lose a sense of amazement and wonder because when we stop having

that sense of amazement we're no longer human.

Something else maybe. Because that is God's gift to us.

We have seen the mighty acts of God. The work of God.

And that continues from the beginning. Thanks to people like you who are allowing

the Holy Spirit to work in you,

who the church continues your prayers your rosaries your novenas coming for the holy eucharist.

See, now I'm going to ask a recommendation to our new priest to always maintain

that sense of wonderment because the Holy Spirit is always outward now through him.

See, that little anecdote I heard from Father Gemma in a week at the seminary.

You didn't know that father, when he was 10 years old, more or less,

he had the complex. He thought he was a Spider-Man because he would climb walls.

Across the street from his house, his parents, his house, where he grew up, it was a factory.

And you know how kids, when they're 10 years old, they want to sneak in in places,

they want to go to places, and he will climb the wall. But his father,

who's right here present, Edward, has forbidden him to climb walls.

But as Bishop Parr said yesterday, our new breeze here is a little intense.

And there is no walls that he doesn't want to climb.

But the thing is that he forgot that the kitchen window or the house window

was looking right at the wall. So he got caught and reprimanded by his dad.

But you know what? What's happening today in today's gospel?

Jesus is not climbing walls, but he's going through walls.

The doors were locked and Jesus show up.

And those who were inside the house were filled with fear.

We all have many fears. We have fears, anxieties, preoccupations, worries.

We all have all kinds of hurts and wounds, whatever it is.

But fear is opposite to love.

And today, to celebrate the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is the love of the Father and the Son.

And love, says scripture, casts out all fears. And we see Jesus breaking in.

Breaking in. It was sort of like a spiritual burglary, you know.

But Jesus didn't steal anything.

He came to steal their fears.

What doesn't belong to us?

Remember that Sister Faustina in the diary, the Lord says to Sister Faustina,

the only thing that you have to give to me as a gift and an offering are your

sins. They're the only ones that are ours.

So Jesus wants to break into the walls of our heart, the Lord-locked doors of our heart.

And that is the job of Father Jemovic now, Jemovic, to break into the walls

through the sacraments,

to the sacraments to make Jesus present where there is fear,

to make Jesus present when we are in anxiety, to make Jesus' presence in all

those moments because the Holy Spirit is alive.

And now we see another sign of wonders of the Holy Spirit.

I remember seeing a video of Father Jimovit saying that for 17 years he was

away from the church, away from the spiritual life.

What he didn't know is that the Holy Spirit was never out of his sight.

And the Holy Spirit broke into his locked doors.

And now he must do the same because he's being anointed.

He's being received, the Holy Spirit, now he's a priest. And through the sacraments,

he will knock down every wall there is because that's the work of the Holy Spirit.

We can see that we are filled with fear. Now he's a message of love.

I remember a story of a priest who was a doctor, had a doctorate in theology,

and he was visiting Calcutta.

He was doing missionary work in the summer with Mother Teresa.

Mother Teresa was alive and well on those years.

And then he is in a big room making bandages, homemade bandages for the sick,

for the wounds of the sick and the dying.

He noticed that in the hall, at the other side of the hall, there was some commotion going on.

And as he glanced, he saw how this young woman who has wounds and needed to

be cured and needed to be bathed, she was not allowed anybody near her.

Not to the volunteers, nor the sisters that were there. She would splash water.

She would be feisty, pushing arms up. He wouldn't let anybody near.

So this priest who has been spit on on his face, sometimes we think that helping the poor is romantic.

It's beautiful. We got to do it. But it's not like the movie.

Sometimes it can be rough.

And then what happened is this priest looked and said, okay,

I noticed that they just went out and tried to find Mother Teresa.

Let's see what Mother Teresa, the mother of the poor or charity, will do.

And he stopped doing his bandages and he glances over the side.

And he sees that Mother Teresa walks in.

And as she was getting near this young woman, she was very, that was very feisty

and splashing water and so forth.

