(The
full cycle)
The liturgical calendar
is comprised of a threefold movement. First a downward movement: the Father sent the Son from heaven (the Advent and Christmas
season). Then an upward movement: the Son, because of his obedient life and
death, was raised from the dead and ascended into heaven (the Easter and
Ascension season). Finally a downward movement: from the right hand of the
Father, the Son sent the holy Spirit (the feast of Pentecost) (In the old days
we used to speak of a Pentecostal season: e.g.
the “22 or 23 or 24th Sunday after Pentecost.” Now we speak
of the “22 or 23 or 24th Sunday of ordinary time”). With Pentecost
we have reached the summit of the
church year; we simply can’t go any farther
or any higher. And so with Pentecost the church calendar has been
rounded off. We will repeat the whole cycle again in late
November or early December when we open the church calendar with Advent 2001.
The fullness of Pentecost
"Pentecost"
comes from the Greek word "pente," meaning five or fifty (e.g.
Pentagon). The Jewish feast of Pentecost occurred fifty days after Passover
when a devout Jew was expected to make a harvest pilgrimage to the House of the
Lord in Jerusalem, that “City of Peace.”
Before ascending to his Father, Jesus
promised the Apostles that he
would give them a gift. He directed
them go to Jerusalem, the “City of Peace” and there wait for the promised gift. It was on this Jewish feast of Pentecost that Jesus delivered the
promised gift: he sent us his holy Spirit as
“power from on high” (Lk 24:49).
Because Pentecost is so
thoroughly rich and full, there are all different ways of expressing its
fullness. Listen to the opening prayer
for the vigil of Pentecost, and hear about its power to tear down walls
and build bridges: “May your holy Spirit disperse the divisions of word and
tongue….” Or the alternate prayer: “May your holy Spirit unite the races and
nations….”
Listen to the opening prayer of Pentecost day
itself and hear about its power to broaden our lives: ”May your holy
Spirit widen the horizons of our hearts
and minds.”
Listen to the first
reading and hear about Pentecost’s power
to include all peoples and to make the many one: “We are Parthians, Medes, Elamites,
inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappodocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and
Pamphylia, Egypt and the district of Lybia near Cyrene, as well as travelers
from Rome, both Jews and converts from Judaism, Cretans and Arabs, and yet we
all hear them speaking in our own tongues of the mighty acts of God” (Acts
2:1-11).
Listen also to the second
reading and hear about Pentecost’s power to include and acknowledge all
gifts: “I would remind you,” Paul writes, “that there are all different
sorts of spiritual gifts but it’s
the same Spirit who gives them; there
are all different kinds of service but
it’s the same Spirit who is served; there are all different ways by which God works in our lives but it’s the same
Spirit who is working” (I Cor 12:4-6).
(fear)
Two elements characterize the atmosphere of that first Christian Pentecost: The first is fear, and the second is peace. John writes: “On the evening of the first day of the week, the doors of the place where the disciples were gathered, were locked “out of fear of the Jews.” A week later the doors are still locked "out of fear" (Jn 20:19, 26). Fear locks things up. Fear locks thing in. Fear locks things out.
//Fear of the Protestant
Reformation convoked the Council of Trent (1545-1563) which wrote us a theology that locked everything up in deep
freeze for four hundred years, till the eve of Vatican II. //Fear locks us
up in prisons of certainty, and makes us “dead-sure” about great issues like
birth control, homosexuality, priestly celibacy, ordination of women, etc.
Fear’s dead-sure-ness, therefore,
locks out all dialogue. //Fear locks up
our gifts: “Out of fear
I buried the talent you gave me”
(Mt 25:25). Or fear locks up the gift of others, so Paul reminds us that “there are all different sorts
of spiritual gifts and all different kinds of service….” //Fear built the
Berlin Wall and Iron Curtain which locked good people in and locked good people
out.
