in Christ, and in the fullness of His Holy Spirit. Several of you have this morning attended a little ceremony down in the crypt, when our friend Miss Pears was received into the Holy Roman Catholic Church. The confession of faith, the reception of absolution and of the peace of the Church certainly requires, on the part of the poor, to offer himself in this way. God and to his Church.

[01:01]

Heed humility. A humility which is combined with a great longing. A longing for wholeness. A longing for fullness. A longing for that spirit that fills the whole earth, that is, boundless. I wanted in some way this morning, here in the Sovereign Cemetery of the Church of the Feast of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, give an answer an answer to this act of humility, and an answer to let it on.

[02:03]

And I can only do by taking a word of the evangelist Saint John, who in the third chapter and the 34th verse of his Gospel says, Boundless is the gift that God makes of His Spirit. God gives in His Holy Spirit without measure. Because, my dear friends, we ought to recognize that humility is a tremendously important foundation of our entire human life. That the same is true of obedience, that these two virtues mean abandoning oneself, that they mean dying to oneself, that they mean, however, in our analysis, that this human being, that under the influence

[03:18]

of that Holy Spirit, abandons all self-conservativeness to God's fullness, is capable of a boundless gift. And to give that assurance that this boundless gift is there, and therefore to turn humility then into that holy boldness, into that holy assurance, into that holy liberty that is essential to the Christian. There also is the meaning of this little homily that can and may be spoken with pride in the fullness of the Holy Spirit, who in fiery tongues descends upon the Apostle, and makes them bold to announce in public, to the world, the great deeds of God's mercy.

[04:34]

Boundless is the gift that God makes of His Spirit. In what sense? We as human beings, in some way we are afraid of something that has no measure, of something boundless. Is it not like chaos? But this without measure, the boundlessness of the gift of the Holy Spirit, is and has to be understood in a different and deeper sense. not of what we call the bad infinity of space and of time, but the inner infinity, that infinity that is proclaimed today in the Gospel by our Lord Jesus Christ, who, speaking to his apostles, gives them that great assurance

[05:41]

that this boundless gift will come to bear when he says, and we shall come, and we shall take our abode in you. Let us remember that the characteristic and distinguishing note of our celebration today, the celebration of the descent of the Holy Spirit, The distinguishing note in comparison to the Old Testament is just this, that while the Old Testament's gifts were given, occasional gifts, like the little tongs of fire, descending upon this or that prophet, descending and leaving a gift, what we celebrate today Even in the spot where God will be personable, he said, the personable presence of the Holy Spirit as God.

[06:46]

He comes, he to dwell in our hearts, to make the retentment of this Holy Spirit. He comes not alone, He comes as God, and therefore in the fullness of divinity, and therefore in the fullness of eternity, we shall come, and we make our abode in Him. That is, today, of a great joy and our assurance that this bounteous gift of the Holy Spirit is our inner participation in the life of the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That, therefore, of the incoming of the Holy Spirit today means our being filled with that personal with which the Father loves the Son, with which the Son loves the Father.

[07:49]

Father, you love me, I love you, that we may be one. This oneness in this mutual love, that is the person of the Holy Spirit. And that is what we celebrate today, our being born into this inner life of God, of the Holy Trinity. That we realize then immediately, my dear friends, this conformity, this connaturality to God, which we celebrate in the descent of the Holy Spirit today, that is realized in us, first of all, through the Spirit, the gift of the Spirit that is infinite and measureless, because it introduces us into all truth. In other words, it gives us that depth of faith that is able to move mountains, as we say.

[09:01]

In the outer, let us say, the picture or image of an outer external dimension, in the inner dimension, we remember this morning thinking about this measureless gift that is ours. We think of the Holy Spirit, who alone is able to blur the depth of God. who also alone is able to plumb the depth of the human heart. That is one aspect of this measureless gift of the Holy Spirit that is being given to us today. It is the gift of infinite understanding, that inner, intimate understanding that plumbs the earth, is bold enough to plumb the depths of God, and also opens them, the depths of the human heart.

[10:05]

Then beyond that, the other gift is mentioned today in the Gospel. You have heard it. My peace I shall bring to you, that peace that the world cannot give. There's the other major gift that is given to us today. the gift of peace, not of that peace that the world may be able to establish for some limited time on the precarious ground of the balance of political powers, but that gift which, coming from the inner heart of God, means infinite forgiveness infinite reconciliation, infinite inner assurance for every individual heart for which Christ died and for which Christ rose.

[11:08]

That inner assurance that we are who bear bed really live, live in that fullness of holiness not only in ourselves as persons, but also in peace with the entire cosmos, the universe that the Holy Trinity has created, and that is an image of the Holy Trinity. This spirit that is given to us today is the spirit of life. It is the spirit that triumphs over death. It is the spirit that raises the dead body into a new transfigured love. It is therefore that spirit that triumphs over all limitations of matter.

[12:09]

And that Spirit is and has begun and is living in us. It is the gift of the Holy Spirit today that we as human beings, through and in Christ, in whom all things are being restored, we enter into that cosmic inner, or can we call it a law, that cosmic wild thing, from the lower level, many different lower levels of dispersion, of infinity, of limitations of all kinds, into that fullness in which in the end God is all in all. So it is therefore this gift of the Spirit to us, and it is a gift that takes us up into that creative, renewing power in which we may expect and in which we work for a new heaven and a new earth.

[13:22]

And then finally, what else is this measureless gift of the Holy Spirit but that of infinite, absolute love? There is love and agapy that does not know its own. The love and agapy in which the works of the law are fulfilled. There is love that embraces truly the whole of mankind, that cannot stop in any arbitrary bounding that human prejudice has convicted to separate them. Then love that in its external range embraces all that, and in its internal intensity retakes, purifies, lifts up, transforms, and generates the heart of man.

[14:30]

that appears on the heads of the apostles today on Pentecost. And that is this deep love, who gives it to us, but Christ the Lord, the Son of God, who in this love descended, who has for God the privileges, so to speak, of His eternal glory, who became our brother, who shed his life, his blood, for all men, not only the chosen people, but for all men, in whom therefore also all men are really and truly reconciled to God, and really and truly united to one another. That is the fullness that the Holy Spirit gives in His Church.

[15:38]

And that is also our prayer today, that this full, infinite love may become more and more powerful, creative, visible in the Church, in our Church. in the Holy Catholic, Roman Catholic Church. In that church, and at this moment, through the order of the Council, a bishop enters into it, manifests, with a longing to enter just exactly into this holiness. And that is how a prayer to lay to that nothing, nor the human presence, nor the human balance, may in any way interfere and hinder us to enter just exactly into this fullness of the Trident, of which our individual heart

[16:52]

of which the Church as a whole is the pillar, the reflection. So then, I say, with all our reverence to this young sister of ours, in a triumphant voice, in the fullness of the Holy Spirit, I request to hear those words that Saint Paul the Apostle, the chosen instrument of the Holy Spirit, has addressed to the Ephesians when he says that, according to the witches of his glory, God may grant you to be strengthened with light through His Spirit in the inner and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that being rooted and grounded in love, you may have power to comprehend and understand with all the senses what is the great and late and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses all understanding, that you may be filled with all the fullness of

[18:11]

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