Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 25 May 2014

Sixth Sunday after Easter May 25th 2014

One thing I can’t escape as a Greek-Catholic priest is the constant reference to the life giving Spirit in our liturgy and prayer, we begin each liturgical act with a magnificent invocation to the ‘Treasury of Blessings and the Giver of Life’. In the anaphora( Eucharistic prayer) the epiclesis, that is descent of the Holy Spirit on the gifts, is solemnly and very directly invoked not once but three times and to stress that moment, all the congregation respond Amen, Amen Amen! Then of course there are the wonderful writings of the Saints passed down as living tradition. which teach us about the deep and abiding role of the Living Spirit in our lives.

There’s something about Eastern Christianity with its rich theology of the Spirit that despite all the odd bits and pieces of history, reminds all Christians we are in the age of the Holy Spirit. The Ascension of the Lord Jesus and the gift of the Spirit celebrated at Pentecost, hands over the community we know as Church to what we might call the ‘hidden person of the Trinity’, and the work of bringing us all together to know, love and serve the living Christ. But more than that there is an insistence that this Spirit cannot be exclusive to the Clergy or believers, but is actively present in all times, peoples and places!

The text from John 14 15-21,which is used in the Roman Rite for the Gospel of the Sixth Sunday after Easter, gives us more insights into this deep and ancient rootedness. John stresses the advocacy of the Spirit , the one who will plead our cause, supporting us through thick and thin all the days of our lives, but John also has Jesus telling us of the Spirit’s binding, indissoluble link between him, the Father, and ourselves, ‘the Spirit is in us, with us’ , so is Jesus and through them we are linked to the Father.

As we move towards Pentecost and as we think of our Christian birth in the place of Pentecost, the Middle East, we need to make greater efforts to love, cherish and support all those communities of Eastern Christians suffering under great privation, but also to cherish their tradition, for in the end it is the living Spirit who gives us that ultimate gift of love which is our vocation!

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Britain.