June 8, 2014: PENTECOST
Acts 2:1-11: When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire. …. And were all filled with the Holy Spirit.
Psalm 104: Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.
1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12: No one can say “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit. There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit … as a body is one though it has many parts. … For in one Spirit we were baptized into one body,. … whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free
SEQUENCE: Veni, Sancte Spiritus: Come, Holy Spirit, come!
John 20:19-23: Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
June is the month of the Sacred Heart
Scripture Notes from the Sourcebook:
ABOUT THIS SOLEMNITY: The Greek word for Pentecost (Pentekoste) means “fiftieth,” and in early Christinity it referred to the entire Fifty Days of Easter. The roots of Pentecost can be found in the Jewish festival of Weeks (Shavu’ot), the Fifty-Day celebration following Passover (Exodus 23:16). It was a harvest festival in which the fist fruits of the harvest were offered to God in gratitude. It eventually became associated with the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. Early Christians reinterpreted the Jewish Festival as a commemoration of the coming of the Holy Spirit, since Acts records that the Holy Spirit came to the disciples when the festival of Pentecost was fulfilled (see Acts 2:1-11). The celebration of Pentecost may begin on Saturday afternoon or evening with the Vigil. By the end of the fourth century in the West, Pentecost became a time for the initiation of those not baptized at Easter. Thus, a night vigil was added like the Easter Vigil for this purpose. With this early history in mind, this is a most appropriate time to initiate those who were not ready at the Easter Vigil, or (and and) to celebrate the Reception of Baptized Christians into the Full Communion of the Catholic Church (see RCIA, 473).
THE FIRST READING: Pentecost was one of the three pilgrimage feasts of the Jews, when all who were able came to the Temple in Jerusalem; thus, the presence of so many foreigners in Jerusalem that day. All the disciples were gathered in one place. Acts of the apostles 1:13-14 identifies these disciples as the Eleven, Mary, the mother of Jesus, the women who journeyed with Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem (see Luke 8:1-3, 23:49), and his relatives. The cosmic sign of the strong driving wind attracted the crowd. (In Greek, the language in which Acts was originally written, the same word is used for both “wind” and “spirit.”) Note also the sign of “fire.” The fruit of the Spirit’s presence and work is the disciples’ ability to proclaim the Gospel in various tongues and be understood by those who heard them.
RESPONSORIAL PSALM 104: As at the Vigil Mass, Psalm 104 is used, with the same antiphon. There is some variation I n the stanzas. Today’s addition in the last stanza voices the desire that both God’s glory and God’s joy in his creation endure. The psalmist is intent on being pleasing to the Lord and finding joy in him. A beautiful theme for each of our lives!
SECOND READING: The contrast between the Spirit and the flesh – and their respective fruits – is emphasized in today’s reading. The flesh represents anything that is opposed to God; the Spirit, that which is enlivened by God’s power and presence. Paul’s command to live by the Spirit points to the choice we have in the matter. Which fruits are more evident in our lives?
THE GOSPEL: The setting of today’s text is Jesus’s last discourse to his disciples, at table with them the night before he died. Jesus promised to send the Spirit, an Advocate on their behalf, the Spirit of truth. Note the intimate workings between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit and how the disciples are drawn into this by the power of the Spirit at work in their lives. On their part, the disciples must receive what the Spirit declares to them and testify on Jesus’s behalf.
PASTORAL REFLECTION: Infused into every part of life to be made manifest in our daily lives, Jesus gives us each a great protector. Because of this we are powerful beings in Christ. Harness this beautiful power and accept your ability to truly make a difference in bold and beautiful ways. Consider downloading from World Library Publications, John Angotti’s songs: “I Send You Out” or “Come, Holy Spirit,” for both are a true representation to feed your soul about the message necessary to live as an empowered member of the Body of Christ. You are blessed to serve. Serve someone in Christ’s name this week. --2014 Sourcebook for Sundays, Seasons & Weekends
PENTECOST: Anyone who has ever looked into a grave will know how logical it is to see it as a dead end, the extinction of all hope, the end of the story. But our faith is deeper than logic and it looks into the empty tomb of Christ with joy, seeing it as the beginning of hope, not the end, the beginning not the end of the story. Because of the empty tomb there are no dead ends for a Christian.
