Sunday June 8 2025
Solemnity of Pentecost – Year C
Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab
Carmel Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Brasilia
(Homily translated into Portuguese sentence by sentence)
1st reading: Acts 2,1:11-XNUMX
Psalm: 103 (104), 1 ab.24ac, 29bc-30,31.34, XNUMX
2nd reading: Romans 8,8:17-XNUMX
Gospel: John 14,15:16.23-26b-XNUMX

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The miracle of Pentecost will now be repeated: I will speak in my own language, and you will understand in yours! Because from now on the Church speaks all languages; and what allows translation is first and foremost charity.
The Spirit makes us sons, says Saint Paul. Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus understood very early on what it was like to be a child. She learned from her parents what it was like to be loved. It was first in her family that Thérèse learned love; it was first in her family that she learned mercy; it was in her family that she learned to recognize her faults because she knew she would be forgiven. Thérèse would thus learn to do things for the joy of her parents. And she would learn to do things for the joy of God.


When she writes to her father: I will try to make you famous by becoming a great saint. (LT 052), she is not thinking of herself, she is thinking of her father.
She doesn't think about her joy, she thinks about her father's joy. She doesn't think about her glory, she thinks about her father's glory. And what Thérèse learned in her family, she will live it all her life with God. She learned to be a child. We might think that "being a child" is natural... but not completely. We must also learn to be a child: learn to be a child of God, learn to trust God in all things, learn to believe that God is truly a Father who loves us, contemplate in Jesus, the love of God the Father for us:
“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (Jn 3,16:XNUMX). And what Thérèse shows us is what the life of someone who trusts completely in God is.

Thérèse does not seek to live the commandments to be “in order.” Thérèse seeks to live the commandments to please God, to rejoice God’s heart. Do each of us seek to rejoice God? Do I act to be pleased with myself, or do I act because I am pleased with God? This is the whole conversion that Thérèse calls us to live.


The Spirit is given to us to make us sons. Welcoming the Holy Spirit is learning to live as children of God. The sign that we live with the Spirit is that we have absolute trust in God. Thérèse goes through trials, she will even go through the test of hope when, from the Easter season of 1896, it seems to her that there is no more Heaven, that Heaven no longer exists. But Thérèse never doubts the love of God… Thérèse never doubts the presence of Jesus. And when in her life of prayer, in her life of oration, it seems to her that nothing is happening - she calls this dryness - she is faced with an immense silence, Thérèse does not say "God has abandoned me", she does not say "Jesus is no longer interested in me", but she has so much confidence in Jesus present that she concludes: "Jesus is sleeping", "Jesus loves me so much that in my home, he has the freedom to sleep" (Cf. LT 074.)


And she will explain to her sister Céline, who also lives a dry life of prayer: Don't worry, Jesus is sleeping. Why is he sleeping? Because he is tired, because he has been running all day after the lost sheep. And in your home, Céline, Jesus finds a pillow much softer than the stone he didn't have to rest his head on: He finds your heart, Jesus comes to rest on your heart (Cf. LT 144). Thérèse never doubts the loving presence of Jesus.
Thérèse does not theorize about the Holy Spirit, she does not explain how the Holy Spirit works, but she lives deeply by the Holy Spirit. The work of the Holy Spirit in Thérèse is to live in communion with Jesus.
We heard in the Gospel, chapter 14 of Saint John, that the Holy Spirit will teach us everything, will make us remember everything that Jesus told us. And we see clearly in Thérèse how much she is nourished by the Word of God, how much she is nourished by the Gospel. For Thérèse, the Gospel is not a reference text, it is the living word of God. Very often, Thérèse says: "Jesus 'tells' us that...", "Jesus 'tells' me that...", "Jesus 'makes me feel...".
The Holy Spirit gives Thérèse a living relationship with Jesus. This is the Christian life: a life of trust in God, a life of union with Jesus, a life in which we seek, at every moment, to act for the joy of God.
Don't worry so much about your sins.
Be more concerned with loving God, with loving your neighbor, with absolute trust in God who loves you.

Amen

Father Emmanuel Schwab, Rector of the Shrine