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You and I just heard the phrase, "suddenly." You know these scared, scared apostles are hiding in this room - they're still scared. And then the Holy Spirit comes and the adverb used is suddenly, they're filled with courage; now they can't wait to get out and talk about our Lord and Christ! And the adverb in Greek, it's almost like roadrunners - velocity! They finally go through the door and say, "Here is some good news! There is a God, he knows you personally, He cares about you!" And of course, you and I have heard since we were little kids, "Faith is a gift." And these men, filled with the gift; they want to share the gift. It's good news. Get rid of despair and depression as best that you can! It's good news - it's a gift.

Those of you who are visiting here, maybe for the first time this Sunday, once a month or once every five Sundays, the people here are subjected to an acronym at Mass on Sunday. An acronym, as you remember, is a word that you coin from the first letters of other words. And that's our acronym, with your help I'd like to think about today, the word is "gift." The gift of faith -it's a gift! GIFT. And the "G" is Gate, and the "I" is Identity, and the "F" is Fidelity, Faithfulness (sticking to it), and the "T" is time, time. There's another word I want to think about with you this morning, and it's the word "nugget." Nugget. A couple of people evidently were listening to a talk recently, and at the end of the talk one turned to the other and said, "Did you like the talk?" And the other person said, "Yeah, I liked the talk, but I wonder if the people listening got the nugget - the main point of the talk. Did they get the nugget?" So that's our second word.

But the acronym is GIFT. And the first for the feast of Pentecost is - it's a gate, it's a gate - the G will be Gate. It's a gateway - when in doubt, hear Christ out - our Lord calls our gift of faith a Gate. That's our nugget - the four nuggets will be from the mouth of Jesus. And our Lord says, "Behold, I stand at the gate and knock." It's a free gift, faith. The gate swings both ways - and maybe this is only just for a couple of us this morning, it is for me, and maybe a few of you - about it's a free gift? It's a gate, you know, our faith? A gate is something small and kind of humble, kind of low. And it swings both ways; you can go in and out. And some of us, including me, have somebody we love, maybe a member of the family, who no longer comes through the gate. You know, they're fed up with the Church, or they hate it or they're mad at it or they're too bored or they're too lazy, but over and over we read in the Bible, "Jesus is Lord." Jesus, not me. Not you. Jesus is Lord, Jesus says, "Behold, I stand at the gate and knock. Leave them in the hands of Jesus. Don't get mad at them. Maybe I'm just talking to me about somebody in my family, but don't change the gate to big steel door and bolt it, because you're hurt and you're mad - "Well, you're not coming to Church anymore? And you're not in the Church anymore?" Jesus is Lord - he gives the gift and the gate swings both ways. So we pray for them and we remember them today at Mass. It's a gate, we hope we see them come to the gate, but Jesus is knocking. And the nugget is what I just said three times - our Lord, "Behold I stand at the gate - the gift of faith and knock." He's still knocking for those people we love who aren't around in Church anymore.

The second is Identity - identity. Now I am sometimes scared of sounding like Dr. Feelgood, with a little pat or pabulum, and the next statement I make is like Dr. Feelgood - psychobabble - but the Church has always said, and it's all through the Bible, that you and I have unique identity; there's nobody ever been born like us, and nobody will ever be born like us later. You're unique in the eyes of God, Christ - very special. And he's given you special crosses, and special experiences to make your identity unique. Now I thought about that those summers when I was at the drug addict place - not as a patient, I was a volunteer! (Laughter.) I was in California, come out every summer and work for a couple of weeks in this rehab. You know, there's nothing more boring, people don't lose their identity more quickly than when they're all stoned. "Hey, man," "hey, man" - they all sit around, mostly college kids - "hey, man," "hey, man," "cool, man." Boring! No identity - they're all the same. Monotonous! But once they got clean and sober, began, as you must, day after day, just struggle in sobriety, straight and clean, to begin to struggle with life and many of them return to Christ - they did! And it wasn't a Catholic hospital! And then they were interesting - fascinating! - because they were struggling and real, and not anesthetized in the vapors. The saints are always interesting, but a bunch of stoned out, messed up sinners. Boring! So don't be afraid, even our weaknesses and confusions our Lord will use as we stay by the gate - your identity.

