|
Pentecost
Some feasts don’t really require a homily. Pentecost, I think, is one of them. Pentecost speaks for itself: in the colors, the sounds, the music, the pervasive, almost electric sense that something new is afoot. It was this way at the first Pentecost as we just heard in that familiar reading from Acts. Words did not come first. Before words came the sound of a mighty wind accompanied by flaming tongues of fire which came to rest on each of the apostles. All were “filled with the Holy Spirit,” we are told. And from that moment on, those flaming tongues of fire turned into a brushfire that rushed out of the doors of that upper room, into the city, and throughout the countryside. Before long, incredibly, the brushfire became a wildfire that spread throughout the then-known world. Two millennia later, and far from that upper room, the fire goes on and we have been warmed by it. But my Pentecost question for you today is this: have we been burned by it? Let me share with you a favorite Pentecost story. One day, a monk came to his Father Abbot and said, “Father, according as I am able, I keep my little rule, my little fast, and my little prayer. And, according as I am able, I strive to cleanse my mind of all evil thoughts and my heart of all evil intents. Now, what more should I do?” The Abbot rose up and stretched out his hands toward heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. He answered the monk, “My dear brother, why not be totally changed into fire?” Why not be totally changed into fire? That’s the right question for Pentecost. Pentecost is not for the pale, the passive, or the faint of heart. Pentecost is for the passionate! I think of the great eighteenth century English evangelist and reformer, John Wesley, founder of Methodism who was, by all accounts, a fiery preacher. “I go into the pulpit,” he once said, “and the people watch me burn!” Now there was a man “totally changed into fire!” (A personal aside: I think about Wesley sometimes and wonder what it was about him that burned. Was it the fire and brimstone he preached, or was it his soul on fire with God’s love? I’m quite certain it was the latter, and so I find myself praying that that same fire might burn in me…). Why not be totally changed into fire? Well, to be honest, it’s a scary thought. Fire is hard to control: it spreads, it’s all-consuming. It may smolder for a time but once it flashes forth, it flames everything in its path. Stopping fire is like catching the wind. Pentecost is often called the Birthday of the Church. Is it the birthday of the Church you know and love? Fifty years ago when the great and Blessed Pope John XXIII surprised the world by climbing out on an ecclesiastical limb and calling the Second Vatican Council, he very aptly referred to his Council as a New Pentecost. Here was a Pope who was not afraid of fire, who believed that God would be in the fire speaking in unexpected ways; here was a Pope who trusted deeply in the Spirit, who believed that truth was not the monopoly of a privileged few but God’s gift to the many – to the entire Church -- a gift to be discovered in prayerful listening and painstaking dialogue. A tightly regimented and controlled church, he knew, was a comfortable and orderly church but also a church lacking fire, and John XXIII was eager for the Church to be totally changed into fire! We’re not there yet, are we! We’re still a pretty timid, cautious Church. And these days we’re a shell-shocked Church because of disheartening scandals and dismay with what too often has been the official response to those scandals. As a Church we have a long way to go before we are “totally changed into fire.” This Pentecost the ancient prayer of the Church has a unique urgency about it: “Come Holy Spirit! Fill the hearts of the faithful and kindle in them the fire of Your love. Send forth your Spirit and they will be created and You will renew the face of the earth!” But this renewal we pray for – how will it come about? Only by the grace of God which, throughout history, has kept the Church with all its sins from failing in its mission. Let me share with you a little story that speaks to this. I tell it at the risk of triggering an anonymous letter or two. During the Napoleonic era early in the 19th century, Cardinal Enrico Consalvi was the Vatican Secretary of State. One of his aides was deeply concerned with Napoleon’s movements against the Church and told the Cardinal, “Your Eminence, the situation is very serious. Napoleon wants to destroy the Church.” And the Cardinal replied, “Not even we have succeeded in doing that!” A healthy breath of honesty, wouldn’t you agree? And humor. And humility! I might have been reluctant to tell the story were it not for some honest and humble words spoken recently by Pope Benedict on his visit to Portugal. I quote: “The suffering of the Church comes from within the Church because sin exists in the Church. This has always been the case, but today we see it in a really terrifying way. The greatest persecution of the Church doesn’t come from enemies on the outside, but is born in sin within the Church….The Church thus has a deep need to re-learn penance, to accept purification, to learn forgiveness and the necessity of justice… We have to re-learn the essentials; conversion, prayer, penance, and the virtues of faith, hope and love.” I see in those words of the Pope an acknowledgment that, while the Church is God’s holy people, it is also God’s sinful people. I also see in his words, and in his recent acceptance of the resignation of some compromised bishops, a growing awareness that the Church needs renewal -- deep and pervasive renewal from the top-down and the inside-out. And that renewal, of course, can come about in only one way: through a New Pentecost: through the cleansing fire, the renewing wind of the Holy Spirit. Only the Holy Spirit can totally change the Church into fire! So my friends, we have much to pray for on this Pentecost, don’t we? Penance, purification, forgiveness, justice, conversion (to use Pope Benedict’s words). It is the whole Church that needs renewal -- leaders and led -- and it is the Holy Spirit alone who can make it happen. Will you join me now by standing and singing a hymn to the Holy Spirit: a prayer for our Church, that we will be totally changed into fire? Father Michael G. Ryan |
