(Please note, the Pentecost Vigil, Simple Form, has for readings from the Old Testament to choose from for the first reading. For this homily, I chose the third option, from Ezekiel 37:1-14)
While New Jersey is certainly not a tropical rain forest, we are also not what would be described as an arid environment. We get rain pretty regularly — especially this past week — and we are blessed with many lakes, streams and rivers, not to mention the Atlantic Ocean to our east.
The same cannot be said about Israel. While modern technology makes getting fresh water in Israel today rather easy, that was not the case at the time of Jesus. Much of the land was arid, large parts of it would be called a desert. People often had to walk a good distance to a well or river to get water. For the ancient Israelites, water was an important factor in life, and not something to be taken for granted. Water was seen as a symbol of life, and dryness was a symbol of death.
This helps us understand the vision the Prophet Ezekiel has in today’s first reading. The Chosen People have been unfaithful to God. They neglected the covenant; at best just going through the motions of worshipping God without their hearts really being in it. They thought that they could handle everything on their own, and failed to rely on God. As a result they have been conquered by the Babylonians and most of their people have been taken into exile. As the Prophet records them saying, “Our bones are dried up, our hope is lost, and we are cut off.”
God sent Ezekiel a vision of a plain filled with dried bones. The bones covered as far as his eyes could see. The bones symbolized the Chosen people; dead, lifeless, disconnected. Ezekiel is told to prophesy over the dried bones, and when he does they start to assemble themselves; first becoming human skeletons, then the sinews and flesh came upon them, and finally skin. They looked now like a vast army, but they were still lifeless. Just a collection of bones, organs and skin, can look human but not be alive. It is only when Ezekiel prophesy to the spirit, that God’s Spirit comes into the bodies and gives them life. God promises through Ezekiel to raise the people from their graves, the grave of sin, and He goes further exclaiming, “O my people! I will put my spirit in you that you many live…”
In today’s Gospel, Jesus proclaims that the time for the promise made in Ezekiel is at hand. We are told that it is the last and greatest day of the feast, but what feast is it? It is the Feast of Tabernacles, a harvest festival. Again, recalling that Israel is an arid land, each day of the Feast the priests would fill a basin with water from the Pool of Siloam, and pour it in front of the Altar of Sacrifice as an oblation, a sacrifice asking God to send them abundant rains in the winter to refill their wells and cisterns. The eighth day of the Feast is the greatest and most important day, so the Temple would have been very crowded. It is during this day that Jesus exclaims, “Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink.” He says that everyone who believes in him will have “living water” that will flow in him. “Living water” is the best, because it is fresh and flowing. Jesus is saying that he gives life, and this life is the Holy Spirit.
Like the other two persons in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is mysterious. We will never be able to fully understand the Holy Spirit, but one way to understand the Holy Spirit is in the language of love. St. John tells us that “God is love.” God does not just love, He IS love. God the Father is the Lover, and the Son is the Beloved. The Holy Spirit is the Love that the Father and the Son share. It is a perfect love; perfectly reflecting the Father and the Son; the three are one.
We can also consider the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church. As we saw in Ezekiel, after the bones came together with flesh and skin, they still were not alive. They were corpses. They needed a “something” that would give them life. In natural life, we call that the soul. God infuses the soul in human bodies to give them live. He does that at the moment of conception. What was two cells are fused and form a new life with a human soul.
Yet we are made for something so much more than just natural life. We are created for supernatural life; sharing the very life of God. Through the sacrament of baptism, which of course uses water, the Holy Spirit is poured into our souls making us the children of God. And as the soul gives life to the various parts and organs that form the human body, the Holy Spirit gives life to the various members that form the Church. We are the Church, and the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ. When the Church acts, it is Christ who is acting. We are the continuation of Jesus’ ministry in the world throughout all of history. But it is only if we stay connected to Christ the Head of the Body. And we can only remain connected to Christ through prayer, especially through the sacraments. In the Eucharist in particular, we eat the Body and Blood of Christ so as to become the Body and Blood of Christ.
This Pentecost we need to ask ourselves, “How dry are my bones?” Have we allowed other things to separate us from Jesus and the Holy Spirit? Like the Israelites in the first reading, are “our bones dried up, our hope is lost, and we are cut off?” What is drying us out? Conflict in the family, challenges at work, physical illness? Are we putting too much priority on profits, prestige and pleasure, and not placing our priority on God?
Recently Jonathan Roumie gave the commencement address at Catholic University. In case his name is not familiar to you, Jonathan is the actor who plays Jesus in the series “The Chosen.” His father is Egyptian and his mother is Irish. He was baptized in the Orthodox Church, but later converted to Catholicism. He is very active in his parish, both as a catechist and an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion.
A few years ago he was going through a difficult situation. He had no medical insurance. He had only $20 in his wallet and nothing in the bank. He had enough food to last him maybe a day or two. While he had gotten some small guest roles on TV shows, his dream of being an actor did not seem to be paying off. He was desperate. In fear and anguish he fell to his knees, sobbing to God. It was then that he realized that he had given God most of his life, but not all of it. He had never given God his career. He thought he could make it as an actor on his own. He had never turned his career over to God. So that morning he did. He told God that he only wanted to do His will, and if that was to be an actor, great, but if it was doing something else, so be it. About an hour later he received a call asking if he would be interested in playing Jesus, and the rest is history.
We need to give God our dry bones. We must allow Him to be our Lord and Savior in every aspect of our lives, 24/7/365. As we approach Him in the Eucharist, let us give him our dry bones, begging Him to pour out His Holy Spirit into our lives, so that as we receive the Body and Blood of Christ, we will become the Body and Blood of Christ so to continue to proclaim to the world the Good News of Jesus Christ.
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