Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year A
First Reading: Acts 8:5-8, 14-17
Second Reading: 1 Pt 3:15-18
Gospel Reading: Jn 14:15-21

This Sunday, just two weeks before Pentecost, we hear that Jesus promised his disciples to ask his Father to send them the “Spirit of truth,” to be with them forever. Then we hear how Peter and John laid their hands on the new Christians of Samaria and “they received the Holy Spirit.”

Today, our reception of the Holy Spirit in Baptism is “confirmed” in the sacrament of Confirmation, in which the bishop, a successor of the apostles, lays his hands on us and prays that the Holy Spirit will bestow on us his gifts of wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord.

These gifts, first attributed to the Messiah by the prophet Isaiah, are supernatural reflexes or instinctive reactions by which we respond to God spontaneously, but always with full consent.

They are essential if we want to account for our trust in God, as St. Peter enjoins in the Second Reading. However, we cannot expect Confirmation to make us wise, understanding, or knowledgeable without any effort on our part.

It is true that God can “infuse” his gifts miraculously, just as he can heal us miraculously, but that is not his usual way: he normally does it through doctors and medicine. In bestowing his gifts on us, God grants us the dignity of co-operating or collaborating with him.

Recall the joke about a man who asked God to let him win a lottery. When he reproached God for not answering his prayer, God replied, “Well, at least buy a ticket!”

All too often we mark Confirmation, near the end of elementary school, by ceasing to learn about God. For the rest of our lives, we remain satisfied with an elementary education about the most important questions in life.

There are many ways in which we can, and should, continue to learn about our faith as adults.

One way is reading the Bible, the inspired word of God. We hear excerpts from the Bible at Mass, but we should also read it for ourselves, especially the Gospels. Rather than trying to read it from beginning to end, we can focus on the books and the chapters from which the Church chooses her daily and weekly Mass readings.

Another way is to study the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a clear yet profound exposition of all that the Catholic Church believes and teaches.

We can also read the lives of the saints, recent papal publications, and the documents of the Second Vatican Council, easily available from Christian bookstores or vatican.va. Finally, we can read Church history and keep up to date with current events through vaticannews.com.

If (like me!) you are not a reader, you can take a course in the Catholic faith, like my own “The Catholic Faith in Plain English,” available on YouTube at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course, in both print and audio form. I edit these talks every year as I myself increase my understanding of the Catholic faith.

“It would be a strange God who could be loved better by being known less,” Frank Sheed said in his Theology and Sanity. “Love of God is not the same thing as knowledge of God; love of God is immeasurably more important than knowledge of God; but if a man loves God knowing a little about him, he should love God more from knowing more about him; for each new thing known about God is a new reason for loving him. It is true that some get vast love from lesser knowledge; it is true even that some get vast light from lesser knowledge; for love helps sight. But sight helps love too.”

Only with knowledge, understanding, and wisdom can we “always be ready” to invite others, as we do in this Sunday’s Psalm, to “come and see what God has done: he is awesome in his deeds among mortals.”

Father Hawkswell is again teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English with new insights, in print and YouTube form at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. He is also teaching the course in person on Sundays (2–4 p.m. at the John Paul II Pastoral Centre, 4885 Saint John Paul II Way, 33rd Avenue and Willow Street, Vancouver) and Mondays (10 a.m.–noon in St. Anthony’s Church Hall, 2347 Inglewood Avenue, West Vancouver). The title of next week’s talk is Consecrated Life.