Fr. Simon's sermon is about the Holy Spirit - the transparent member of the Trinity - the Third Person of that relationship which is God. The Holy Spirit is the First Person of the Trinity that you met, because it is the Holy Spirit who first leads us to Jesus.  Fr. Simon seriously suggest that Catholics say: "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Breath" every time they cross themselves.

Topics Presented 

	Why Jesus told Nicodemus: "You must be born of water and the Spirit."
	"Lord" is a code word in Hebrew, Adonai, represented by the vowels A-O-A
	God's unspeakable name is represented in Hebrew by the letters Y-H-W-H
	"Jehovah" is what you get if you put A-O-A together with Y-H-W-H
	Until about 500 years ago, the word "Jehovah" never existed
	In essence, the Holy Spirit is God's Breath
	Rabbi Yochanon ben Zakkai prediction that General Vespasian would be emperor
	The most recent appearance of the Shekinah cloud was at Fatima in 1917
	Once Jesus had died, the annual Yom Kippur sacrifice at the Temple in Jerusalem wasn't acceptable to God ever again - the cloth would never again change from blood red to white, as it had done for centuries before, since the Arc of the Covenant was created.
	How can you be a Jew without the Temple and without sacrifice, since sacrifice is needed to become reconciled to God?
	Why the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, just whispers to us about what we should say
	When and where do you hear God breathing?  Take note that you're in pretty big trouble if you can not hear God breathing.

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	1st Reading
	Psalm
	2nd Reading
	Gospel
	Written Transcript of Homily
	Footnotes

Well first of all, Happy Mothers Day to those to whom it applies.

Many of you are mothers - or all of you have been children - or still are.

You must have heard the proverb that it's never too late to have a happy childhood.

I believe in that.

Right?

Well, also, it's the feast of Pentecost.

I want to thank Steven and choir for singing the sequence.

I think most people don't remember that --- those of us who are ancient can....

In the old Mass, way back when, there were no hymns.

It was all chanting back and forth.

If you did it the traditional way, it was a chant back and forth.

There were no hymns, except for three times a year.

And Pentecost was one of them.

And that hymn is call the sequence, or the follower; it follows the first reading.

If you didn't get a chance to look at it, I think the words in English are on page 49.

I didn't look at that translation.

But one of the titles of the Holy Spirit is:

"Come, oh Father of the poor.   Come, oh best Counselor."

It's a beautiful, beautiful poem.

And it describes the nature of the Holy Spirit.

And that's kind of a problem.

I mean... most of us don't think of the Holy Spirit a lot.

I mean, we say:

"In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen."

But, somehow the Holy Spirit...

I mean....

We know what God looks like, the one with the long white beard.

And Jesus is the short one with the shorter brown beard.

We kind of have the mental image of the Father and the Son.

But the Holy Spirit....

I mean really --- what's the Holy Spirit?

A dove?

Fire?

Well, the Holy Spirit is the transparent member of the Trinity.

The Third Person of that relationship which is God.

Remember...

Jesus taught us that the Oneness of God is not a solitude but a solidarity.

God is a family - - - to which we're invited.

So, the Holy Spirit....

Who's the Holy Spirit?

Well, I would think that all of you here, certainly most of you, know the Holy Spirit.

Because though He is the transparent member of the Trinity, Jesus said He will glorify Me.

The Holy Spirit leads us to Jesus.

So, the Holy Spirit is the First Person of the Trinity that you met.

By that I mean, have you ever felt God was right there.

I mean, you're going through a quiet church....

Or you're sitting on a hill somewhere....

Or you look out on the lake or the stars....

And it just feels like God is right there.

Well , in a certain sense, that's the Holy Spirit.

I don't know if it's a good theological definition, but I think it's a good practical one.

The Holy Spirit is the sense  of the presence of God.

And that's important.

Now in that passage in the scripture....

In the Gospel of John, in which Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night....

Jesus tells him:

"You must be born of water and the Spirit."

And then further on in that passage, we read

"... the wind blows where it wills."

We don't know where it comes from, or where it's going.

But we can hear it.

The word for Spirit and wind in Greek....

Boy!  That first reading was a whole lot of Greek words, wasn't it?

So... here's your Greek lesson for the day, are you ready?

The word for spirit and wind, in that passage, is the same word - pneuma.

You've heard of pneumatic drills --- those are drills that work on air.

Pneumonia - - - wonder why the 'ppah' is in there?

The "P" that we don't pronounce?

That's because Greeks pronounced it.

That has to do with lungs and with breath.
 

NOTE: the Greek word pneuma literally means: "breath"

So that word pneuma...

In the top, they translated it "spirit."

In the bottom of the passage - "wind."

Why?

Because it's like a theological prejudice...

