Pentecost
Scripture Readings: Acts 2: 1-11; I Cor 12: 3b-7 12-13; Jn 20: 19-23.
On a rainy afternoon when you really have nothing to do, you might pick up that box or album of family photos and pictures you have accumulated over the years.
You see all those faces staring out at you, but none of them is revealing what is behind their expressions. The photos may be accurate and even high definition, but they don’t say what thoughts, hopes, fears or plans are whirling around in their heads. What is the connection between the younger face and the older face of the same person? If we even bother to ask that question, we may finally point to a spirit or soul as the living source of its unity. The simpler and easier view is that we are just successions of events and scenes which play themselves out while we, the agents, cope as best we can. Looking for a deeper meaning seems to add little or nothing to our ability to manage the reality that confronts us.
The cultural spirit of our times is confident in its dethronement of any “meta-narratives” which would embrace our lives in a larger story which gives them meaning. The lonely premise is that life is what you make of it and meaning is what you can persuade yourself and others to believe. Any connections made to foster social cooperation or negotiated peace are recognized as arbitrary, fragile, and temporary. Any meaning will be found in the order and organization that can be preserved and maintained. Order becomes its own meaning.
When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. What brought them together was the work of the Holy Spirit, the celebration of the fruition of God’s work in bringing earth to wholeness and His people to knowledge of his will in the Law and Torah. Life was celebrated as the gift of God and communion in his abundant goodness. The overflowing goodness of God bore fruit in the liberating freedom of humanity and creation. This is the story they shared, the whole of which they were integrated and integral parts. Pentecost is the event which creates the church to be what it is.
When we have trouble communicating an experience, in exasperation we finally say, “You had to be there.” The event was its own self explanation and burst beyond the limits of definition and organization. The meaning is in the immediacy of the experience. The meaning has to come to you, to appear to you as a gift which astounds, amazes, and fills you with joy. “Jesus came and stood in their midst … The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.” This is being there.
This is having one’s own spirit brought to life and given the courage to think and act out of the untouched depths of our hearts. We are brought out of locked doors into an unfolding connection and unity being created by the Spirit of God.
We are touched by the flame of God’s love and are liberated to go out into the world with a transforming power. The whole revelation of Jesus needs to be fulfilled in us. “When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled.” His peace, His wholeness, His meta-narrative must grasp us so deeply that it unites the center and heart of our being to that of the love of Jesus. He breathed on them.
His peace is a gift and a mission. It is living out of the unity we have in God, under the impetus of “the same God who produces all of them in everyone. To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.” It is the unifying peace of the Spirit which enables us to see and encourage the connections being made by the Spirit underneath the faces which look out at us. We cannot be content with relating to ourselves, to others, or to creation in one-dimensional ways. We cannot populate our lives with life-size cut-out photos in the way churches and sports arenas have done during the pandemic. When we call upon the Lord to send down his Spirit in every eucharist and “to pour out the gifts of the Holy Spirit across the face of the earth,” we open our own hearts to be recreated in His love.
Pentecost
Scripture Readings: Acts 2-11; l Cor. 12:3b-7, 12-13; Jn. 20:19-23.
In our opening prayer, we asked God to pour out the gifts of the Holy Spirit across the face of the earth. It is an invocation, a call for the very gift that makes the Church what it is. It is the voice of the ecclesia: those who are called and those who call upon God. We often get a little too “substantialist” in our understanding and forget the creative space that is left between the call and the hearing. The Church prays out of its deep memory and anamensis. The roots of her being are created and formed by her history and memory of the saving acts of Christ. Her own history is inconceivable without the living penetration and contact with the Spirit of Christ. She reads and understands history not as an accumulation and succession of events, but as an unfolding of the plan of God guided by His Spirit. Through the Spirit, she sees Christ and rejoices. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. The presence of the Spirit gives her a deep personal and connatural knowledge to recognize him when he appears. The Church turns her face to God when she invokes that gift of life which can make all things new. The Spirit is the author of life who breathes where He will.
In our prayer, the Church also turns her face to the earth. And the world has a face: pour out the gifts of the Holy Spirit across the face of the earth. An initial understanding might see this as indicating the breadth, universality, and unity of the earth as a whole. This is the common home we all share, the dwelling place of the Spirit who has filled the whole world. The earth is the locus of the Spirit. The earth is the common home of all living things and the matrix of human life.