The disciples had locked themselves in "for fear of the Jews." They had gathered themselves into a kind of tomb. Perhaps they thought that their future would be just this: to recall and cherish their memories of Jesus within this little circle. But suddenly Jesus appeared among them. He went down into their tomb, as the story says he descended into Hades to release the dead from their past and to bring them out into the light of the Resurrection. He would not let these disciples enter an early Hades. He empowered them with the Spirit. As God breathed into Adam the breath of life, so Jesus now breathed the Spirit into these disciples, making them a new people. In the power of the Spirit they left their narrow dungeon and preached the news of Jesus to "Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs…" (Acts 2:9-11); in other words they preached to the whole world. They did not remain a synagogue, an assembly of the elect, they went out to meet the world as it was.
To us today this might appear a case of relaxing into an easy cosmopolitan spirit. But for those disciples it was anything but that; an hour before, the thought of it would have paralysed them with fear. The religious culture of their time led them to fear and despise foreigners, seeing them as a source of contamination. But the Spirit they received was not a spirit of timidity and flight.
It is an abiding temptation for Christians to return to being a synagogue of the elect. Mentally, spiritually, we barricade ourselves in and call it keeping the faith. The hammering on the door we interpret as threats and opposition. But it may well be the struggle of others trying to come into the faith. We call them by nicknames and give them the label of heretics: 'New Agers', 'Quietists', 'Liberationists'…. But we should heed the prophets, the people filled with God's Spirit. "The Churches," wrote Thomas Merton, "have created a separate world within the world, a world claiming to be 'sacred', while surreptitiously gaining and retaining for themselves every possible worldly advantage and privilege."
Today, of all days, we have to listen to what God is saying to the Churches.
--- Donagh O’Shea for the Dominicans of Ireland, Today’s Good News
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Today we feel the wind beneath our wings
Today the hidden fountain flows and plays
Today the church draws breath at last and sings
As every flame becomes a Tongue of praise.
This is the feast of fire, air, and water
Poured out and breathed and kindled into earth.
The earth herself awakens to her maker
And is translated out of death to birth.
The right words come today in their right order
And every word spells freedom and release
Today the gospel crosses every border
All tongues are loosened by the Prince of Peace
Today the lost are found in His translation.
Whose mother-tongue is Love, in every nation.
--Malcolm Guite, from Sounding the Seasons
AUTHOR COMMENTARY ON THIS POEM: Continuing in ‘Sounding the Seasons’, my cycle of sonnets for the Church Year this is a sonnet reflecting on and celebrating the themes and readings of Pentecost. Throughout the cycle, and more widely, I have been reflecting on the traditional ‘four elements’ of earth, air, water and fire. I have been considering how each of them expresses and embodies different aspects of the Gospel and of God’s goodness, as though the four elements were, in their own way, another four evangelists. In that context I was very struck by the way Scripture expresses the presence of the Holy Spirit through the three most dynamic of the four elements, the air, ( a mighty rushing wind, but also the breath of the spirit) water, (the waters of baptism, the river of life, the fountain springing up to eternal life promised by Jesus) and of course fire, the tongues of flame at Pentecost. Three out of four ain’t bad, but I was wondering, where is the fourth? Where is earth? And then I realised that we ourselves are earth, the ‘Adam’ made of the red clay, and we become living beings, fully alive, when the Holy Spirit, clothed in the three other elements comes upon us and becomes a part of who we are. So something of that reflection is embodied in the sonnet.
PENTECOST (Whitsunday): One of the biblical names for Pentecost is “the festival of firstfruits.” A “Firstfruit” is the first of a crop to ripen. These we offered to God in thanksgiving for the harvest. We usually don’t think of this time of year as a harvest season. But in mild climates, such as the lands around the Mediterranean, the apricots, cherries and strawberries are ripe now. So are wheat and other grains. The grain harvest is the principal harvest of the year, the crop that can feed people all year long if it is abundant enough. Even in the north, gardens yield asparagus, rhubarb, the first peas and spinach and other salad greens. Winter’s fast has become springtime’s feast. – Mary Ellen Hynes, from Companion to the Calendar
“Those in whom the Spirit comes to live are God's new Temple. They are, individually and corporately, places where heaven and earth meet.” ― N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense
When you strip it of everything else, Pentecost stands for power and life. That's what came into the church when the Holy Spirit came down on the day of Pentecost. ― David Wilkerson, The Cross and the Switchblade
What do we feel is the first and last need of this blessed and beloved Church of ours? We must say it, almost trembling and praying, because as you know well, this is the Church’s mystery and life: the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. He it is who animates and sanctifies the Church… The Church needs her perennial Pentecost; she needs fire in her heart, words on her lips, prophecy in her outlook. – Pope Paul VI, General Audience, Nov. 29, 1972
The sending of the Holy Spirit / A treatise "Against the Heresies" by St Irenaeus
When the Lord told his disciples to go and teach all nations and baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, he conferred on them the power of giving men new life in God.
