Holy Spirit Goose
And as he had said this, he breathed it on them
and said, receive the Holy Spirit.
In our Catholic church, we typically
think of the Holy Spirit in rather tame terms.
We think of the Holy Spirit
as a nice peaceful dove coming, fluttering into our lives,
or tongues of fire settling down on our head.
But in Celtic spirituality, it is very different.
In Celtic spirituality, it is a wild goose,
honking and wild, untamed, fierce and furious, but free.
I know that is a little startling, but there is a difference.
We Celts really believe that
the Holy Spirit is alive and free, fierce.
It settles in our heart and creates this energy,
this wildness inside of us that yields to nothing but the Lord.
John O'Donohue, the great Irish poet, theologian, and philosopher,
expounds quite a lot on the image of a goose for the Holy Spirit.
The reason why it is so important in Celtic spirituality
is because there is certain wildness to it.
Yes, there is a certain freedom to it.
But it is also because of the unity that the goose brings to it.
A goose never flies alone,
they always fly in formation.
And when geese fly, they fly in a “V” formation.
Those who are at the front expend 70% more energy
than the ones on the wings.
They will readily get pretty tired,
and then they move to the back of the V formation.
Each one will take their role at the front.
This ensures that the whole flock
can travel extraordinary amounts of time and distance
because they work together,
constantly rotating the lead.
O'Donohue maintains that this is
the perfect symbol of the Holy Spirit in the church,
because it is together that we need to work.
It is an image that I am sure Saint Paul
would have gladly have used if he had thought of it back then.
But he used the body with its many parts.
He calls us members of the same body
and each of us have different gifts
and that we all need each other at different times.
The same basic concept of unity is the same in the same body.
There is who we are as church.
There are times that one of us needs to take a lead
and the rest of us then can tail in behind,
but we all need to take our turn at the front.
And when that happens, well, it is beautiful
because we can feel the unity of who we are
and how this Holy Spirit works among us.
We had a great example of that last weekend
at the twenty-fifth anniversary of my ordination.
We had a magnificent celebration here in Church
where the children's choir, the adult choir,
the choir from Holy Spirit,
cantors who have played recently with me
and cantors who have been
here in the entirety of my priesthood,
all together singing in unison
with a magnificent, beautiful service.
Then the church being full and and alive,
you could feel the energy.
Then we went over into the hall
and again a whole other group of volunteers
who set all that all up and then all tore it all down.
It was just an extraordinary movement of the Holy Spirit alive.
The wild goose within us alive and determined to express herself.
Over these last several weeks, the leadership team and I,
have been sharing with you the bold vision for the future
of how we are celebrating our seventieth anniversary.
Today is the feast day of the beginning of the church.
We consider this annual feast of Pentecost
as when the church, if you would, began universally.
But for us, this year is our seventieth anniversary
and our sixty fifth anniversary as a school.
We as a leadership have been pondering and thinking
about what the next seventy years look like?
What are we going to do to build on the legacy of the past
to build a legacy for the future?
We have made some bold ideas.
We want to extend the preschool,
and we want to build a a spirituality and education center
where the convent is.
It is a bold vision.
No question about it.
We have the wild goose of the Holy Spirit within us!
Here is the part that is most important,
we all need to take our turn at the front.
Right now, it is great that there are a few of us at the front.
Six teams that are going to come together,
and we will talk about this at 10AM.
Hopefully, some of you will stay and listen and dialogue
with us in Spooncer Hall about this.
But the idea is that we have to be bold.
We have to allow the Holy Spirit to get into our lives
and to inflame our hearts and to make us a little bit wild,
a little bit outrageous so that we can continue
the great work that the Lord has started within us.
My fear is that sometimes when I get up I get all fired up
and you look at me like I have just taken
some extra morning coffee or something.
And you wonder, “Oh, God, is he like that all day?”
But the challenge is for us is to allow this Holy Spirit,
the goose, not a tame dove,
but the goose that gives wildness to us,
that allows us to come alive.
There is and we do it together.
There is a great tale that is told,
and I think it is apropos to my fear,
changing the metaphor for a second.
Migratory ducks.
There is there is this tale told about a flock of migratory ducks.
They decided that they were going to form a little town.
They were going to stop migrating.
They had a little duck school and little duck shops,
and they had duck homes, and they even had a duck church.
So they would go about their duck day each day,
waddling around the town, doing what ducks do,
waddled from one place to the next.
But every Sunday, they would come waddling into church,
and the duck pastor would get up
and give a fiery duck homily.
And then one day, he gets up, and he tells them,
“We all have wings. We are called to fly.”
And they all honked, and they quacked,
and they were all fired up.
After the homily and they were done, they all waddled home.
None of them flew!
The challenge is that I sometimes feel
I just get up here and I waddle on,
and we do not really allow the Holy Spirit in.
We have tamed it, controlled it,
and we decide what we allow to happen in our lives.
See, that is not the Lord's vision.
The Lord's vision is that he sends his Holy Spirit down.
There is a bit of wildness, of unpredictableness to it.
And we are called to soar like geese
and we travel great distances together
because we are always better together.
My friends, today as we receive the great gift
that the Lord continues to promise us,
a gift of His body and blood,
the gift of His Spirit to make us one body of Christ.
Let us not waddle out of here,
but instead fly like wild geese spreading the word of the Lord.
His love is enough.
And as he had said this, he breathed it on them
and said, receive the Holy Spirit.