Pentecost is a feast that doesn’t require a lot of words.
Pentecost speaks with its colors and sounds, its pervasive, almost
electric sense that something new is afoot.
Words weren’t paramount on the first Pentecost,
either. Before words came the sound of a mighty wind accompanied
by tongues of fire which came to rest on the disciples. All were filled
with the Holy Spirit, we are told. And soon, the tongues of fire became
a brushfire flaming out of that upper room into the city. Before very
long, the fire had spread throughout the then-known world. Two millennia
later, and a world removed from that place, the fire still burns and we
have been warmed by it. But my question today is: have we caught fire?
This little story has always spoken to me of
Pentecost. One day, a monk came to his Abbot and said, “Father, as far
as I am able, I keep my little rule, my little fast, and my little
prayer. And I strive to cleanse my mind of evil thoughts and my heart of
evil intents. 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, and said to 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
or the passive. 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: When I
think about Wesley, I wonder what it was about him that burned. Was it
the fire and brimstone he preached, or was it his soul on fire with the
love of God? I’m quite certain it was the latter, and I find myself
praying that that same fire might burn in me…).
Why not be totally changed into fire? Why not?
Because it’s a scary thought. Fire is hard to control, it’s
all-consuming. It may smolder for a time but once it flashes forth, it
burns everything in its path. Stopping fire is like trying to catch the
wind.
Pentecost is often called the Birthday of the
Church. Is it the birthday of the Church as we know it? Sixty years
ago, when the great and sainted Pope John XXIII started a fire by
opening the Second Vatican Council, he very aptly referred to his
Council as a New Pentecost. Pope John was not afraid of fire. He
believed that God would be in the fire sparking new ideas. He also
believed that truth was not a monopoly of the few but God’s gift to the
many - to all the baptized - a gift to be discovered in prayerful
listening and painstaking dialogue. A tightly regimented, totally
top-down church, he knew, might be an orderly church but it was 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! If truth be
told, we’re often a fearful, confused, divided and even angry Church.
And for that reason this Pentecost has a unique urgency about it as we
pray the great Pentecost prayer: “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!”
Renewing the face of the earth. We’ve made a start.
We have. Think of the long history of the Church. Think of the fearless
preachers of the gospel beginning with the Apostles; think of the
countless martyrs whose blood gave that gospel growth; think of the
great teachers who kept alive the light of learning in dark times and
whose brilliance illuminated entire cultures; think of the artists –
painters, sculptors, architects, musicians – who have elevated and
crowned those cultures by their genius; think of the saints, canonized
and not: holy women and men of every age, including ours, who have taken
to heart their baptismal calling and devoted their lives to teaching the
young, healing the sick, comforting the dying, feeding and clothing and
housing the poor, fighting for justice. Our history makes it clear that
we have indeed made a start in renewing the face of the earth.
But sometimes we have made a mess, too!
Whenever power or privilege or politics have become our passion, we
have made a mess of things, and the instances of that over the centuries
are not hard to find, are they? But through it all – despite all the
sinfulness and selfishness, the compromises and the cowardice, and
despite the fact that at times the Church has been its own worst enemy –
through it all, the Spirit has continued to breathe, the gospel has been
preached, and the fire has spread.
All of which puts me in mind of an
exchange that took place during the Napoleonic era of the early 19th
century between Enrico Consalvi, Cardinal Secretary of State, and one of
his trusted aides. The aide was deeply concerned with Napoleon’s
movements against the Church and he told the Cardinal, “Your Eminence,
the situation is very serious. Napoleon wants to destroy the Church.”
And the Cardinal replied, “My dear fellow, not even we have succeeded in
doing that!”
A healthy bit of honesty, wouldn’t you
agree? And humor. And humility! The Church is God’s holy people, but it
is also God’s sinful people, always in need of renewal: deep and
pervasive renewal. And that renewal 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? Will you join me in singing the hymn printed in
your order of celebration, a prayer to the Holy Spirit that we will be
totally changed into fire? Please stand.
Father Michael G. Ryan
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