TODAY’S GREAT AND JOYFUL FEAST rounds off the tremendous mysteries that we have been commemorating since Holy Week – the Passion, the Death, the Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus culminates in the sending of the Spirit of the Father and the Son on his disciples. As has been said previously, we are not dealing here merely with separate historical incidents but with one reality – the extraordinary intervention of God into our lives by what we can only call the “mystery” of Christ. And today’s feast indicates that it is an ongoing reality, which still touches our lives every single day.
What we said, too, of the Ascension last week applies with equal force to the meaning of Pentecost. In other words, we would be making a mistake to read the Scripture texts too literally, otherwise we will run into unnecessary conflicts. As with the Ascension, our traditional catechetics tend to identify Pentecost only with the version in the Acts (the First Reading of today’s Mass). But a closer look at the gospels will show that there are quite different accounts of the coming of the Holy Spirit. It is seen as taking place on Easter Sunday – or even on Good Friday.
Keeping Jesus’ commandments
In today’s Gospel, we find Jesus with his disciples at the Last Supper. He is encouraging them to keep “my commandments”. He does not say “the” commandments; he is not referring to the Ten Commandments. He is referring to his own “commandments” – these can all be summed up in the central instruction to love one another as he has loved us. Anyone who genuinely is a loving person cannot go very far wrong. Anyone who extends their love to every single person cannot be far from God. Further on he says, “Those who love me will keep my word and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” The word for ‘love’ here is agape (’agaph, pron. a-ga-pay) which describes an outgoing love which is not conditional on its being returned although it very often will be. And the result of a life lived in that kind of love is that the Father and the Son will come to make a home within us. ‘Home’ implies long-term, enduring indwelling.
“Whoever does not love me does not keep my words”, which, Jesus emphasises, are not just his own words but come from God the Father himself. “The word that you hear is not mine but is from the Father who sent me.” In other words, we cannot claim to love God or love Jesus, if we are not observing the commandment to give unconditional agape-love to our brothers and sisters.
Not on our own
However, we are not expected to do this on our own. “Without me, you can do nothing,” Jesus had also said to his disciples at the Last Supper. Although Jesus is about to leave his disciples, he will ask the Father to send another Advocate. Up to now, Jesus himself has been their Advocate. ‘Advocate’ (in Greek, parakletes, paraklhths) suggests a supporter, someone who stands by us in our time of need.
And so, Jesus tells them that “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.” If the Church as a whole and its individual members are to remain faithful to the mission that Jesus passed on to us, then we need the guidance of God and his Son through the Spirit. The Spirit has been called the soul of the Church; without the Spirit we are dead.
A mind-blowing experience
Let us now turn to Luke’s account in the Acts (First Reading). This is sometimes called the Exodus account, for it reminds us of the great event commemorating the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt.
Here, too, there are significant elements:
- There is the powerful wind, which, of course, is the Spirit and which, in John’s gospel, is translated as “breath”.
- There is the fire – the tongues of fire over each one in the place. This, as in the Exodus narrative, indicates God’s power and presence. We think of the burning bush from which God spoke to Moses and gave him his mission to his people. It reminds us of the pillar of fire, which, by night, accompanied the Jews on their wanderings through the desert.
And what an extraordinary result this experience had on the disciples! These men, huddled fearfully behind locked doors are almost blown from the room. No longer afraid, they have an almost uncontrollable urge to share what they have experienced, to share their knowledge but, even more, their experience of Jesus. Threats of prison or torture in no way intimidate them.
Together with this, they are given a power to communicate. Their message is heard and understood by all. The linguistic barriers of Babel have collapsed. This is less, I believe, a miracle of instantaneous language-learning than a way of saying that the message of Jesus is for all and can be understood by all. And this is so because, deep down, the message of God through Jesus speaks to the deepest desires of each one’s heart. “Our hearts can find no rest until they rest in you.”
