What we are meant to be doing

 

 

I have said these things to you

while still with you;

but the Advocate, the Holy Spirit,

whom the Father will send in my name,

will teach you everything

and remind you of all that I have said to you.’ 

John 14:26

Twelve years ago I took a phone call from my mother. She had been long estranged from the Church - indeed, since the publication of Paul VI's encyclical Humanae vitae in 1968. But as she aged, she longed to return to the practice of a faith that she held deep in her heart. She had begun attending Mass, but hadn't taken communion. She needed encouragement and advice on the Sacrament of Penance, and was soon reconciled. As her health failed, one of the joys of her last few months was being anointed with the oil of healing in the Anointing of the Sick.  

The Pentecost experience is well known and much written about - including myself over the past 25 years - but I continue to wonder about what happened to - and in - the disciples in that upper room. John is clear that the Spirit is breathed on to the disciples on the evening of Easter Day (John 20:19, 22), while in Acts the Spirit arrives some 'days' later accompanied by tongues of fire and provided the disciples with the gift of speech. From Acts we learn that they spent time devoted to prayer (along with certain women) (Acts 1:14), and that they were in fear of the Jews (John 20:19), and they also chose Matthias by lot to replace Judas Iscariot (Acts 1:26).  

The fear about which John (v.19) writes is specifically about fear of the Jews. This assumes that the Jews were not satisfied with the outcome of Jesus' trial and execution - and that the conspiracy theory of Jesus' body being stolen (Matthew 28:13) was alive and well. So, I continue to assume that their fear was a fear of being found, of being accused falsely, of being summoned to trial - not, as some may suggest - that the disciples and their companions were all at sea over the loss of Jesus. 

That being so, tongues of fire appeared, followed by the disciples being 'filled with the Holy Spirit' and finally being given the gift of speech. What is the transition, the transformation that occurs when the Spirit is breathed upon them? Is it miraculous, or is it something more human? Two things, I suspect, happened - one, the disciples recognised truth - that in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus they could acknowledge with utter conviction that Jesus was indeed Lord, and two, this recognition/cognition caused their fear to be washed away. They became fearless.

As Andy Otto (in his blog 'Fearless' in God in all things) so succinctly explains: The Spirit empowered Peter and the Apostles to proclaim truth to the nations by helping them overcome their anxiety and have the freedom to express themselves, to courageously build new relationships, and to be fearless.

This confrontation with the truth would appear to be part of the self-realisation and -actualisation tier - the highest tier in Maslow's hierarchy. It is here that we believe we are doing what we are meant to be doing. And this is the disciples after the Pentecost 'event'. This is the liberation that comes from acknowledging and accepting Jesus as Lord. It's an uncomfortable truth but a transformational truth that enables and propels believers to speak out in every aspect of Gospel life.

The vast majority of us may never experience the gush and energy experienced by those first disciples at Pentecost, we will, like my mother, come quietly to a conclusion, allow ourselves to be slowly transformed by God's love into clearer images of Christ himself. We then will know all too clearly that we are doing what we are meant to be doing.

 Peter Douglas

  

Speaking the same language was not what mattered: it was the ability to listen.

 

 

Richard Leonard SJ

There are two Pentecost traditions in the gospels. The first one, in John 20, has Jesus bequeath the Spirit on the same day as the Resurrection. Then, in Acts 2, we have the vivid version which is celebrated in our liturgical calendar. The word “Pentecost”, from the Greek word meaning “fiftieth”, was first given in the Old Testament to the Feast of Weeks, Shavuot, falling on the fiftieth day after Passover. Christians celebrate Pentecost on the fiftieth day after Easter Sunday and at the end of the seventh week.

Numbers matter in the Bible. In the Old Testament, 50 was the year of jubilee because it was rare for people to live beyond their fiftieth birthday. Of the many features of a jubilee year, three were consistent: slaves were set free; debts were cancelled; and fields for crops were allowed to lie fallow. This meant there was no such thing as lifetime slavery among the Israelites; that they aimed for no cross-generational poverty; and that they cared for the environment.

What Christians celebrate on Pentecost Sunday is that the power of the Spirit is unleashed on us because we have been set free from the slavery of our sin by Christ, all our debts have been forgiven in Christ and we are recreated as a new creation through Christ. Pentecost is meant to see us live as free sons and daughters of God, a people who forgive as we have been forgiven and who care for God’s Creation.

The second element of the story in Acts 2 is equally challenging. If you’re like me, you will have been taught that the most public gift on display at the first Pentecost was that a tongue of fire rested on each of the Apostles, they were filled with the Holy Spirit and had the ability to speak in different languages. But a more careful reading of the story reveals that the gift received that day was not only one of speaking, but equally one of hearing. Luke, the author of Acts, recounts how the crowds that gathered to hear the Apostles asked: “How is it that in our own language we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power?” Not only was the gift of tongues given to the earliest disciples, but their hearers received “the gift of ears”.

When it comes to listening in the Church today, some people mistake uniformity for unity. At the first Pentecost, the earliest Christians had no such difficulty; they knew that speaking the same language was not what mattered: it was the ability to carefully listen, and to hear the Gospel being spoken in different languages. The first Christians were a very complex and diverse bunch. Like the Church today, they had great struggles to deal with, inside as well as outside the community. Within a few years of the first Pentecost, there were fierce disagreements between Peter and Paul over Jewish and Gentile converts. Some were for Paul, and some were for Apollos. Some died for the faith and others betrayed their Christian brothers and sisters to the authorities.

Pentecost faith holds that while we build our faith on that of the believers who have gone before us, we also have a responsibility to listen to our contemporary culture and to bring it into dialogue with the Gospel. That’s why courage is one of the Holy Spirit’s pre-eminent gifts. We are not asked to retreat from the world. We are sent out to enter into conversation with it, affirming what we see to be good, and unashamedly standing against whatever, we see demeans or oppresses or is life-denying.

This is why we should ask the Holy Spirit to hone our ears as well as to prepare our tongues, so we are equipped to hear and discern as well as to proclaim the Gospel of Christ in the marketplaces of our own day and age. To talk of the things of God in an increasingly secular world requires prudence and wisdom: we must listen before we speak.

Towards the end of Acts 2, we hear a list of the marks of the first followers of Jesus that is as extraordinary now as it was then. If we take Christ’s Spirit as our own, then we too will be filled with awe and be open to signs and wonders; will sell our possessions and distribute the proceeds to those who need them most; will be filled with praise for how God works in and through the world; will discover Christ’s presence in the “breaking of the bread”; and will be joined every day by others wanting to share our joy and fellowship. If we live this out with courage and prudence and wisdom, then we too will be recreated and renew the face of the earth.

Richard Leonard is an Australian Jesuit. His latest book is The Law of Love: Modern Language for Ancient Wisdom (Paulist, 2021). This article appeared in The Tablet, 21 May 2021.