Clergy Notes — June 8, 2025
When I was a little boy, there was a party game that I really enjoyed. I forget its name, but it involved a group of children sitting in a large circle. One of them was designated as “it” and they had to whisper a message into the ear of their neighbour. It had to be a full sentence or a couple of phrases. The neighbour had to pass on what they heard (or thought that they had heard!) and so on round the circle. Then the final person had to say aloud what they had heard. It was always amazing to see how the message had been distorted – words mis-heard or forgotten or guessed at wrongly. The final result could be very amusing.
This game came to mind when I was having a discussion with an atheist friend of mine. He is passionate in his belief that the original message of the Christian Gospel must have been distorted. He maintained that there has to be a high degree of mis-interpretation, omission and guess work. “After all, the events on which the message was based took place over two thousand years ago and many miles away. Also, they were first recorded in languages that were not English”. He and I are good friends and so we respect each other’s viewpoints. I doubt that I will ever convert him to the Faith and he certainly won’t make me abandon mine.
But what I want to say to you is that he was forgetting the work of the Holy Spirit. Jesus, on the last night of his life, promised his disciples that he would make a special request to God – to send the gift of the Spirit of Truth. Jesus explained that one of the functions of that Spirit was to lead his followers into a full and deep understanding of the many things that they had seen and heard about during the time that He was with them. Today, we celebrate the dramatic arrival of the Spirit. Luke uses the images of wind and fire to give a vivid impression of the strength and power of that Spirit. We believe that the Holy Spirit will help to guard the Christian message, so that it is not distorted or mis-interpreted. The life-giving story of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus can be heard by each generation with the same freshness and clarity that was available to the first generation.
To return to my silly story of that party game. However big the circle grows, we can be assured that the same message is heard and proclaimed from the earliest section to the most recent. As we said at the Vigil Mass of Easter – “Christ yesterday and today. The beginning and the end.”
Fr. Neil Gray