Dear Sisters, dear brethren, today is one of the greatest solemnities of the year – the final climax and culmination of the entire Easter season. Today’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles is the only place in Scripture where we hear of the wonderful and strange events that characterise this day and record for us the descent of the Holy Spirit. In reflecting on the liturgical anniversary today of that event, we also remember that the Holy Spirit is Himself Almighty God, co-equal with the Father and the Son, sharing the self-same nature of the one Godhead with them both.
Indeed, the strange phenomena of the Coming of the Spirit on that first Pentecost Sunday are difficult for us fully to understand. The sound of a mighty rushing wind, the appearance of something that could only be described as ‘like tongues of fire’ which separated as they came to rest on the head of each person present in that Upper Room – all this is very strange. These phenomena were not to be repeated in the same manner after this day, though the reality which they conveyed to the Apostles and the holy women has continued to take place in the life of the Church ever since. The event is the beginning of the life of the Church as the body of Christ united in Him by the one Holy Spirit shared by all who are baptised in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is why we call today the ‘Birthday of the Church’.
A particular difficulty lies in the way that the individual images of the Holy Spirit as wind and fire reveal so little of Him as a person at all, let alone a divine Person. Indeed, I think we can say that the Holy Spirit is more truly concealed in wind and fire than that He is revealed by them. It is His presence that is revealed by the Pentecostal wind and fire, but not His Person; something of what His power is, but not who He is personally as God. Even after Pentecost, the Spirit remains an intense, yet joyful, mystery. Moreover, the Gospels tells us of other signs of the Spirit. First, He appears at our Lord’s Baptism in the form of a dove descending upon the Lord to anoint Him. Secondly, our Lord Himself speaks of the future coming of the Spirit upon the Church by means of the image of the Spirit as ‘water’ welling up to eternal life in the heart of those in whom the Spirit will come to dwell. So from these different scriptural sources we can grasp that the Spirit is seen in the powers of air, fire and water – the elements that move freely and beyond the control of human power. These may reveal his presence but they also conceal his person, which we must therefore look for in another way.
St John Henry, Cardinal Newman wrote about two contrasting ways in which we can grasp the truths of the faith: one he calls ‘notional’, the other ‘real’. A notional grasp or assent is purely in words we use. We can say the words ‘the Spirit is God’, and believe them, but without it really penetrating our understanding or warming our hearts and minds, that is, without giving us a strong sense of His real Personhood and His power and love. That kind of strong sense of the Spirit’s character and reality as a divine Person is what Newman calls a ‘real’ apprehension. How do we get from a notional acceptance of the Holy Spirit to a ‘real’ and living apprehension of His divine power and majesty? How can we begin to realise just how great a part He plays in the lives of those who pray for His gifts and who welcome them with great joy?
One of the most important ways in which we come to a ‘real’ apprehension of someone so otherwise elusive of our knowledge as the Spirit, is through the liturgy. Cardinal Newman explicitly mentions the power of the liturgy of Pentecost to do just that for us. But he was writing about this at a time when Pentecost was not a single day’s celebration, here today and then gone tomorrow, but rather it consisted of what he called ‘the grandest octave’; eight continuous days of celebrations and meditations on the mystery of the Holy Spirit’s coming. For it is especially by the sheer weight of eight days continuously devoted to this particular mystery that the full depth and riches of its meaning and of the real personhood of the Spirit can begin to be impressed upon us.
We can think of an octave as being like a festival. A festival consisting of only one day hardly makes a splash, let alone a deep impression, because it has passed away almost before it has got going. Yet a festival of eight days has a presence and a power that makes itself felt even if we are not directly part of it for every day. We celebrate Easter and Christmas with octaves which help both to prolong the celebration and to provide us with continual opportunities to rejoice in and reflect on their meaning and influence, to give weight to the importance of what we celebrate in them. Even if we go to Mass only on the feast and on the Sunday in the octave, we get a greater sense of the power and importance of what we are celebrating just from knowing that the Church’s liturgical celebration lasts for eight whole days. Until fairly recently, Pentecost too used to have just such an octave as Easter and Christmas do, and on reflection it seems to me that it is a great loss to our understanding of the Person, role and character of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church and in the working out of our salvation, that we no longer have a whole week to ponder on His wonderful divine reality and to celebrate His presence in the Church.
And there is more still to ponder and celebrate. When I was a Parish Priest at the Oratory, one of my preparatory sessions for the confirmation class was to teach the distinction between the gifts and the fruits of the Holy Spirit. The gifts, I would explain, are given to us by the Spirit as He comes to dwell in us. But the fruits must come from us, by our cooperating with the gifts of the Spirit. And if learning about all this takes time, it takes even more to put it into practice. To learn the meaning of these gifts and fruits, and how we are the place in which the Spirit must find a home; to learn the meaning of the different images of the Spirit - the wind, the fire, the water and the dove, - and how none of these images on its own tells us precisely who the Spirit is, all requires time to unfold and develop. For it is only when we have had time to ponder all of them together that they reveal a rounded and varied image of the Spirit as God.
Week by week we state our faith in the Spirit as the Lord and giver of life, who together with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified. It is in order to be able to convert what is probably a ‘notional’ grasp of the Spirit in the Creed to a ‘real’ and joyful grasp of the Spirit’s divine essence and of His effect upon the life of the Church, that during this coming week here at Carmel we will be prolonging and continuing the celebration of Pentecost with Votive Masses of the Holy Spirit. In this way, we will continue to reflect on the various images of the Spirit in Scripture, the diverse characteristics of His person and of His power and influence, the better to come to know Him and to love Him who is Himself both the love of the Father and Son for each other, and the love of the One God for the whole of His creation.
Make A Comment
Comments (0)