Homily for the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Confirmation Mass

August 11, 2024
Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church
Hillsboro, Texas

1 Kings 19:4-8
Psalm 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9
Ephesians 4:30-5:2
John 6:41-51

In today’s second reading, Saint Paul addresses an urgent invitation to us: “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption” (Eph 4:30). How does one cause the Holy Spirit to become sad? You will receive the Holy Spirit today in Confirmation and you have received Him in Baptism. Thus, in order not to grieve the Holy Spirit into sadness, it is necessary to live in a manner consistent with the promises of Baptism that you are going to renew in Confirmation in a few moments. The grace of the Holy Spirit enables you to live in a morally consistent manner with what you promise today. The promises of Baptism that you will make in accord with your own freedom at Confirmation have two aspects: rejecting evil and embracing good.

To reject evil means to run from temptation; it means to say ‘no’ to temptation, to sin, to reject the devil and his empty promises. Particularly, it means saying ‘no’ to a culture of death that shows itself in a denial of  reality tricking you into seeking a false happiness. This false happiness makes you comfortable with lies, with deceit, with not caring, and with resenting and despising others. Today, you say “no” to the devil and his lies.

The new life given to you in Baptism and which you will receive in a new way in Confirmation has the Spirit as its source and rejects any behavior dominated by feelings of hatred, lust, or envy. This is why Saint Paul urges the Ephesians and us in today’s second reading to ask God that we act in a way that “all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from your hearts, with all malice.” These are the things that make the Holy Spirit sad because they unsettle the joy of the Holy Spirit and poison our hearts and compel us to cursing God and our neighbor.

Yet, it is not enough to refrain from doing evil in order to be a good Christian. It is necessary for us to embracegood and to do good for others, especially those most in need. Saint Paul illustrates this further: “be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” If we settle on living lives where we only avoid doing evil but we are not committed enough to Christ to perform good actions for other people, we waste our life by passively not caring about others and become indifferent. In the words of the Jesuit Saint Alberto Hurtado, “It is good to do no evil, but it is evil to do no good.”

Pope Francis once told a group of young people around your age, “I urge you to be protagonists in good! Protagonists in good. Do not feel all is well when you refrain from doing evil. Everyone is guilty of not doing the good they could have done. It is not enough to refrain from hate. One must forgive. It is not enough to refrain from bearing grudges. One must pray for one’s enemies. It is not enough to refrain from causing division. We must bring peace where there is none. It is not enough to refrain from speaking ill of others. We must interrupt when we hear others speak badly about someone: stopping the gossip: this is doing good. If we do not oppose evil, we feed it tacitly. It is necessary to intervene where evil spreads because evil spreads in the absence of audacious Christians who oppose it with good, walking in love.”

The gifts of the Holy Spirit that you receive this morning enable you to rejoice in God’s gift of your human nature because they conform you to Christ who is fully human and who conquered the devil not only as God but also as man in communion with the Father in the Holy Spirit. His gift to you of the Holy Spirit enables you to share in His defeat of the devil by rejecting evil and by doing good.