Readings: Nehemiah 8:2-6, 8-10; 1 Corinthians 12:12-30; Luke: 1:1-4, 4:14-21
Some scholars have called St. Luke’s Gospel and Acts of the Apostles a “biography” of the Holy Spirit–a bit glib but you get the point. St. Luke certainly underlines the operation of the Holy Spirit from what we Christians recognize as the saints of the Old Testament to the growth of the New Testament Church. And that’s quite a development, even a surprise.
The birth of the Son of the Most High God through the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit should have placed him on the throne of David his father to reign forever. This should have been the crown of God’s covenant with his Chosen People. But something went wrong. Jesus was not acclaimed Messiah by the majority of his own people. Instead, a foreign government executed him.
God so values the free will he gives us that he would never coerce us to do the right thing. God knows that doing the right thing is not the same as doing the good–the good can only be born of free will. God has all eternity to wait for us to wake up to the depth and goodness of his will.
In fact, Jesus does reign forever on the throne of David his father but not as anyone could have envisioned at the time of his conception. No human misunderstanding or failure can derail God’s will.
As the Holy Spirit had overshadowed Mary, the Spirit continued to hover over a new creation. We see that in today’s Gospel: the same Spirit that descended upon Jesus after his Baptism while he prayed, is active. For it is in the power of the Spirit that Jesus returns to Galilee and reads from Isaiah that the Spirit of the Lord is upon me…to bring glad tidings to the poor; and to proclaim this as realized in his own person.
In dirt poor Nazareth that should be very good news. But here our reading breaks off and we won’t hear the reactions of Jesus’ neighbors until next Sunday. That’s the crux of the matter: will they resist the Spirit or welcome the Spirit? Isn’t that the difference between the annunciation to Zechariah and the annunciation to Mary?
Augustine A. Dolcich says
Fr. James, thanks for posting your homily from Luke’s 1st Gospel. Your piece in 3rd paragraph has several of us perplexed, and thirsting for clarity. Is not “doing the right thing” (in context to God giving us our gift of free will), itself an act of free will? As we all struggle with our sinfulness, yearning to do the right thing, and with faith, begin to understand the depth and goodness of God’s will?
James says
Sorry for the confusion.
I believe that one of the human puzzles in exercising authority is coercion to keep problems under control; it’s also inevitable in an imperfect world as a way to protect innocent people from harm. We lock up lawbreakers. It’s not unusual that human beings project the same strategy onto God. Why doesn’t God punish wicked people with disease or accident that both disables them and punishes them? If children die anyway, why didn’t Josef Stalin die in infancy?
The fact that God doesn’t act that way doesn’t indicate that God doesn’t care. God wouldn’t make anyone believe in Jesus; God doesn’t purge the Church of abusive clerics who discredit the faith or prevent them from being ordained, etc.
There was a time when the Church purged the presence of heretics by condemnation, and then handed over the accused to the secular government for sentence and execution (disclaiming any responsibility for their death). The cry of the First Crusade was “Deus vult”–“God wills it”, to justify the indiscriminate slaughter in Jerusalem of civilian Muslims, Jews and Asian Christians. Mass baptisms were imposed on peoples by their monarchs in the early middle ages–in and of itself Baptism is the right thing to do; but were such enforced baptisms real conversions below the surface?
Coercion can subjugate outward behavior but not guarantee a change of heart. That is what I was addressing, not the degree of freedom in the act.