One quick example - I had four, you'll be happy to hear it's all boiled down to one. Because it involves a priest and somebody in confession, that doesn't matter. The point is the identity of each of these two. And the man who was going to confession told me about it later - I wasn't the priest, but this guy went to confession. This was a long time ago and far away! He said, "Father, before I finish I want to say to you that I'm so sad because I don't feel I'm in love with my wife anymore." And the priest was sitting there, face to face, and he said (he didn't grab his marriage manual, or the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas on matrimony), he took his identity, his experience, his personality, leaned back in the chair and said, "Well, yeah, that kind of romantic feeling fades, but why don't you just try to be her friend? Just try to be her friend. The romantic music has ended, try to be her friend." Now, that's what I mean; he used his identity, and the identity of the man listening, and it clicked. The Holy Spirit suddenly gives us the right thing - there are things that have been said and done by you on this planet that only could have been said and done by you - good stuff that you've long forgotten because of your special identity. I deeply, deeply believe that. And the nugget from the mouth of Jesus Christ is, and I used this quote a lot but I hate it, the quote is, "The hairs of your head are all numbered." And you've heard me moan about that before. But our Lord's audience, the Jewish audience, a Semitic audience, understood that expression - it's a figurative expression. It doesn't just mean, you count; it means you count uniquely. If every hair on your head - it's a Jewish phrase that means uniquely - God understands and loves you, you specially. If every hair is counted then you have an identity. And that's a gift of faith.

And the F is Festival. There's an annual Parish festival here; it ends at 2:00 this afternoon. I looked it up in the bulletin. And a festival - it doesn't mean slap-happy. The original word means "an ongoing joy." A deep sub straight and underpinning of joy - not necessarily pleasantly buzzed, the way one is after a couple of drinks or when one is falling in love, but an ongoing joy. You read the Bible; you get to the last page, God wins. And so with his grace and your own struggle and identity, so will you! That's what festival means.

Um, there's even an intellectual festival - did you see the New York Times about a week ago, I mean an ongoing joy for our cerebral cortex. It seems that a couple of scholars have now established on a scale of probability (evidently it took them about ten years), on a scale of probability, they have said the following thing. First of all, nobody with any brains nowadays disputes the fact that Jesus Christ lived, that the Gospels relate what He said and did, nobody disputes that anymore, nobody. The meanest atheist in the world has to admit the historicity of the Gospels - the validity. The Resurrection has always been a stumbling block. Well these two guys, scholars, Professor Swinburne at Oxford and Professor Wolterstorff at Yale, working in tandem have established on a scale of probability that Jesus Christ rose physically from the dead - 97.2 probability. Isn't that nice? What a relief! Physically - not just a nice memory of that nice Jewish man! Rose! And He said that if He would rise so would we. That's an intellectual festival, for me anyhow. I love reading stuff like that, and the emotional festival, it's a sub straight, remember, is this. And I've used this before because I love it.

CS Lewis, who became a believer as a middle-aged man, said, "Now and then when you don't feel like life is very festive, you've got to remember Jesus didn't sell us a bill of sale, he didn't say 'I'll promise you a rose garden,'" CS Lewis says, "Try to think of life as a boot camp. Our life on this planet, which is relatively short compared to eternity, is a boot camp. But, now and then, our God lets us stay at a very pleasant hotel or inn." And I was in San Francisco last week and a friend said, "You see that hotel?" And my materialistic head swiveled, "Where?" And he said, "That's the poshest hotel in San Francisco, and no one ever knows about it. The Huntington! The Huntington - doesn't look like much, but that's where royalty stays!" I thought, I like that simile, I do. Life is pretty much for us a boot camp - a spiritual training ground, but, now and then, God lets us stay at The Huntington. And the nugget from our Lord is (and He said it the night before He died, remember at the last supper He turns to those 11 guys - Judas is gone by now), but to the 11 who stayed there, our Lord says, "In this world you are going to have troubles, but have confidence I have overcome the world." He doesn't sell us a bill of goods, He tells the truth - that "I have conquered the world."

