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Pentecost
I hope you won’t think I’m irreverent if I say that Pentecost can be a problem -- in the same way as our other great feasts, Christmas and Easter, can be a problem. The problem is that we can look at them as historical happenings only, and not here-and-now happenings. And they are both. God’s power, the divine energy unleashed in the Incarnation and the Resurrection and the sending of the Holy Spirit can hardly be locked in the past. The Word of God took flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary at a moment in time, true, but the Word is still taking flesh in our time, in our flesh. And Christ who triumphed over death on Easter is still triumphing over death. And the Holy Spirit who burst forth upon the apostles in wind and fire on Pentecost is still fanning those flames, lighting those fires in our time. Pentecost may be past, but Pentecost is also present. Very, very present! But maybe this year I don’t need to spend a lot of time convincing you that Pentecost is happening right now because the Cathedral certainly looks like Pentecost, doesn’t it! I mean, if you were to paint a picture of Pentecost, wouldn’t it look like this? And if a liturgy were to capture Pentecost wouldn’t it be like this? Pentecost is now! God’s Spirit is moving among us at this moment – prodding us, waking us up, stirring us, sending us! The Veni, Sancte Spiritus which we just heard, that lovely Medieval prayer inviting the Holy Spirit to come among us as our guest, our sweet refreshment, our light, our solace, our comfort, makes it clear that Pentecost is now. Listen again: Come, Holy Spirit, Come! For a few moments, I would like to draw on those images to help bring Pentecost from the past into the present. “Heal our wounds, our strength renew.” Our wounds are many, aren’t they? Too many to count, really. We are wounded people, each of us – fragile, vulnerable, weak. And our world is wounded, too. In a homily not long ago, Pope Benedict spoke of what he called the “many wounds of our world,” and he recited a litany of them: the wounds of hunger and incurable disease; of terrorism and violence which some justify in the name of religion, the wounds of disregard for human life, of the violation of human rights, the exploitation of human persons. And we could undoubtedly add to his list. Wounded we are. Healing we need. And healing is the Spirit’s gift, and only the Spirit’s gift. The Pentecost Sequence continues: “On our dryness pour your dew.” Who of us doesn’t know dryness in our lives? And who of us in our dryness doesn’t long for the refreshing dew of the Holy Spirit? The 63rd Psalm says this in remarkably beautiful poetry: “O God, you are my God, for you I long. My body pines for you, my soul thirsts for you like a dry, weary land without water...For your love is better than life.” Beautiful, but do we believe it? Believe that God’s love is better than life? In our better moments we do; in our lesser ones we settle for lesser loves and drink from wells that only make us thirstier. Pentecost reminds us that only God’s love, a gift of the Holy Spirit, completely satisfies. “On our dryness pour your dew.” The Sequence goes on: “Bend the stubborn heart and will, melt the frozen, warm the chill.” Stubborn hearts, cold hearts -- we know both of them. How often do we cling to our harsh, unbending judgments about people? How often do we freeze people out of our lives, lock them out of our hearts: people who think differently from us, people who have hurt us, people we can’t bring ourselves to forgive? The Holy Spirit of Pentecost wants to bend our rigid hearts, to break open our locked-up hearts, to fire our frozen hearts. “Melt the frozen, warm the chill!” The Pentecost Sequence concludes with a plea:
“On the faithful who adore On the day we were confirmed the bishop extended his hands over us and prayed a solemn prayer, naming each of those seven gifts, and asking God to breathe them into us: “…the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of right judgment and courage, the spirit of knowledge and reverence, the spirit of wonder and awe in God’s presence.” My friends, each of those seven gifts is ours, and seven is not really their number. In the scriptures, seven means infinity -- beyond number. Those divine gifts and countless others are already ours, but they can be asleep within us and Pentecost can fan them into fire. It can! Look at what happened to those frightened disciples on the first Pentecost when they found their voice and took to the streets! Do you think that God’s Spirit is any less at work now than then? That would be heresy! No, the mighty wind is still blowing and tongues of fire are still burning. Look around you. If you haven’t yet caught fire, look at those who have! This community is alive with God’s Spirit. Witness our prayer together. Witness this prayer! St. Paul told us in the first reading that “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” This liturgy and every liturgy we celebrate is our statement that Jesus is Lord, our way of telling the world that Jesus is Lord. We can always say it better and we can always mean it more, but we would not be saying it at all were it not for God’s Spirit. The same goes for everything we do in this place: every child we teach, every stranger we welcome, every friend we feed, every searcher we encounter. Everything we do here is a way of saying that Jesus is Lord and is therefore the work of the Holy Spirit. So, I say it again: Pentecost is not past. Pentecost is present! “Come Holy Spirit! Fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love.” Send forth your Spirit and we will be created and in that Spirit you will renew the face of the earth! Father Michael G. Ryan |