And, I don't know why...

We just don't think of the Holy Spirit in a vivid way.

So... I looked at a number of translations in the Bible, and they all did it.

Spirit up there - - - Wind down there.

The same word, pneuma, and it means wind or breath.

Breath?

Breath..

You've had the wind knocked out of you - - - that's your breath.

That's the sense of this word in Greek pneuma

What is this about?

I'll get there, I always do.

Or, mostly I always do.

When you come into Church....

And you cross yourself....

Put your finger in the Holy Water and cross yourself....

You're saying:

"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Breath."

The Holy Breath?

Hey, think about it....

I want you, from now on, when you make the sign of the cross....

I want you to realize you're saying:

"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Breath."

When you say Spirit - - - you're saying Breath.

What the heck does that mean?

Well. have you ever gone into a dark place....

A dark room.... and heard... (sound of heavy breathing into the microphone)

Yikes!

You'll get out of there pretty quick won't you?

That means there is somebody there!

Where there is breath, as the saying goes, there is life!

And this is the point....

In order to speak - - - you have to breath.

St. Paul said:

"Brethren, when you were pagans, you were let astray to mute idols."

"But, no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Breath."

I mean the Holy Spirit....

You can't understand that "Jesus is Lord" unless....

You have had that encounter with the Breath of God.

You know that phrase, "Jesus is Lord"....

Now are you ready....

This is gonna be a little Hebrew....

Ohhh, a little Hebrew --- about so tall.

No, I'm just joking.

A little Hebrew...

I know a little Greek and a little Hebrew - - - they're both kind of short.

Ahhh - - - never mind.

Where was I...

Oh Lord - - - get me out of this mess.

Here is your Hebrew du jour - - - that's French!

Where was I... speaking in tongues up here, huh?

Hallelujah.

The word Lord is code in Hebrew.

There was a word that was God's unspeakable name: Y-H-W-H.

I cringe every time I hear it in a song, or hear someone say it.

Because no self-respecting Orthodox Jew would every say that.

It was a word, the name of God, pronounced by the high priest...

When he went into the Holy of Holies....

This dark, unlit cube....

It was a room that was exactly a cube.

And before the Exile to Babylon....

The Ark of the Covenant was there....

But - after they were taken to Babylon - 500 years before Christ....

That room was completely empty.

It was built under the threshing floor of a rounder...

So it had a rock floor, and it had a perfect cube....

And the high priest went in there....

Once a year...

And he said the unspeakable name of God.

Well, when the Jews had lost the Temple, after the birth of Christ...

70 years after the birth of Jesus the Temple was destroyed by the Romans.

And, it was a terrible moment in the life of the Jews.

And one of the things they did, they compiled their scriptures....

And they worried....

Because, you see, the Hebrew has no vowels.

Has no vowels.

Do you ever go drive....

Well of course you go drive....

Most of you I've come frequently close to running into ya.

Have you ever seen the signs over the expressway, "EXPWY"

Did any of you move to this country and wonder what an "expwy" was?

I mean, E-X-P-W?

We abbreviate.

We take the vowels out, well except the really important ones.

Well, that's what Hebrew did.

Well, when they came to the word Y-H-W-H, they said:

"Well, we don't want to put the right vowels in there...."

"Because somebody might say it by accident."

"So, tell ya what...."

"We will put the vowels for Lord, Adonai, A-O-A."

Because a Jew, when he is praying, he calls God - - - Adonai.

He calls Him - - - Lord.

When he's not praying, he just says the name - - - Hashem - - - The Name.

So they put A-O-A with Y-H-W-H.

You know what you get?

Jehovah.

That word didn't exist before 5-6 hundred years ago.

If you went up to Abraham in a time machine and said:

"I worship your God, Jehovah."

He'd say, "Who?"

That word didn't exist....

But that's a talk for another day.

But you see, the word "Lord" was code for the name of God.

So what St. Paul is saying is: "No one can say Jesus is God...."

"The Creator of the Universe...."

"Except that the Breath of God breaths in him."

You can't really say the Holy Name.... really say it....

Unless God's Breath is breathing in you.

So.... that's what he's talking about.

The Third Person of the Holy Trinity --- the Holy Spirit is God's Breath.

Another problem they had - - - after the destruction of the Temple....

Was how can you be a Jew without the Temple?

Without sacrifices - - - how can you be reconciled to God?

Now, Jerusalem was surrounded....

It was just shut tight by the huge Roman army.

They built a low wall all around it - - - and just waited for the Jews to starve.

There were maybe a million people who fled to Jerusalem....

Because Jerusalem was built like a fortress.

And they just waited them out.

And there was a rabbi, who actually got a message from God in the City of Jerusalem.

