Pentecost 2009

“The wind blows to the south, and goes round to the north; round and round goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns... What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:6, 9). Familiar words from a wise old Jew a few centuries before Christ. “Round and round goes the wind.” Is there any of us here, unless we’re very young, who doesn’t in some respect feel trapped in a cycle, a prisoner of habits of thought and behaviour, our own worst enemy our repetitive self?
“Round and round goes the wind.” But today is Whitsun, Pentecost, the third after Christmas and Easter of the 3 great feasts of the liturgical year. Round and round that year goes too, as the earth goes round the sun, and our lives unfold year after year. But into that cycle, Christmas, Easter, Pentecost slip their newness. At Christmas a child is born of a virgin; at Easter he passes through death to the new freedom of the Resurrection; and today he sends from the Father the Spirit who opens that freedom for us.
“When Pentecost day came round...” (Acts 2:1). Today the name for this newness, this freedom is Pentecost. For the Jews Pentecost meant and means the barley harvest and the giving of the Law; for us the coming and remaining of the Spirit, bringing us the newness who is Christ.

According to Genesis, at the first moment of creation when the void and formless earth came to be “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (Gen 1:2). This was the first Pentecost, the cosmic Pentecost, the Pentecost of creation. It’s all-embracing, never-failing, all around us. The life-giving Spirit fills the universe, gives it oneness and coherence, unfolds the potential of matter and of living things. “You send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of earth” (Ps 103:30). The upsurge of life every springtime is its sign.
Turn then to page 2 of Genesis, and we meet a second, human Pentecost: God breathing into man, into his nostrils, the breath of life. Even though, page 3, man “fell” (whatever that precisely means), he is not entirely bereft of the Spirit of God. Every time a child is conceived, this Pentecost is renewed. And the Spirit is alive in our natural spiritual powers. Wherever love of others is stable and real, nourishing rather than devouring, wherever hostility is overcome by amity, wherever there is positive creativity in art or inventiveness in science, wherever there is a breakthrough in moral understanding, there, in the Upper Room of the human soul, as it were, the human Pentecost is renewed. In Wenceslas Square in Prague in 1989, a great crowd gathered longing for change. Armed police surrounded it. Suddenly though it lost its fear; no shots were fired, the oppressive government was washed away, the Velvet Revolution occurred, and freedom returned. That was a human, social, political Pentecost. It happens. Never without ambiguities, of course, but still it happens. Life is full of Pentecosts.
Then there is the mystery of Israel, its meeting with the one true God, its worship, its prophecy, its hope of the Messiah: all of that only possible by gifts that come from the Spirit. “He spoke through the prophets”, says the Creed. This is the Pentecost of the Old Testament.
Yet all of these - 3 so far - only foreshadow. On the first page of the New Testament, the angel says to Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you,” (Lk 1:35), and she conceives the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s the Pentecost of the Mother of God.
At the beginning of his public life, 30 years later, Jesus is baptized in the River Jordan, and John his baptizer says, “I saw the Spirit descend as a dove and it remained on him” (Jn 1:32). This was the Pentecost of Christ’s humanity, and in the power of it he lived his life to the Cross.
Then today, 50 days after the Resurrection of Jesus, 10 days after his Ascension, the climax of all this, the fulfilment of Jesus’ promise and the fruit of his death and Resurrection, the rushing wind is heard, tongues of fire are seen, and the Holy Spirit fills those first disciples gathered in Jerusalem. This is the Pentecost recalled and renewed in the Liturgy today. It’s the Pentecost of the apostles, of the nascent Church, and through the mission of the Church which it inspires, it’s the Pentecost of all humanity and all creation. It is a gathering back into unity.

What is it then that happens today? What is the new thing? It isn’t essentially that the apostles could suddenly speak foreign languages, symbolic and suggestive though that be. It isn’t essentially any of the charismatic gifts that so marked the early Church and reappear here and there, now and then. It’s not about signs and wonders. The real depth of Pentecost lies elsewhere. With the birth, death and resurrection of Christ, something quite new entered our world. Russian thinkers call it Godmanhood. It is the intimate entry of the living God into the life of man, both individual and corporate. On the Cross, Christ showed a divine-human love more powerful than all human un-love or sin. With the Resurrection, he opened up a divine-human life beyond the power of death. He is the New Man, the God-man, humanity’s new horizon. But how access this, across time, across our own alienation? Where is the bridge? What happens today is that in wind and fire, word and sacrament, the Spirit throws us that bridge. He himself comes. He comes to enter our hearts so that through the cycle of our years we can enter this newness, this Godmanhood. He offers us the risen Christ, his love and his life, the love stronger than sin and the life stronger than death. He comes to give Christ in us the place he has in the bosom of the Father. He comes to set him at our centre, as the one who gives us meaning and life, who holds us together individually and corporately, and gives us to each other. The Spirit comes to draw each of us, all of us, all of creation into the new creation we call the Body of Christ, and so fulfill all the Pentecosts that have gone before.
“Round and round goes the wind.” Yes, but something new has happened too. Each of us has had a share in this Pentecost, has had a personal Pentecost. We have had it or rather we have it - it’s given us again every day - in what we call our Christian initiation. “For by one Spirit we were all baptised into one body” (1 Cor 12:13). We have it in the gift of faith, in the sacraments of baptism, confirmation and the Eucharist. We have it whenever our sins are forgiven through the ministry of the Church (cf. Jn 20:22-23).

“Come, Holy Spirit,” we pray. Until the final Pentecost, the final transfiguration, the universal resurrection, even the Pentecost of today remains, like all the others, hidden. It’s hidden under the sinful frailty of Christians, hidden under word and sacrament, hidden under our mortality. But still it is present. It is present in the saints. It is present in our own faith and love, in the forms of service we are called to. That is the newness renewed today.
“Round and round goes the wind.” Yes, but open our hearts to what we celebrate today, and we can be sure, quite sure that, as the weeks pass, something will shift within us, however unspectacularly, some imprisoning pattern will lose its hold, something new will come to life. And Pentecost will be ours.

Abbot Hugh, O. S. B.