He had promised through the prophets that in these last days he would pour out his Spirit on his servants and handmaids, and that they would prophesy. So when the Son of God became the Son of Man, the Spirit also descended upon him, becoming accustomed in this way to dwelling with the human race, to living in men and to inhabiting God’s creation. The Spirit accomplished the Father’s will in men who had grown old in sin, and gave them new life in Christ.
Luke says that the Spirit came down on the disciples at Pentecost, after the Lord’s ascension, with power to open the gates of life to all nations and to make known to them the new covenant. So it was that men of every language joined in singing one song of praise to God, and scattered tribes, restored to unity by the Spirit, were offered to the Father as the first-fruits of all the nations.
This was why the Lord had promised to send the Advocate: he was to prepare us as an offering to God. Like dry flour, which cannot become one lump of dough, one loaf of bread, without moisture, we who are many could not become one in Christ Jesus without the water that comes down from heaven. And like parched ground, which yields no harvest unless it receives moisture, we who were once like a waterless tree could never have lived and borne fruit without this abundant rainfall from above. Through the baptism that liberates us from change and decay we have become one in body; through the Spirit we have become one in soul.
The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of God came down upon the Lord, and the Lord in turn gave this Spirit to his Church, sending the Advocate from heaven into all the world into which, according to his own words, the devil too had been cast down like lightning.
If we are not to be scorched and made unfruitful, we need the dew of God. Since we have our accuser, we need an advocate as well. And so the Lord in his pity for man, who had fallen into the hands of brigands, having himself bound up his wounds and left for his care two coins bearing the royal image, entrusted him to the Holy Spirit. Now, through the Spirit, the image and inscription of the Father and the Son have been given to us, and it is our duty to use the coin committed to our charge and make it yield a rich profit for the Lord. – posted on beliefnet
When the spirit comes
Before the Spirit came, you were just words on a page,
Black on white and yellowed with age.
Simply a story of long ago,
Of a man who had so much love to show;
Who healed the sick and cured the lame;
Took our guilt and bore our shame.
It sounded so good, but it just couldn't last.
It was not for today but locked in the past.
Until the Spirit came.
Now the Spirit has come, you are here at my side,
Larger than life and ready to guide;
Making real to me all that you said
And doing through me the things that I read.
I am the glove that your hand has filled;
I am the cup into which you have spilled
All the love and the power which you promised would come,
Right now in the present and for everyone.
Since the Spirit came.
-- from http://www.barnabasinchurches.org.uk/pentecost-a-story-and-a-poem/
“The Spirit is the reason we can build a church and have confidence that we will get it at least a little bit right.” ― Lauren F. Winner, Girl Meets God ________________________________________________________________________________________
“It is the Spirit’s work to draw what might otherwise be a cacophonic disunity into symphony. The Spirit worked to transcribe God’s music for playing on the human instrument of Jesus of Nazareth; the Spirit now works to orchestrate that theme for an ensemble of billions.” —Mike Higton
The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
“The Word is light and the Holy Spirit is oxygen; to pray is to see and breathe.”
― Gangai Victor
Reflection for June 8, 2014: PENTECOST
When I was a child, I thought as a child and spake as a child and watched Saturday morning cartoons as a child, at least when my brothers left me any space on the family sofa. Which is likely why I’ve so often had problems with the idea of the Holy Spirit. I’ve said this before, but I can’t be the only baby boomer whose idea of the Holy Ghost got entangled with the cartoon character Casper, the Friendly Ghost. Not to mention confusion about what “Tongues of Fire” might be. I had them confused with actual tongues, like the Tongues of Slobber our big dog, Rebel, was prone to let fly. Which makes for poor theology, at the very least.
