Remember through the Holy Spirit

(Excerpt from the Homily of Most Reverend Romulo G. Valles, D.D., on the Holy Spirit Mass and Sending Forth of Interns at Holy Cross of Davao College Inc. Sta. Ana Avenue Davao City, Jan. 31, 2023)

Today in this holy sacrifice of the mass ang sub theme, extra attention,“Lord we thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit that you give to your church.” Now the liturgy today for this mass, invoking the Holy Spirit, the liturgy and the readings bring us to the early church, to the beginning of the church. Ang iyang atmosphere, ang iyang context: kadtong unang mga adlaw sa simbahan.

In these first days of the church…there is so much, you see many things and many wonderful things. That’s why Jesus says, “as of now your mind and your heart cannot take everything, I will send the helper, the advocate, to be with you, to teach you more truth and all truth.” In other words to help us digest, take in what Jesus has taught. And in this mass and kada misa we would hear the words of Jesus “do this in memory of me.” Aguy, kung atong memory corrupted, atong memory daghag lain-laing files dimalas. That’s why we ask the Holy Spirit to clean our files, to delete our files, to judge whether the majority of our CPU, hard disk are really the memory of Jesus. I know that you will be bombarded with Religious Ed, yes to say the least, complicated and Jesus knows that, but yet he did not surrender. My memory would orient you… to keep everything, each and everything, oriented, anchored in the memory of Jesus. We cannot do it on our own. We cannot. In subtle ways, people today would say “we can.”

What is that “we can”? We can make the world better by reducing the population, promote birth control, families are too big, abortion, very bright. You ask these bright people they can reason out that, “we can do this.” Japan is worrying because their population growth is close to zero, but yet in the news they would not accept it, still smiling. China is worrying because they believe in that “we can do it, reduced population.” That example alone would hopefully move us, with the Holy Spirit to go back to the memory of Jesus. “Do this in memory of me.” The Holy Spirit would move us, be with us, walk with us, synodal spirit, to be with us, to be faithful, to struggle, to act on the memory of Jesus, to act on the fact that the only way for happiness is to carry the cross of Jesus. We believe in that.

The Holy Spirit will inspire us, to be faithful, to keep, to refresh, to renew, to examine the memory of Jesus in our hearts.