Catholic Outlook Magazine Ordinary Time Winter Edition 2022

From Bishop Vincent
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
It is helpful to remind ourselves, as we celebrate
Pentecost in 2022, that the images of God’s
transforming Holy Spirit are wind and fire. That is the
incredible personal presence we have inside each
of us.
This is the power through which God became one of
us in Palestine and then fills the disciples’ hearts at
Pentecost with courage and creativity.
Our annual celebration of the season of Pentecost
especially reminds us that our Lord and Liberator,
Jesus of Nazareth, is not just some figure
from history. In some mysterious way, beyond our
understanding but not beyond our belief, Jesus is still
with us.
For Jesus promised us his deep abiding presence
until He comes again in glory. At Pentecost we
especially remember that He keeps his promise!
For Jesus of Nazareth sent his Holy Spirit to
empower us to go out and preach and live out the
Gospel especially to those on the margins.
Our front cover of this Catholic Outlook edition shows
the joy and wonder of parents and their baby being
filled with the Holy Spirit, during a recent baptism at
the Easter Vigil.
It reminds us that our own
baptism, is the same powerful
force that, like a wind, blows
all the cobwebs of sin and
selfishness away and that
burns down all barriers we erect
against living our Christian
life. For we are baptised into an
ongoing and intense union with
the Spirit of Christ.
The bus driver going about his work, the nurse
caring for the patients in hospital, because they are
baptised Christians, are bathed in the presence and
energy of the Spirit of God. And so are all of us,
as we journey through the ups and downs of our
daily lives.
As our chaotic world stumbles from one crisis to
the next, let’s never forget the Spirit is ‘hovering’
over the seeming chaos of our unsettling times and
mysteriously giving birth to the Kingdom of God.
This Pentecost may we accept this grace of the Holy
Spirit close by, especially in this the great Southern
Land of the Holy Spirit. For:
Without the Holy Spirit God is far away. Christ stays
in the past, The Gospel is simply an organisation,
Authority is a matter of propaganda, The liturgy is
no more than an evolution, Christian loving a slave
mentality.
But in the Holy Spirit the cosmos is resurrected and
grows with the Birth pangs of the kingdom.
The Risen Christ is there,The Gospel is the power
of life,The Church shows forth the life of the
Trinity, Authority is a liberating science, Mission
is a Pentecost, The liturgy is both renewal and
anticipation, Human action is deified.
Come Holy Spirit!
Bishop Vincent Long OFM Conv
Bishop of Parramatta
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