Pentecost is a feast that speaks for itself. Even when we’re celebrating
it in shutdown mode where the wind and fire, the colors and sounds are
only virtual, it tells a story that doesn’t need much commentary. But a
little context can help.
Pentecost was a Jewish
festival long before it became a Christian one. For our Jewish brothers
and sisters, Pentecost, or the Feast of Weeks, celebrates God’s gift of
the Torah, the Law, to Moses and the chosen people.
And our Christian
Pentecost also celebrates the gift of God’s Law. St. John Chrysostom,
bishop of Constantinople, spoke of this in a Pentecost homily over 1500
years ago. “Pentecost,
he said, “marks the moment when the disciples
of Jesus emerged from the Cenacle carrying within themselves the Law of
the Spirit, the Law of Love, a Law written in their hearts. Each person
became a living Law, a living book animated by the Holy Spirit.” I like
that. Pentecost turns us into ‘living books animated by the Holy
Spirit!’
So, the gift of God’s Law, the Law of the Spirit written in
our hearts provides some of the context for this feast. But there’s
more. In the reading from Acts, Luke connected the moment of Pentecost
with the story of creation in the Book of Genesis. The “strong, driving
wind” that swept through the room where the disciples were gathered
brings to mind the Genesis moment when a mighty wind swept over the
waters of the abyss and God brought light out of darkness. So, more
context. Pentecost is creation. Think of it as the New Creation.
And there is yet another
Genesis story that gives context for the Christian Pentecost. It’s the
story of the Tower of Babel. You remember: people who spoke a common
language were so sure of themselves that they decided to build a city
with a great tower that would reach into the heavens. They did this,
Genesis tells us, because “they wanted to make a name for themselves” –
which suggests that they were driven by pride and ambition. If they
could just build their tower high enough it would pierce the heavens and
they could steal God’s power and become more like God than they already
were. Of course, when the tower collapsed, they ended up less like God -
speaking a confusion of languages: divided, dispirited, dispersed.
Pentecost reverses that
story. On the day of Pentecost there were many languages but, quite
amazingly, when people who were gathered in Jerusalem from all over the
Mediterranean world heard the preaching of the Galilean disciples, each
was able to hear them speaking in his or her own tongue. What should
have been a hopelessly divisive experience, became this amazing moment
of unity when the many and the diverse became one.
So, historical context
can definitely enhance our understanding of Pentecost. But Pentecost
also has a contemporary context because, my friends, like all our
feasts, Pentecost lives in the present as well as in the past. Pentecost
is happening right now. I hope we can feel that in this livestream
liturgy and I hope we can know it every day. Pope Francis, in one of his
homilies, spoke in his down-home way of how the Holy Spirit is with us
now but how we are quite good at keeping the Spirit at a distance from
us, good at ‘taming’ the Holy Spirit.
“If I may speak
plainly,” he said, “we want to tame the Holy Spirit because the Spirit
annoys us… moves us, pushes us - pushes the Church - to move forward,
and too often we prefer for the Spirit to keep quiet and not bother us!”
As an example, he spoke of the Second Vatican Council, the “New
Pentecost” of Pope John XXIII, and how some in the Church seek to
neutralize the Council by treating it as a museum piece instead of as
the living, dynamic, revolutionary call to action it was. “That’s the
sure way,” Pope Francis said, “to stifle the Holy Spirit.
My friends, Pentecost is
about letting the Spirit bother us, annoy us, make us uncomfortable.
It’s about daring to engage the world with all its destructive divisions
- personal divisions, political divisions, moral divisions (think of
this present moment with its deep racial unrest and violence) - seeing
these divisions for the dead ends they are. How sad, then, when out of
fear we are content to stand on the sidelines, clinging to our
comfortable certainties, closed off to new ways of thinking, closed off
to views other than our own.
In his Apostolic
Exhortation, Rejoice and Be Glad,” Pope Francis warns against allowing
ourselves to be paralyzed by fear and excessive caution, always hiding
in what he calls safe, closed spaces. (We’re having to do that these
days, thanks to the virus, but you get his meaning.) “Closed spaces,” he
says, “grow musty and unhealthy, and the only antidote to them is a holy
boldness, the kind of boldness that sent the disciples to the streets on
Pentecost.” He concludes, “Let us ask for the apostolic boldness
to share the gospel with others and to stop making our Christian life a
museum of memories!”
“A museum of memories.”
That can’t be the Church; it can’t be our life! A museum of memories is
the opposite of the New Creation that is Pentecost because the Holy
Spirit of Pentecost comes to us in fire to awaken and embolden us – to
make us eager to renew and repair relationships – relationships within
families and among friends, relationships between races, relationships
between peoples and nations, and, yes, our relationship with the
creation around us.
My friends, may the
Spirit of Pentecost come to us now. May the Spirit annoy us, disturb us,
prod us, push us out of our comfort zones, turn us into witnesses –
disciples on fire – full of faith and love, conviction and compassion,
mercy and a deep passion for justice. "Lord, send out your Spirit and
renew the face of the earth!"
Father Michael G. Ryan
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