|
+THEY WERE ALL FILLED WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT Pentecost 2005
This Feast of Pentecost is our birthday as Christians. Without Pentecost,
without the gift of the Holy Spirit our lives as Christians would be without any
lasting meaning, we would be left to our own resources and sink into oblivion.
It is the gift of the Holy Spirit that allows a person to break out of the fear,
out of the locked rooms within which he or she is confined and to shine with
Christ's own light in our world. In the Scriptures we have just read we were
given two very different experiences of the gift of the Holy Spirit. The first
from Acts gives us a rather dramatic with the sudden noise of a strong driving
wind, filling the entire house where they were. Then tongues of fire come to
rest on each of them so that they began to speak in different tongues. The
second from the gospel of John is far more subdued; Jesus standing in the midst
of the disciples breathes on them and says "receive the Holy Spirit." But the
basic message is the same: we are confined in the locked cells of our own fears,
our own egos until the Holy Spirit comes upon us and we radiate the goodness of
God to all around us.
This divine life of the Holy Spirit is what is to motivate the whole of our
lives, whether as Church or each one of us that makes up the Body of Christ. Of
what does this life of the Spirit consist? St Paul tells us plainly and
beautifully that the life of the Spirit is: "love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there
is no law." When these fruits of the Spirit are manifest in our lives, we can
then say we are true to the gospel of Jesus Christ. But to live this way is the
continual gift of God, nothing that we can claim as our own as the fruit of our
own effort. It is the work of God in us. What is striking about the early
experience of Pentecost that we just heard from Acts is the transformative power
it had in the lives of those who experienced. They were no longer afraid but
went out freely sharing the love that overtook their own lives. It made them
fearless without the least tinge of violence. Also striking is the inclusiveness
of the experience for at the sound of what happen a large crowd gathered, a
crowd of Parthians, Medes, Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia etc. and the
Holy Spirit comes upon them all so that they hear the disciples speaking in his
or her own tongue of the might acts of God." Through the gift of the Spirit all
those usual barriers we set up are broken down. What might this be saying to our
own time when mutual understanding between persons of other races and religions
is becoming daily both more possible and critical for our future. Will we allow
the Holy Spirit to bring about unity both within our Church, among the Churches,
among peoples of all religions and cultures of all the world? Only if we allow
the Spirit to live continually in each of our hearts.
As Paul tells us in the second reading, there are "there are different kinds of
spiritual gifts but the same Spirit." Once again we are brought before the
giftedness of each one of our lives and just how deeply interdependent we are.
To paraphrase the second reading from Paul, "there are many kinds of spiritual
gifts in this assembly, many different forms of service, a variety of different
workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone." To acknowledge
and be appreciative of the wonderful variety of gifts is what creates community
and gives it vitality. I sometimes think that what purgatory is going to be for
some of us is coming to realize we lived next to persons with all kinds of gifts
but failed to see them because they were different gifts than our own. Failing
to appreciate our own gifts, the grace they represent, we fail to recognize
others' gifts as well. When we are filled with gratitude for the many graces
bestowed on each one of us, we are open to the many gifts in those around us.
Isn't this what it is to celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, to allow for the
great variety of working of the Spirit to revivify the living Body of Christ,
with each of its members functioning for the good of all. So much in our culture
would have us function as autonomous individuals and betray what is most human
and life giving in us, that our lives are mutually interdependent, enriching one
another in a way that allows a true celebration of our life together.
This mutuality and inter-relatedness applies to our lives in community, but also
to the whole world of nature all around us. The earth is full of God's creatures
as we just heard in the psalm that was sung. "Take away their breath, they
perish, send forth your spirit, they are created and you renew the face of the
earth." "The world depends on God's breath and God's food for viable
functioning." Our singing these verses stands, the author Walter Brueggemann
tells us, "as a massive protest against all modernity, all mistaken autonomy,
all the seductions of technical thinking that imagine we have life on our own
terms. Even as the church cannot have its life on its own terms, without
reference to God's life-giving Spirit, no more can the world ever be
self-sufficient. The 'greenhouse effect,' the disruption of the rain forests,
and death by agricultural chemicals all are evidence that the world cannot be
made self-sufficient according to human desire, ideology, or technology." The
coming of the Holy Spirit unmasks all our human pretensions and renews the face
of the earth. The future of this planet depends entirely on our willingness to
accept every human life and our environment as God's gift to be respected and
loved. The gift of the Spirit touches all of life and makes all things new.
The Eucharist would remind us weekly if not daily just how precious human live
and our created world are to God. Through the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit
God has taken on our very human flesh and blood, embraced the whole of our
humanity. And now in these very sacraments of Bread and Wine, these created
elements; this same Incarnate God gives us his very flesh and Blood to be the
source of our very own life and love.
Michael Casagram, ocso
Abbey of Gethsemani
Pentecost Sunday
May 15, 2005
Return to Resources
Contact information:
Mailing Address
LCG, PO Box 503, Oxford, OH 45056
E-mail: info@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org
|