But Mother Teresa stood there and what she did was immediately jump on her, hug her very tight.

And after a little resistance, the young women gave in.

And Mother Teresa was just simply hold her tight like you hold a baby.

And she will rock her back and forth and caress the back of her head and shoulders.

After a few minutes, she was totally calm. The women was totally calm.

And she allowed herself to be cleansed and her wounds to be healed.

To be sanitized.

That's the story of our lives. And that's the role of Father Jemovit now,

all the priests, to give the embrace of God so we can be cured, so we can be healed.

Life can be rough at times. We all have our own wounds and issues and sometimes

our own fears because we still need to be convinced that God loves us.

We have to trust that God loves us. And he wants to embrace us.

And once he embraces us in his love, change begins.

Our interior change and confidence. Jesus says to Sister Faustina, St.

Faustina, the one thing that hurts me the most is that people don't trust me.

Increase, Lord, our trust in you. We need to pray, Jesus, I trust in you,

but maybe we can add, Jesus, increase my trust in you.

And trusting in Jesus is trusting that the power of the Holy Spirit wants to embrace me.

No matter what addiction, no matter what issue, no matter what you or I have

done in the past, Jesus likes to begin new.

He renews everything. He renews us because he knows how to break through walls

and doors. He's done that before, and he can do it in our hearts.

And that is now the role also of our new priest, to bring to those doors to

the power of the sacraments, the power of the Holy Spirit.

And mainly the power of the Eucharist. You see, during Communist Poland,

Father Jamo, he wasn't aware that I was taking notes of some of his homilies as a deacon.

During Communist Poland, typical communist country, is there is lacking of everything.

Lack of food, lack of material things, basic necessities. It's really a struggle.

And then father, young father, will tell his dad right here,

Edward, says, Father, prepare a meal for me.

Prepare a delicious meal for me. And his father, he says, will do the best with little ingredients.

And he prepared a delicious meal for his son, his only son.

Now, Father Jemowit is going to prepare a delicious meal for you because he's a priest.

Because the Holy Spirit is alive.

The power of love is alive. And the only ingredient we need is the Holy Spirit

in our simple meal but has eternal ramifications.

When we pray the benediction at the adoration, and we say usually,

you have given them bread from heaven, and the response is.

Having all sweetness within it, some other responses containing in itself all delight.

That is the delicious meal that we must be craving for.

Jesus himself in the power of the Holy Spirit is present in the Eucharist, in the precious blood.

And when we receive that, there's nothing to be afraid of.

It's receiving the embrace, the loving embrace of God. And when we receive the

Eucharist, our wounds are healed.

If we just let him, we don't have to do much, but say yes.

Look, you're looking at a miracle here. For 17 years, he wasn't really hanging

around with God, but God broke in and now he hangs around with God.

Be careful when you hang around with God. You may become a priest or a nun or a nun.

So allow the Spirit to do his work.

Allow the Spirit, because people are thirsting for God, the true God,

our God, the God in the Eucharist.

There's thirsting for a blessed mother.

You heard many times in 1979 that famous chant from the people in Poland when

St. John Paul II visited Poland.

And people were claiming in communist Poland, we want God.

I would say, America, in God with trust.

We want God also. We are thirsting for God.

That's what makes us strong at the beacon of hope for the world.

Because our foundations are Christian foundations.

And we as Catholics know that our foundation is the Eucharist,

the sacrament, our Blessed Mother, the Rosary, our novenas knock yourself out

i see relics everywhere here you know pray to the saints,

because we will never be afraid priests will continue to be ordained you will

still come in here because the holy spirit is always at work and there is no

wall or doors that he cannot enter in To do what?

To liberate us from fears and to rejoice as we are become the Pergam Church.

So, Father Jamovi, you have a lot of work ahead of you.

Keep climbing walls, the right walls. Keep having a taste of the delicious meal.

Very little ingredient.

The power of the Holy Spirit. it. We all want that delicious meal,

which is going to happen in a few minutes.