But if the earth has a face, it means that its inner life comes to expression through the face it turns toward us. What we see in creation is an epiphany of its interdependence and desire for that peace 
which is the harmonious interaction of all diverse forms in the biosphere. That is the face of creation: the expression of the creative spirit of God in supporting, giving, and sharing life. Our face is the primary medium for manifesting our inner life, our loves, our cares, our willingness to engage in communication. Our face is the home or locus for expressing our intentions and our sensibility. We turn our faces towards those who are important to us. We turn them away from those who do not count.
It is obvious that the earth has many faces. It is difficult to look at the faces of violence and protest that seem to cover the earth today. Inequality has bred injustice. Powerlessness and apathy have bred violence. The colored, the indigenous, and the poor are ripe victims for Covid-19 in what functions as a practical genocide. The environment is suffering from what can seem to be mortal wounds. The soulless indifference to the lives of others (“we all have to die sometime”) is a prevalent virus eroding any common bonds of decency and respect.
And yet the Church prays pour out the gifts of the Holy Spirit across the face of the earth. The Church (we) cannot be merely a bystander, hoping for a massive inundation to drown all our ills. There appeared to them tongues as of fire which parted and came to rest on each one of them. The one Spirit manifests himself to each individual. Different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. Each of us has been given a gift, a share in this one Spirit. What have we been given, sent to do and be? What is the source of our wholeness, our integrity, our holiness? Rather, who is this source? What form do our beliefs and convictions take in the face of our earth today?
Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. The gift of the Spirit has made our lives a locus, a place where peace and forgiveness can transform the earth. We are called to be instruments and messengers of the peace, forgiveness, communion and harmony which are the one Spirit. This call enflames that love which waits to come to life in our hearts. It is the breath of the Lord who comes face to face with us.
Pentecost
[Scripture Readings: Acts 2:1-11; 1 Cor 12:3-7, 12-13; Jn 20:19-23]
What is the most obvious fact or feature of the Holy Spirit? It is so obvious that the answer is irrefutable. The fact is that the Holy Spirit is invisible. It is obvious. It is not that we are unfamiliar with invisible reality. We all have a visible and invisible side to us. William James once said that whenever two people meet there are really six people present—there is each person as she or he sees themselves, each as the other sees them and each as they really are.
Four of these six are invisible. The last two are especially intriguing; who we really are. How do you know who you really are? St. Paul writes, “Your life is hidden with Christ in God and when Christ appears you will appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:34). At this point we will appear for the first time as we really are. In the meantime the Spirit of Truth is revealing the truth of who we really are. What exactly is being revealed?
The Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Truth. But there are many types of truth. In Greek orthotes means correct representation. The word orthodoxy comes from this word and orthopedic shoes that correct your feet. This type of truth is important and guides our daily life. But there is a more basic truth called alethia in Greek and this is truth as reveled and disclosed to us. It is at the heart level, being claimed by the truth, being apprehended. Wherever you have truth you have the presence of the Holy Spirit just as wherever you have love there is God. So even thought the three persons in God are invisible we apprehend their presence in the world through truth bearers and acts of kindness and love. 
On this day of Pentecost the whole church was commissioned to go forth and bear witness, to preach the good news and this is one of the best ways to fulfill our mission.
But back to the question, what is the Holy Spirit revealing in us or disclosing to us so we can apprehend who we really are? Last week at Lauds we sang a hymn to the Holy Spirit and one verse went like this, “Spirit of Grace, reveal in me my savior that I may gaze upon his mirrored face till I reflect it in my whole behavior.” So I am not a single, isolated person; the Holy Spirit is revealing to me a presence that is more myself than I am. Thomas Merton in a mystical moment wrote, “Since the inmost I is the perfect image of God, then when the I awakens it finds within itself the presence of one whose image it is and by a paradox beyond all human expression God and the soul seem to have but one simple I, (The Inner Experience, page 15).
St. Paul says we are God's work of art but we will not be complete until Christ reaches full stature in us. Right now much is hidden from us but if we have love and truth in our life we know the invisible Sprit is present. We long to gaze on the mirrored face of the savior in us but the mirror is cloudy and our eyes are weak. Someday when Christ appears we will appear with him.