Reading, especially the First Reading, on Pentecost Sunday is challenging for a lector. (“We are inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia… Phrygia and Pamphylia… stc., stc.… ”) If you’re not careful, it comes out sounding like “We are Trilobites and Ammonites and Electrolytes” or something like that – causing yet more theological confusion. Reading Acts on Pentecost is like declaiming the small-print ingredients on modern food packaging. You can muddle through it, but that doesn’t mean you know what you’re talking about. I sure didn’t, the first time I read. I mean, I more or less got what was happening, but I didn’t really get why it mattered so much. I figured Pentecost was sort of like “last call” for Easter – a final encore and then back to Ordinary Time.
But Pentecost is the climax of Easter, the peak of Easter’s Fifty Days. Pentecost is what Easter turns into if you take it seriously enough. Jesus told his disciples: When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will be filled with power, and you will be witnesses for me … to the ends of the Earth. Did they have any idea what they were in for?
Think about the journey they’d been on, those last few years: Long dark nights in the desert, hot days listening to Jesus preach in podunk villages, with the occasional unexpected jolt of a miracle flung in. All that ending in the shock of Crucifixion, when Jesus was arrested and tortured and killed and buried, right in front of their eyes – everything made even more terrible by their fear that they would be next, and the shame they felt when they panicked and took off running like jackrabbits. But then, amazingly, Easter morning dawned … and there was a rumor, a whisper, a glimpse of astonishing Glory – the wild, unlikely Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. What a mysterious time that must have been, those forty days they spent with the Risen Lord. It passed like a wonderful shimmering dream, every moment of it held and treasured in their hearts. But at the end, he was gone again, and they were left alone, with nothing but their memories and his promise. Of course they were confused by the whole crazy business. Who wouldn’t be?
So there they were, in the Upper Room, perhaps beginning to have a few doubts, wondering what to do with the rest of their lives. How do you even describe what happened next? We talk about “all Hell breaking out” – well, that day, all Heaven broke out in Jerusalem. The Spirit of God came to them in fire and glory and thunder, and they were filled with a tide of love and courage and grace. People who had been too scared to poke their noses out the door now charged into the streets, knocking down Pharisees and careening into centurions, praising God in every language at the top of their lungs. Drunk, people thought them, and drunk they were indeed -- high on the Holy Spirit, intoxicated by God. And it was something that never quite left them, no matter how hard the path that lay ahead. I am sure they still knew fear, and pain, and worry, along with moments of exhaustion and uncertainty. The Holy Spirit is not a vaccination against being human. But the difference for them was this: They knew that God was with them, even when they couldn’t feel it. The courage and wisdom and love they were given would remain with them, forever. Even when the grace seemed to slow to a trickle, even when they had to cling to their faith by the skin of their teeth – even when they were dying the extremely gruesome deaths of martyrs. Even then: They knew God loved them. And they did their best to pass it on to us.
And that is why the Holy Spirit gave them the gift of Tongues. It’s the opposite of the story of the Tower of Babel, which is one of the Pentecost Vigil readings: This time, God wanted people to communicate across all nations, working together as one family to attain Heaven. It doesn’t matter what language we speak or how we look or what color our skin might be. What matters is that we use words to communicate– not to hurt, or to frighten, or bully, or humiliate. What matters is that we speak in love, and courage, and honesty -- reach out to others with gentleness and compassion.
“Speaking in tongues” sounds like a lovely experience, although it’s never happened to me. It can be a powerful form of prayer, but it’s still not quite what happened on Pentecost. When people “speak in tongues” today, outsiders seldom understand it; it sounds to the uninitiated like a stream of nonsense syllables. But Pentecost gave understanding, as well as speech: “Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans? Then how does each of us hear them in his native language?” Today, speaking in tongues tends to be a solitary affair, even when it happens in public. It remains a gift, but primarily for the one who receives it; it doesn’t change the world, the way the world changed on Pentecost. I think we need to ask God to repeat that original Pentecost miracle. We already know how to talk to ourselves; we even know how to pray out loud, sometimes. But we still need to learn how to communicate with one another.
To listen – and to try to understand. Veni, creator spiritus. Come to us, Spirit of God; we need you, now.
-- Diane Sylvain