Depiction of the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, Chapel of the Holy Spirit, Campion Center, Weston, MA
Acts 2:1-11
Ps 104
1 Cor 12:3-7,12-13
Jn 20:19-23
One of the truisms heard in theology school is that you can't
understand the New Testament without first understanding the Old. Today’s first
reading from Acts of the Apostles is proof.
“When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place
together.” This reference to Pentecost
was to the Jewish festival of Pentecost, not to what we are celebrating today.
The Greek root of Pentecost means fifty days. The feast of Pentecost that ends the Easter
season is historically and symbolically linked to the Jewish feast of Pentecost
or Shavuot. Shavuot
is a harvest festival that commemorates God giving the Ten Commandments to
Moses fifty days after the Exodus. In
our liturgical year Pentecost occurs fifty days after Easter. Thus, just as Moses received the wisdom and
teaching of the Decalogue fifty days after the Exodus, the disciples received
the wisdom of the Holy Spirit fifty days after Jesus’ led the exodus from
death. Today we rejoice in the gifts of
the Holy Spirit: wisdom,
understanding, knowledge, counsel, fortitude, piety and fear of the Lord. If we choose to accept and cooperate
with these gifts they will strengthen
us in our faith and our daily lives.
The reading from Acts is dramatic and action packed. It is almost a movie script demanding heavy
use of special effects. Too bad Cecil B.
DeMille didn't make a film of this using modern computerized effects. Wind. Flame. Polyglot speaking. It would be spectacular. But, we can't afford to be distracted by the
special effects of this reading. Step
into the scene. Put yourself into the
action. Imagine the people’s
consternation when they heard this group of unsophisticated and uneducated Galilean
men speaking whatever language was necessary for everyone to hear and
comprehend the Good News of Christ Jesus risen from the dead. In the speaking in tongues we see what some
call “the reversal of Babel.” That which had been split apart by man's hubris at
the Tower of Babel was made whole again by the Son of Man's obedience to the
Father at Pentecost.
It is a pity we did not hear all of Psalm 104 during the
responsorial. Psalm 104 describes God’s
ongoing act of creation in exquisite imagery.
It also describes our response--or what our response should be--to God's
act of supreme generosity. Ideally, God’s action and our response are
reciprocal, flowing from the Creator to the creature and from the creature to
the Creator. In a perfect world the
reciprocity would be equal in both directions.
In reality it is not. God gives
us more than we are able to, or choose to, return to Him in thanksgiving.
“As a body is one though it has many parts . . .” is an
important statement. Paul will return to it with a more detailed elaboration in
the letter to the Romans. It is relevant
in society today. Certain sectors of modern
society no longer acknowledge or accept differences or distinctions. They insist on a false equality. That false
equality is an extreme version of particularity. It is marked by a grandiose
sense of specialness and uniqueness. Each
individual or faction insists that his or her specialness is most special and
thus deserves most special precedence. Any
arguments to the contrary seem to end with someone shrieking the equivalent of "My
equality trumps your equality" followed by attributing some newly coined
'ism' or 'phobia' to the other.
There are a number of amusing anecdotes, most of which can
never be shared in a homily, about the struggle for the role of most supreme in
the body. The general outline is an
argument in which the body's organs argue about which one is the most
important, which one is MOST critical to the life and
comfort of the individual. But you know
what? Except for the appendix, which
appears to be a useless though occasionally dangerous anatomical appendage, the
body has no most important system or organ, no most special system. All of the systems are equally necessary,
each in its own way, to the function and survival of the individual. The lungs cannot do the work of the liver
even if it wishes to self-identify as liver.
The liver cannot decide to do the work of the heart. The pancreas cannot substitute for the
kidneys. And nothing can cover the body
as well as the skin. If one organ or
system fails the entire body dies. It is that simple.
None of us is the social or biological equivalent of a stem
cell. None of us can do or become ANYTHING
depending only upon our dreams, our passion, or, to use an unfortunate term
from the past, following our bliss. We
cannot decide to be whatever we "identify ourselves to be" particularly
when that violates natural law. The
statement "you can be whatever you want to be" is one of the greatest
lies in the history of lying. We all have assets and liabilities. We are all limited and have strengths. We all have specific genetic endowments. We
are all fallible in some areas and more than competent in others. The only thing we share is that we are all
sinners. No exceptions and no
counterbalance. That we are sinners
loved by God is the only true equality. Thus,
we are called to rejoice that the gifts of the Holy Spirit have been bestowed
on us. Our vocation is to cooperate with
those gifts, along with our natural talents and abilities, in the manner to
which each of us is called. Our common
calling as Christians is to share the revelation of Jesus with those we meet in
whatever language necessary. The best
instruction on how to do this comes from St. Francis of Assisi:
"Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words only when absolutely necessary."
On of the many halls at the charterhouse.
One of the small chapels in which each priests celebrates a private Mass after the conventual Mass.
My lunch on Wednesday. I love Europe.
No comments:
Post a Comment