There is no longer a Chosen People. All are God’s people and all are called. The responses, of course, will be uneven because we are invited, not conscripted, into the Kingdom.
Effects of the Spirit
In the Second Reading from the Letter to the Romans Paul tells us of the effects of the Spirit on us. He makes a difference between living in the flesh (sarx, sarx) and living in the Spirit. This is not a distinction between soul and body, between the ‘spiritual’ and the ‘material’. Christianity has the deepest respect for the body and for the material world. “God looked at everything that he had made and he found it very good” (Genesis 1:31). God continues to be present in all things as Creator, Conserver and Saviour. God is to be sought and found and responded to in every person, every thing, every experience.
Living in the flesh
To be in the “flesh” is to have our lives governed by forces which cannot be identified with God. To live in the flesh is to live in subservience to one’s appetites and instincts. It includes much more than sexual appetites. It involves feelings of all kinds, positive and negative. The problem is when we become a slave to our appetites and feelings it can only lead us downwards. So Paul says, “We are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh – for if you live according to the flesh, you will die.”
Our own times have been characterised by three movements in particular:
– gratuitous violence
– immediate gratification – predatory sex.
In our market-dominated and consumer-oriented societies, hedonism and pleasure are confused with happiness. We see what happens when people become in the course of time addicted to sex, or alcohol, or nicotine. We see what happens when people allow themselves to become devoured by feelings of anger, hatred, resentment, jealousy, revenge… We see the injustices created by uninhibited indulgence in material greed.
Against truth and integrity there are lies, distortions and an emphasis on the external image (what you see is what matters, irrespective of what is inside). Against justice there are gross even obscene inequalities and a refusal to share resources. There is an obsession with money and the unnecessary accumulation of material goods. There are all kinds of destructive interpersonal behaviour such as verbal and physical assault, sexual abuse inside and outside marriage, anger, violence and revenge.
There is the excessive individualism masking as “freedom of expression” (the right to have and use guns, to indulge in nicotine, alcohol, legal and illegal drugs, abortion…)
Many of these things today are called “natural”, “normal”, “only human” and even “necessary”.
The life-giving Spirit
The Spirit, on the other hand, gives life. The Spirit is represented by an uplifting vision guided by a thirst for truth and love, for freedom and justice, for community and sharing. The feelings and instincts are still there and very important. But they are integrated and assimilated into the search for truth, love and beauty and make a huge contribution to it.
To live in the Spirit is not to be a killjoy. Quite the opposite. No one should be more joyous, more happy, more free and liberated than one who lives in the Spirit. “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.”
In other words, we have been called in a special way to be children of God, that is, to be like him in the living of our human lives. Jesus is our example of how that is to be done. And let no one – inside our Church or outside it – persuade us that to be a committed Christian involves a loss of freedom or self-respect. If we understand the teaching of the Christian Testament, the very opposite is the case.
The way to freedom
The Spirit is a way of true freedom and liberation; it is not a way of slavery, compulsion, addiction, greed or fear. It involves a close, warm, confident relationship with God who can be confidently addressed by the intimate term “Abba” (Papa). Filled with the Spirit, we are in the fullest sense children of God, living (spitting!) images of our Father.
The Spirit makes us co-heirs with Christ to “suffer with him that we may also be glorified with him”. The suffering does not arise from restrictions on our freedom but because, in our total commitment to truth, love, genuine freedom and human dignity, we are prepared to pay any price, even, if necessary, the surrender of life itself. We could not be truly happy otherwise.
We radiate that Spirit and by our word and example invite others to share it. The gifts of the Spirit are not for ourselves: they are to be shared. After the coming of the Holy Spirit, as we have seen, the disciples did not stay in that room luxuriating in what they had been given. They burst out to tell the world how much God loves everyone and how he wants everyone to experience that love. How he wants people liberated from the destructive constraints of the flesh to an unlimited blossoming in the Spirit.