And he had to tell the general, General Vespasian, this little bit of information.

And so he faked his own death, Rabbi Zakkai did.
 

[NOTE: full name: Rabbi Yochanon ben Zakkai who was the youngest and most distinguished disciple of Rabbi Hillel. He has been called the "father of wisdom and the father of generations (of scholars)" because he ensured the continuation of Jewish scholarship after Jerusalem fell to Rome in 70 AD.]

And he was taken out in a funeral procession....

And the Roman army let the funeral procession through.

Well, as soon as they got far away enough from the soldiers....

The rabbi got up off his funeral bier and he went straight to the general.

And he said to General Vespasian:

"I want to ask you a favor.  God has told me that in one year you will be the emperor of Rome."

Now, Nero was the emperor and he was from the family of Julius Caesar.

Only members of the family of Julius Caesar could be emperors...

And General Vespasian was a nobody....

He was a hick.

Well, Vespasian said:

"What's your favor?"

He said:

"I want you to let me go to Galilee and create a center there where we can rebuild Judaism, after you take the city."

And Vespasian laughed and said:

"If in a year I'm emperor, then you can have your center."

Well darned if Vespasian wasn't an emperor in a year.

And Rabbi Zakkai started a center for Judaism..

How do you have Judaism without the Temple?

Because you see, the Temple was the place where God spoke to humanity.

Do you remember that when Moses built the Tent of Meeting in the desert....

You know it's in the Bible....

That big book on the coffee table....

Well, the cloud of God's glory descended and filled it.

You couldn't even enter the tent where the Ark of the Covenant was kept.

And God said that on the wings of the angels....

That cover the Ark of the Covenant...

There was a covering --- there were angels on it, cherubs, and their wings met.

God said that's the mercy seat.

That's where I will meet my people....

That's where I will talk to my people....

And when I will hear them.

That's the place.

Well, God's glory filled that tent.

And, then when Solomon built the Temple that his father David had prepared....

And they dedicated it....

And the same thing happened.

The cloud of God's glory, they call it the Shekinah cloud.

It filled the Temple so that you couldn't even go in.

Well, that's just mythology...

Well, that's what happened at Fatima in 1917 --- this cloud would descend.

And on October 13th, 1917, the sun fell.

So.... if you think that's just old biblical mythology....

The last time the cloud of glory fell --- in a way people could notice it --- was in 1917.

It happens.

God appears to His people.

The cloud of glory filled the Temple....

And God took a residence in the Temple....

And I told you that the Temple was destroyed.

The Ark of the Covenant was hidden by Jeremiah the Prophet in the mountains of Moab.

And the Holy of Holies was just a dark empty room.

And they still went in.

Bad went to worse....

Around A.D. 30 - - - thirty three years after the birth of Jesus....

The Yom Kippur sacrifice wasn't acceptable.

The Jews would sacrifice two goats on Yom Kippur .

One would be killed at the altar; the other sent out into the desert.

And they would take a thread or a cloth...

And they would dip the cloth in the blood of the sacrificed goat...

And they would tie one piece of the cloth on the goat that went out into the desert.

The other they would tie to the pillar of the Temple.

The entrance --- the door post.

Then during the ceremony, the Talmud says this:

That cloth would change from red to white.

And it signified that the sacrifice of Yom Kippur had been accepted.

Well... A.D. 30 - - - the cloth no longer turned white....

And it never did again until the Temple was destroyed forty years later.

What else happened in A. D. 30?

Jesus died on the cross.

They no longer needed the Yom Kippur sacrifice....

Because Jesus had made atonement.

It was as if God had stopped speaking in His Temple.

And Rabbi Zakkai, in the year 70, went to Galilee....

And they made a kind of Judaism....

And this is what this is, what the Rabbis tells me....

This is what Rabbi Lefkowitz  tells me....

That really the sacrificial order wasn't important....

Wasn't important....

The moral and ethical quality of Judaism - - - that is what was really important.

I said:

"Rabbi are we reading the same Bible?"

"Sacrifices are on every other page!?"

Well, we are in great danger in the Church.

Because, you see, my friend Rabbi Lefkowitz realizes....

That we Catholics maintain the sacrificial order....

We have the Sacrifice of the Mass.

We believe God demands an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

And Christ is that sacrifice on the alter.

Every Mass is the Day of Atonement for us.

Now, rabbi says, no it was just... sacrifice wasn't important...

We believe sacrifice is essential.

You know what sacrifice really means?

Sacrifice means that there is a supernatural world.

If there isn't a supernatural world, well, why bother to kill some poor chicken?

You understand that?

That sacrifice means there is a supernatural world.

And when the Jews turned their back on the Temple sacrifice...

And made their religion something - - - that was in the first place, moral and ethical...

