To the Eastertide question, “How do we receive the Holy Spirit?” last Sunday we answered: by participating in the “Breaking of Bread.” As in the Emmaus episode which we heard last week, the actual Breaking of Bread includes the Opening of Scripture, which preceded it in the Emmaus episode and is necessary for the Sacrament. Hence the Liturgy of the Word precedes the Liturgy of the Eucharist. And let us remember that Bread, Jesus teaches, is both His Body and the Eternal Word (which is Him). Or more succinctly: Bread is both Sacrament and Scripture. “Give us this day our daily bread” refers to Jesus given both as Sacrament and as Scripture (that is, as Eucharist and as Old Testament).
Through Eucharist and Old Testament (the “Breaking of Bread”), we can hear Christ’s voice, as He taught us. And with His voice comes His presence: His real and actual presence, both in Eucharist and in Old Testament; in Sacrament and Scripture. Jesus said in the Upper Room: “Take, eat: This is my Body.” and He said on the road to Emmaus, in effect: “Take, read: This is my Body.” Both are Him: both are Bread: both we receive in the Mass, in the Breaking of Bread.
Such is the first answer. And the second answer is this: We receive the Holy Spirit by being sheep.
And this comes directly to us from Christ, Who in our Gospel passage says, “The sheep hear His voice, and He calls His own sheep by name and leads them out.” Or turned into the first-person, Jesus says, “The sheep hear My voice, and I call My own sheep by name and lead them out.” In being sheep, we receive the Holy Spirit, for it is through the Holy Spirit that we hear His voice and through Him we are led. And so, we must ask, what does it mean to be sheep?
Because it is the Holy Spirit Who makes it possible to hear and know Christ’s voice – the Church has never only celebrated the holy Mass. The Mass, rather, has always been part of a larger pattern of worship, a larger pattern of religion. The purpose of religion is to accustom us to the Holy Spirit. This is what we heard last week in our Reading from the Acts of the Apostles, the second chapter, verse 42: Saint Luke says, after Peter finished his sermon, responded to the question, “Then what shall we do?” with an exhortation to baptism as the way to receive the Holy Spirit, the newly baptized “continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.” This is the very day of the public creation of the Church, and the pattern of religion immediately emerges as the pattern of the Church’s life, in response the Holy Spirit having been poured upon the whole world: He who is the giver of life.
And the way of receiving this life is by doing religion: through the pattern described by Saint Luke in Acts 2:42: “And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers.” This is what it means to be sheep, this three-fold Rule or pattern. Sheep who hear the voice of Christ! Religion accustoms us to the Holy Spirit so what we can receive Him, day in and day out.
Having already looked at what “Breaking of Bread” means (Scripture and Sacrament coupled together in the Mass), we need to be clear on the other other parts of Christian religion. What do the other two refer to: “apostles’ teaching and fellowship” and “the prayers”?
Apostles’ teaching and fellowship refers to baptized life in a community of devotion to Christ, being disciples. It was what the Postcommunion prayer at Mass calls being “members incorporate in the mystical Body” and “that holy fellowship … [doing] all such good works as Thou hast prepared for us to walk in.” It means service and prayer, of study and formation, of humility and hospitality, of loving all the members of the community, and together loving Christ in all person whether or not they are Christian. It is social ministries, prayer ministries, formation ministries; it is studying Scripture, it is feeding the hungry: apostles’ teaching and fellowship is an overall term for the infinite ways that personal devotion happens within community.
And the other is “the prayers.” And I include “the,” as the Greek text does, and I say it with emphasis. That is because “the prayers” is not referring to mere praying (that is part of personal devotion: petition, intercession, thanksgiving, and all other kinds of prayers Christians spontaneously do). What “the prayers” refers to is the rest of the Liturgy of the Church besides the holy Mass. It refers to what we today call the daily Offices: Matins and Evensong, also Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer. The Church has never not gathered for “the Prayers”: it is one of the habits inherited from Jewish religion: the marking out of times in the day to be grounded in and by the Holy Spirit, in Christ, and in the Father. Doing this was also revealed on the Day of Pentecost for the Church to receive the Holy Spirit. And by this pattern of Liturgy – Breaking of Bread plus the Prayers (Mass plus Office) – the Life of our Lord is experienced through the Kalendar, and all the major Saints who witness to His Life.
And so, this pattern of Pentecost religion is itself the primary, ordinary means of receiving the Holy Spirit. Through this three-fold pattern, the Martyrs of the Church (like S. Stephen), the Apostles of the Church, the Fathers of the Church, and all the Saints of the Church have received the Holy Spirit. May our religious life in this parish give us the same active and real presence of Christ in our lives as the Martyrs, Apostles, Fathers, and Saints of the Church have had in theirs. It is by being Sheep, through the rule of Pentecost religion; that we may know Him who calls us each by Name, and follow where He does lead. It is by being sheep, and being sheep in Christ’s pasture, and sheep whose Shepherd is Christ. Amen.
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