If my savior is being revealed in me he is also being revealed in you and so we form a community of searchers for the truth. Searching and finding, searching and finding until we are found, longing to possess until we are possessed. All the words of Sacred Scripture, all the teachings of the fathers and mothers of our faith, all the hours of lectio, all the bearing of each other's burdens, are ways to polish the mirror of our soul that we may gaze more clearly at the face of our savior whose image we are. When Abraham's slave girl, Hagar, was driven into the desert she had an experience of God and she said she had seen the one who sees her. So we too gaze on the one who sees us until we become one with what we see.
There is an ancient Paschal homily that we usually read on Holy Saturday describing Jesus descent into hell. There he meets Adam and says to him, “I order you, 0 sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be a prisoner in hell. Rise up work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated,” (Breviary).
Pentecost
[Scripture Readings: Acts 2:1-11; 1 Cor 12:3-7, 12-13; Jn 20:19-23]
Many years ago in the 1960’s Psychology really hit the religious life with a vengeance. There were sensitivity sessions, there was the book, “On Becoming a Person” by Carl Rogers that you just had to read and there was a popular little book entitled, “Why I am Afraid to Tell You Who I Am“. I suppose to read the book would have been an indication that you were one of those who was afraid, so you did not want anyone to see you reading it which again only reinforces the fact that you were afraid to tell people who you were or are or will be. We can express who we are by sharing intimate things about ourselves or by simply giving our name and where we are from . We do this at meetings sometimes and an indication that you are afraid to tell people who you are is the nervousness with which you await your turn to give out your name—it is worse if you have to stand up and do this. Very few of us like to be the focus of attention this way. Someone described it as being like a deer caught in the head lights of a car. We want to vanish into the safety of the woods or fade into the background or the wall paper, as it were.
One gets the impression that the Apostles were something like this after the death of Jesus. They hid out, didn’t want to be seen, sort of snuck around Jerusalem and met behind closed doors or dispersed. They were not about to tell anyone who they were. This all changed with Pentecost. We read they were given the power to express themselves. The exact words are, “…the Spirit gave them the power to express themselves” . This is quite remarkable because everyone there, and the text makes it clear there were people from many different nations and languages present, could understand what was being said. But, to me what was more remarkable was the content of what was being said. It was not a teaching or a sermon. It was a prayer, an ecstatic prayer of praise, a preaching, the text says, about the marvels of God. Remember, what we are attending to here is the birth of the church. 
The narrative is telling us what is the essence of the church. It is the prayer of praise, it is worship of the Father by the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit; it is the celebration of the marvels of God, it is the liturgy of the church or what Benedict calls the work of God.
The tongues of fire in the story represent the presence of the Holy Spirit. Fire is also the symbol of love. The Sacred Heart is always shown surrounded by fire. The message is that at the heart of God, at the heart of the Church and at the heart of each one of the Baptized is the fire of love. When the disciples were given the power to express themselves this fire burst forth in praise and worship of God. This praise and recounting of the marvels works of God is still the heart of the Church. It is still powered by the fire of love called the Holy Spirit. This is the mystical church where the lack of love by one is made up for by the burning love of another. In this way a lonely, forgotten widow who is bearing her cross in love can be supplying more to the church than a world renown theologian. At the heart of the church only love counts. As St. Paul says love alone endures.
The church of course has many dimensions and functions but when the community gathers to worship we are brought into the essence of the church—the church at prayer. St. Augustine spoke of the “vox totius Christi“, the voice of the whole Christ. This is the worshiping community, this is what the church was founded to do—to praise the wonderful works of God and in doing that to praise God Himself.
As a consumer society we have in the background of everything we do the little voice saying, “what’s in it for me“? When we come to the liturgy this gets translated into, I don’t get much out of it—it doesn’t appeal to me. Today’s feast is telling us what we get out of it when it says, “…the Spirit gave them power to express themselves“. This is a tremendous gift. We can find ourselves by expressing ourselves and here we mean at the deepest level of our existence. When we praise and worship God in the power of the Spirit we are actualizing our true and essential nature as being who are a communication of God. God expresses himself through us and we express ourselves through the Spirit.
Truly, Pentecost is the birth of the Church and the birth of our deepest and truest self.