And we finally got to the last one, which is time. The T of GIFT, "Time," tick, tick, tick. Another quote that I love is from the only prayer that Jesus gave us, the Our Father. "Give us this day our daily bread". Day by day - bread, not cake, not haute cuisine. Not weekly, daily bread. Nutrition - spiritually, physically. But anyhow I was trying to work this thing out. A week ago I was at the Martinez garbage dump, and what I was doing there I will get to in a minute. But I know I've spent a lot of my time, wasting time in resentments. And again, I know I'm repeating myself - in two years I've told the same thing over and over, but resentments. This guy who cheated my family, oh way back in 1980, that's over twenty years ago! Cheated my family, after making a promise, he broke the promise and we didn't get a whole bunch of money that my father and brother sure could have used. OK. Well, I've been resenting him, wasting time for many years, picturing what I could do to him. Now, we've often heard, and it's in the Bible, love your enemies and so forth, pray for your enemies. Well I've tried! I've tried! And I have these invisible critters, now I'm just talking metaphors, don't rush out and get an ambulance, invisible critters. And now they've taken different forms. They're at opposite ends of lying. Sometimes the invisible critter, when I'm resenting the person, wasting time, wanting to smash him, this critter appears over here and it's Walt Disney's Bambi. "Oh Michael, of course you cannot pray for that jerk. You shouldn't, no you shouldn't be expected - all that money that you never got and especially now you're in retirement and you want to buy dog food - you poor fellow. Actually, you're a kind of saint to have endured this deprivation for so long. Francis of Assisi and Mother Theresa should step aside. I love you and don't you worry about the resentment. The fact you have a resentment indicates that at least, metaphysically, you've got some macho." And then Bambi kisses me (smooch sound!). And then the other liar appears, Godzilla. And Godzilla says, "You are destined for Hell! If you cannot pray, our Lord himself said it, for the happiness - the physiological, financial, sexual, and emotional happiness of the person who cheated your family out of $100,000, then you are going to hell and we are preparing a special rotisserie!" You know I'm speaking in cartoons, but the Spirit works through others. And a very wise, dying, holy man said to me, "All right, you're having difficultly praying for this guy" - now the Spirit moved him, and I use this because some of you have told me that it's helped - "replace the face. Replace the face of this Igor with the face of someone who did you some good. Who brought Christ or the Spirit to you." And if you replace the face, both Bambi and Godzilla will fly away. You say a prayer for the person who did you good. It has helped and the Lord works in wondrous ways.

I was sitting at the Martinez garbage dump - I had the GIF and I was still working on the T. I had the Lord's Prayer - daily bread. But minute by minute was passing, and I was there to help the guy who works on the grounds on which I live. And he had this big truck and he was getting rid of a lot of garbage. He didn't have one of those hydraulic things where you press a button and the garbage slides serenely down all by itself. We had to untie the covering of the garbage, and then with big shovels push the garbage. So after a while he turned to me and said, "Michael, don't help." (Laughter.) "Don't help," he said, "Why don't you sit in the front of the car, I've got some Christian music." And it was beautiful, it was called "Christian Praises". Beautiful, it was using Scripture. Lovely music. And I was writing out the notes, GIF - what do I do for Time? Time - tick tick. And he came back now and we drive up to the booth where the guy who you pay the garbage disposal fee (you know how many tons you dumped, and they measure it). But the guy who's supposed to take our money had his back to us, chatting with somebody else, over there. And the fellow who was doing all the hard work, sitting to my left at the wheel (by the way, he's a new, fervent believer in the Lord, in Christ), but he was sitting there minute by minute, time ticking away. And finally he said, very gently, I could barely hear him, he said, "Hey man, quit your jabbering." And I thought, "That's it! That's what people will love to hear at the end of an acronym!" (Laughter!) A nugget of pure gold!