They forgot the component which was (intentional heavy breathing into microphone)...

ALIVE ! ! !

And Catholicism at this time is in grave danger...

Of reducing itself to a moral and ethical religion.

And we are moral, God willing.

And ethical, we hope.

But more than that, we Catholics believe in the supernatural reality of God.

Do you realize that more saints were canonized from the 20th century, than any other century?

And you know what you need to be canonized?

Martyrs get a free pass on this...

But everybody else - - - no.

You need two indisputable miracles.

Something that the doctors say there's no way this could have been healed.

Indisputable miracles.

So that means for every saint canonized, just about, two incontrovertible miracles...

After they're dead - - - not during their life - - - but after they're dead.

We believe in miracles.

Catholicism is built on supernatural reality.

This is the Sacrifice of the Mass.

In which we believe that the Holy Spirit comes down and overshadows bread and wine...

And, then in some inexplicable way, that bread and wine becomes flesh and blood.

If you don't believe that - - - go home to your computer...

And do a Google search on Eucharistic Miracles...

Eucharistic Miracles... happens all the time...

The priest breaks the host - - - and it starts bleeding.

Oh, that's ridiculous!

That's medieval!

Noooo... it's supernatural.

You see, our religion is a religion of miracles.

In which God is alive (intentional heavy breathing into microphone)...

But in the Church - we have reduced the wonderful supernatural power of God...

That just kind of well - - - that's not the most important thing.

You know, the Reverend Know-It-All really goes overboard this weekend.

The pastor's column says: "Take what he says with a grain of salt."

But, I think the Reverend Know-it-All has a point.

We treat the Church as if it were not the Throne Room of God.

We treat the Church as if it was the extension of our basement recreation room.

This is a long sermon...

You're looking at your watch...

You've got something very important to do...

You've got to take your mother out for pancakes.

Ahh... Hunger is the best sauce.

I'm not done yet.

We treat the Church, this building, as if it were a play thing

And forget that in that box --- there is a Miracle.

In that... golden, silver box --- there is a Miracle.

By the way, it's just a little gold plate, and a little silver plate.

It's not that valuable.

I'm too cheap to buy a really expensive one.

It's the Miracle inside that makes it valuable.

You know, the Holy Spirit is the Breath of God.

We call Him the Paraclete.

I heard somebody once read that reading, and say:

"I will send you another counselor, the parakeet."

No... no... no...

The Paraclete.

What is a Paraclete?

The Advocate - - - The Comforter.

Well.. the word is... well... here we go again - - - a Greek word.

And you know what the paraklētos was in Greek?

He was the lawyer for the defense!

I will send you another lawyer. 
 

NOTE: the Greek word paraklētos literally means: "one who consoles, one who intercedes on our behalf, a comforter or an advocate"

Just what we need.

I will send you another lawyer.

Jesus is our lawyer, He is our paraklētos the Bible says.

But, we have a whole defense team.

I will send you the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.

Greeks were funny --- they had good sense in certain things.

Lawyers, and don't get me wrong, it's an honorable profession.

Lawyers were not allowed to speak in court.

What the lawyer did was stood at the shoulder of the accused.

And he whispered into his ear what he should say to the judge.

So, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit is the lawyer...

Who is going to whisper to us what we should say...

But.... He whispers it!

Our world...

Our life....

Our church - - - is full of noise.

It's full of noise!

People who walk down the street with things in their ears...

Listening to God knows what on the Ipods...

And they don't even hear the birds singing!

How will they hear God breathing?

(intentional heavy breathing into microphone)...

Where, I ask you, where do you hear God breathing?

You know sometimes I come into this Church late at night.

I just stop in late at night, and say goodnight to the Lord.

And it is just an amazing thing to me.

That the church, it's kind of creepy...

That it's dark - - - yet it's light.

It's empty - - - yet it's full.

There's a presence of God in this building.... that you can sense!

If you just shut up long enough to listen...

If you can find some quiet in this place...

You can sense the same glory that filled the Temple so full --- that they couldn't enter into it!

Where do you hear God breathing?

You know sometimes when the people after the eight o'clock Mass are saying the rosary...

There's this wonderful rhythm....

And, it's almost like breathing.

And with those faithful people who pray the rosary after the Mass...

Or those who say the Litany...

You can hear God breathing.

You go to a wonderful quiet place....

And you look at the stars at night....

You can almost hear God.

Where do you hear God breathing?

Have you encountered the First Person of the Trinity --- the Holy Spirit?

We talk, talk, talk, talk.

And God would speak to our hearts...

If we could just listen.... listen... listen.

The breath of God...

To draw so close to God that you can hear him breathing...

And smell the sweetness of His breath.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.