Pentecost
[Scripture Readings: Acts 2:1-11; 1 Cor 12:3-7, 12-13; Jn 20:19-23]
Not long before I entered the monastery, I was learning how to play tennis and was practicing one day, in a city park with little courts where you could practice your swing, hitting balls against a wall. Each of these little courts was equipped with a basketball hoop as well. As I was practicing, these two big burly guys got out of a car with a basketball, and were annoyed to discover that all four courts were occupied. Seeing me, a not very big burly guy, occupying one of the courts, they decided they would use my court, and, in a friendly, rather cursory manner, informed me that they were going to practice basketball for a little while; thanked me for my cooperation and moved on to the court. I don’t have an athlete’s body, but I have a will, and when I realized what the two men were doing, I became very angry and then, a moment later, surprisingly calm. I was calm, because I had made a decision. It was clear, as these two big athletic guys moved on to the court, it was time for me to leave. I decided I would stay. Taking my tennis ball, I hit it once against the wall, and then again, and so resumed practicing my tennis just as if the two basketball champs weren’t even there. At about the same time they commenced their one on one basketball game, and so, a rather curious contest began.
It’s not easy practicing tennis in the middle of a basketball game, but I was determined to give it a try. Once or twice one guy accidentally, or not so accidentally, collided with me in the middle of the court, and at one point I felt what I believe was a basketball bounce off the top of my head, but I was determined to carry on just as if I were all alone on the court. I don’t know when it happened, but at one point, the two men left. Without a word of complaint and without saying good-bye, they simply moved on. A man, standing off to the side, he reminded me of one of those passive bystanders you read about in stories of New York City muggings, walked up to me looking very happy and with his face flushed said: “Good for you young man! I was—rootin for ya!”
I wasn’t sure exactly what this man was so happy about, and I wouldn’t want you to think I came away from this incident feeling like I had proved something. I did not. The fact is two men had been physically aggressive with me and I was not physically strong enough to defend myself, or even to defend my personal dignity and as a result, for five or ten minutes, I was made the subject of a humiliating spectacle. My susceptibility to this sort of thing has always been a source of anxiety for me. I am aware that I cannot compete physically, and this is a wound I carry inside. On this occasion, that wound was put on public display. I came away from the experience feeling exposed and a little humiliated. So—what was this man on the sidelines so happy about?
In the gospel for this feast of Pentecost, Jesus appears to his disciples—appears three days after he died. Immediately upon appearing in their midst, Jesus shows them his wounds; those terrible wounds by which he was tortured and killed on a cross. Interestingly, the disciples look at these wounds—and rejoice. As with the man beside the tennis court, it is hard for me to understand why the disciples would look at the terrible wounds in Jesus’ hands and side and rejoice.
Maybe we should take a closer look at those wounds ourselves. The wounds Jesus is showing us at this moment, are more than bodily. The holes in Jesus’ hands and feet are a reminder of his humiliation suffered on the last day of his life and witnessed by a large crowd. The death Jesus died was the most awful and shameful death that could be suffered by a subject of the Roman Empire, and he was naked when he died. Moreover, the humiliation Jesus suffered on the cross was the culmination of the humiliation he had suffered all his life. The problem with Jesus is that he was always small; he was always weak and vulnerable. Like the Jews from whom he descended, Jesus was always a target, and all his life, even at his birth was largely defenseless against the violence of men around him more powerful than he. In the world’s eyes, Jesus had always been a weakling. Now, three days after his terrible death, Jesus appears to his disciples, and shows them the wounds which are reminders of the vulnerability and weakness that characterized his entire life. Seeing the wounds, the disciples rejoice.
Brothers and sisters, the Holy Spirit whose coming we celebrate on Pentecost Sunday is God’s Spirit; the Spirit of Love, and, this morning, as Jesus shows us the wounds he suffered on the cross, he is inviting us to reflect on the mystery that this Love of God, is born of suffering and weakness in the person of Jesus His Son. Our vocation as a church and as individual followers of Christ is to manifest in our lives this love born of vulnerability. Pope Benedict the XVI has said repeatedly that we may expect in the years ahead the Catholic Church will be smaller and less influential in the world. To unbelievers, this sounds like bad news for the Catholic church, but we know these words of the pope forecast great things for the church of Jesus Christ whose founder the world considered small and weak. When we are weak we are strong, and it is the abundance of love and strength afforded to the weak of this world that is the cause of our rejoicing
on Pentecost Sunday, the birthday of the church. Today, tongues of fire descend from heaven on our heads. Rejoice at the gift of these flames, but be mindful: what these flames touch they burn, and what they burn, they transform.