Words on the Word
Pentecost
Acts 2:1-11: How can each of us hear them in his own language?
1 Corinthians 12:3b-13: There is a variety of gifts but one Spirit.
John 20:19-23: Peace be with you! Receive the Holy Spirit!
In her autobiography, Thérèse of Lisieux speaks of something that happened while she was still a novice in Carmel. One day when she was ‘sorely tried’ she went to the infirmary to seek counsel from a wise old nun, Mother Geneviève, one of the monastery’s foundresses. She found two sisters already there; the house rules did not permit a third. Thérèse withdrew disappointed.
The old nun noticed this, then called out to her to say:
Attendez, ma petite fille. Je vais seulement vous dire un petit mot. A chaque fois que vous venez, vous me demandez de vous donner un bouquet spirituel; eh bien, aujourd’hui je vais vous donner celui-ci: Servez Dieu avec paix et avec joie. Rappelez-vous, mon enfant, que notre Dieu, c’est le Dieu de la paix.
In other words:
Wait, my daughter! Let me speak a brief word to you. Whenever you come to see me, you ask me to give you a spiritual bouquet. Well, today I give you this one: Serve the Lord with peace and with joy. Remember, child, that our God is the God of peace.
Thérèse was so stirred that she burst into tears, touched by God’s goodness and by a sister who could, she was sure of it, read her heart like an open book. ‘Next Sunday’, she writes, ‘I asked Mother Geneviève what sort of revelation she had had. She assured me: None at all! That made my amazement greater still; for I saw the extent to which Jesus lived in her, acted and spoke through her.’
You may think this account of a whispered conversation in a darkened room smelling of lavender and ether a world removed from Pentecost’s rushing wind, tongues of flames, polyglot preaching, and perplexity. In fact, though, we encounter exactly the same message proclaimed in two complementary ways. Just like the apostles, Mother Geneviève was able to acquire another person’s language without noticing it. Like them she bore witness to the Lord’s great deeds, his magnalia, and thereby provoked a response of bewildered gratitude. She testified that the Spirit of Jesus was alive in her. This she did with the greatest calm, her head still on her pillow, and with just a few quiet words.
If we assume that the Spirit’s work is invariably tumultuous, noisy, and ecstatic, we are wrong. The Spirit may manifest itself spectacularly, of course; but by preference it is discreet. Think of its most wondrous accomplishment, the incarnation. The angel said to Mary: ‘The Holy Spirit shall come upon you.’ The Fathers likened this coming of the Spirit to the dew that descended upon Gideon’s fleece, an encounter that is utterly silent. Not even Joseph, that great listener, noticed the Spirit’s overshadowing of Mary. Think, too, of what happens each day at Mass when, at the hands of a poor, sometimes distracted man, the Spirit descends upon elements of bread and wine and changes them into Christ’s Body and Blood. At communion, we say ‘Amen’ to this miracle of transformation. But how inconspicuous it is!
When John in today’s Gospel describes the gift of the Spirit, the words, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’ are inseparable from the greeting, ‘Peace be with you’. I encourage you to think often of this connection. We find it likewise in the Gospel of Matthew. When Jesus readies the Twelve for apostolic ministry, he refers to the hostility they will meet: ‘You will be handed over to the courts and scourged’. Then he adds: ‘Worry not about what you are to say. For your Father’s Spirit will speak through you.’ The Spirit gives us peace in exposed, objectively perilous circumstances. The presence of the Spirit is peace.
The world God has made is a peaceful, ordered universe. This natural order is matched by supernatural order. The same Spirit is at work in either sphere. Chaos, disturbance, destruction: these are our accomplishments, manifestations of our sin.
What is sin? Sin is the tendency we carry, like a soul-wound, that makes us apt to seek and generate disorder. At Lauds this morning the Church let us pray: ‘Lord, destroy sin in the world!’ Break it down! Each of us can appropriate that prayer, applying it to the particular sins that wreak havoc in our lives. That would be an excellent, necessary way to prepare to receive the Spirit, ‘the soul’s sweet guest’, who comes bringing consolation, consonance, and rest.
During the novena that runs from the Ascension to Pentecost we have prayed each day: ‘Send forth your Spirit and renew the face of the earth!’ Considering the state the earth is in, who would doubt the need for renewal? We all have a role to play, a personal responsibility. The Spirit is given us so that it can pour out its boundless gift through our limitations in order to heal what is sick, straighten what is crooked, melt what is frozen, and irrigate dry land.
First the Spirit must establish its dwelling in us as in a sanctuary. I used to know an old monk who was bright with the Spirit’s light. After seventy years of monastic life, his prayer had distilled itself into two short invocations: Saint Esprit mon ami! Saint Esprit mon amour!‘ Holy Spirit, my friend! Holy Spirit, my love!’ He repeated these two phrases ceaselessly, day and night. Like Antony the Great, the old monk had let Christ become the air he breathed; he constantly inhaled and exhaled the Spirit. He stands before me as a noble, beautiful, and realistically imitable example of a Christian existence sealed by Pentecostal grace.
May the love of God the Father in Christ became incarnate in us through the Holy Spirit to God’s praise and the world’s comfort. Amen.
Mère Geneviève de Sainte Thérèse, 1805-1891, one of the foundresses of the Carmel in Lisieux.
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Tu, qui Apostolis, in Spiritu tuo potestatem contulisti peccata remittendi, destrue peccatum in mundo!