Alone We Are But Ateneans

Fr. Joel Tabora, S.J.
Mass of the Holy Spirit
SY 2006-07
July 7, 2006

Now that we have settled down to this new academic year, we have come together to celebrate the Mass of the Holy Spirit. We pray that the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father and his Son, be specially present to us this year. We know this will not be an easy year. Enrolment is down. We must cope with major shortfalls in income. Budgets have been cut. We are called to extraordinary sacrifice. With special intensity, we pray then urgently for the presence of the Spirit. We are reminded: material well-being is not everything; and well-being is anything but just material. We are drawn back to the Spirit. We know that in the Spirit the unlikely becomes likely, the impossible becomes possible, dead bones are restored to life. What is isolation, despair, and hopelessness is transformed into the joy of the children of God.

It was Fr. Paco Mallari who last Pentecost introduced me to a to a text of a Mexican poet and mystic, Amado Nervo. His words are worth sharing with you at this Mass of the Holy Spirit. Nervo said:

Alone I am only a spark, but in the Holy Spirit, I am a fire.
Alone I am only a hill, but in the Holy Spirit, I am a mountain.
Alone I am only a string, but in the Holy Spirit, I am a violin.
Alone I am only a drop of water, but in the Holy Spirit, I am a fountain.
Alone I am only a beggar, but in the Holy Spirit, I am a king.

We can build on this, in the way that might be meaningful to each of us in our Christian community:

Alone I am only me, but in the Holy Spirit, I am a friend.
Alone I am only a wife, but in the Holy Spirit, I am the Church.
Alone I am only a parent, but in the Holy Spirit, I am the redeeming Lord.
Alone I am only a stubborn sinner, but in the Holy Spirit, I am eternally embraced.
Alone I am only a groping administrator, but in the Holy Spirit, I am love.
Alone I am only a limited teacher, but in the Holy Spirit, I am light.
Alone I am only a searching student, but in the Holy Spirit, I am hope.

2. We pray for the Holy Spirit, that in the community we not be alone, that we not be lonely, that we be spared the despair of abandonment, that we know that in this community in a moment of need, we do have colleagues and we do have friends who are willing to lend a helping hand. We pray for the Holy Spirit that we might be rich in friends, rich in people sensitive to our needs, and rich in persons who care. Through the Holy Spirit may we too be good friends to our friends, enriching them in our love for them, in our laughter in their company, in our joy whenever they are present. We pray for the Holy Spirit, that among friends there may always be interesting things to talk about, meaningful things to do, hours of joy together, of shared meals and games and aerobics, moments too of silence for shared reflection and prayer, and when life is most gently challenging, an abundance of good wine.

3. We pray for the Holy Spirit, that in this university community he be the magic of our instruction, the compelling engine of our research, and the power of our outreach.

We pray that the Holy Spirit lead the teacher in us, through competence, to the mind and heart of the individual student, understanding the peculiarities of the student's circumstances, his or her personal triumphs and travails, but leading him or her to optimum heights of academic achievement. We pray that the Holy Spirit make the teacher for the students an excellent teacher, a model, an “idol,” a counselor and friend for life. We pray for this, for money cannot buy it, even though it is among this university's most precious treasures, not hoarded, but shared. We pray that the Holy Spirit inspire encounters where the students are – in their orgs, in their music, in the happiness or hardship, the pride or humiliation of their family situations, in their drive to help their brothers and sisters survive, in the ambivalence of their relationships of love. We pray that the Holy Spirit grant success to the teacher who leads his students to the library, promotes the adventure of reading even difficult texts, and fosters the excitement of intellectual discovery. May the Spirit grant a sense of exhilaration to every teacher whose students grow in insight and courage.

We pray that the Holy Spirit lead our teachers and our students to knowledge where truth must be discovered, to fortitude where truth must be defended, and action where truth impels it. We pray that the Holy Spirit, “a powerful wind from heaven,” grant courage to our protectors of the environment, that they may be persistent when they are ignored, and persevere when they are persecuted. May he grant satisfaction to those who shield people from certain danger, consolation to those who free people from poverty, and fulfillment to those whose labors result in optimized people's participation in local governance.

May the Spirit so meld instruction and research in our community that we reach out with our lives to serve the Bikolano people.

4. Finally we pray that the Holy Spirit drive us here to our university church. First, as a venue for prayer. As we face the challenges of our university mission today, we do not have time not to pray. The passage from Kings recounts a moment of the Holy in the experience of the prophet, Elijah. For him, the Lord was present, but not in the mighty wind, not in the awesome earthquake, not in the roaring fire. The Lord, however, was present in the “sound of a gentle blowing”, in “a tiny whispering sound. ...When Elijah heard this, he hid his face in his cloak...” (1 Kg. 19:12-13) If we seek the Lord to serve first his Kingdom, his Spirit is often not in powerful winds that disrupt our personal relations, not in the earthshaking events that fill the news without consequence, not in the fires that feed our passions yet never end them, but “in the sound of gentle blowing,” in “the tiny whispering sound” of the Spirit communing with us. We pray the Spirit drive us to this church, where in private prayer we may encounter the power, majesty, glory and eloquence of the Lord in a whispered sound, in a gentle breeze.

We also pray that the Spirit drive us to this Church so that together at our morning or afternoon Masses, here and in the high school, we can praise our Lord in memorable liturgy with the rest of the Catholic Church. The Spirit impels us to celebrate, together with the rest of the Church, the Father's boundless love for us manifested in the Heart of his Son. The Spirit impels us to draw nourishment from the banquet of the Lord, to imbibe, to internalize, to appropriate his values and his mission and his love by eating his Body and drinking His Blood. The Spirit impels us to ever deeper entry into the Paschal Mystery. The Spirit impels us through this shared sacred communion to live in communion with one another – to love one another, as He loved us, and to wash one another's feet, as he washed the feet of his disciples.

We celebrate the Mass of the Holy Spirit, begging him for his presence among us this academic year.

Alone we are but sounding gongs and clanging cymbals...

Alone we are but noisy Ateneans in a troubled world. But in the Holy Spirit, we are God's wind and earthquake and fire felt in the gentleness of the breeze, heard in the silence of our hearts, and celebrated in the joy of the children of God.