The
atmosphere of Pentecost
(“shalom”)
The other element in the
atmosphere of the first Christian Pentecost (the other side of the coin)
is peace. To the early church gathered in the upper
room with doors locked “out of fear of the Jews,” Jesus
wishes peace not once, not twice, but three times (Jn 20:19,21,26).
When Jesus said “peace” in his language, he said “shalom.” It is a very special Hebrew word, and it’s difficult to find a translation to do it justice. In fact, the old Greek translation of the Hebrew bible (the Septuagint) uses twenty-five different Greek words in different places to translate this one Hebrew word of “shalom.” It is so rich in meaning that it is almost better not to translate it but simply keep it as “shalom.” And in fact that’s what we often do.
St. Thomas Becket,
Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered in his cathedral, Dec. 29, 1170 by King
Henry II ’s men. The two were at odds other over certain ecclesiastical rights.
The King exiled the Archbishop to France. With time a tentative peace was
struck between the two, and the Archbishop returned to England. Upon his arrival, a person from the crowd in
T.S. Eliot’s play (Murder in the
Cathedral) asks, “Oh, have they made peace?” And someone replies, “Peace,
peace, but not the kiss of peace-—a patched up affair.” “Shalom” isn’t “any old kind of peace.”
Shalom isn’t a patched-up affair.
“Shalom” rather is the “Kiss of
Peace.” Now that’s a translation
that might do justice to “shalom.”
We remarked that the Council of Trent (1545-1563) wrote us a theology that locked everything up in deep freeze for four hundred years. Then on October 28, 1958 the college of cardinals elected Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli who took the name of Pope John XXIII. He was a bit rotund and a bit old, but he looked like the type who would not disturb the “peace of the church.” Wrong! Looking with compassion upon his church whose doors were locked out of fear of this and fear of that, and wishing for his church not just any old kind of peace but rather “shalom” (the kiss of peace), the new pope announced in January of 1959 his intention to convoke an ecumenical council.
On October 11th 1962 Vatican II opened. (You now find that date inscribed with huge letters carved out in the marble floor of St. Peter’s, right at the very entrance, right on the very threshold of the basilica. Everybody entering walks right over it. ) The opening of the Council initialed the theological thaw of the great deep freeze. A new Pentecost with its powerful elements of fire and wind was unleashed in the church. The fire melted down the iron locks, and the wind blew open the windows and doors. By means of the Council Pope John took the keys of Peter, and reversed their traditional twist, so that things locked in could now go out, and things lock out could now come in.
“Unbar the
doors!”
With Vatican II, Pope John issued his church the same command the Archbishop of Canterbury gave his aides who were protecting him behind blockaded cathedral doors, as the king’s men were coming to kill him. In Eliot’s play Thomas a Becket cries out:
"Unbar the doors!
Throw open the doors!
I will not have the house of prayer,
the church of Christ, the sanctuary,
turned into a locked-up fortress.
The church shall be open,
even to our enemies. Open the door!"
(Murder in the Cathedral)
by T.S. Eliot
Yes,
good Pope John invited even the "enemies" (Protestants, Orthodox,
Jews, and Atheists!) to come to Vatican II.
Now that, indeed, is Pentecost
at its best. Only someone emptied of fear and filled with “shalom” can afford
to do something like that.
Our patched up affairs:
With the call to Council,
John was saying to the whole church, and especially to the functionaries who
elected him, “You don’t think that I have come for peace, do you?” Reminds us of the words of Jesus. In Luke we read him saying the very same
thing: “You don’t think that I have come for peace, do you? No. I have come for division” (Luke 12:51). I have come to disturb your peace, your “patched-up affair,” your “any old kind of
peace.”
We daily make peace with “any old kind of peace.” //We daily make peace with exaggerated and savage capitalism, despite the fact that the Gospel, with all its counter-culture, is announced to us weekly in the Sunday assembly. //Rich nation that we are, we make peace with a healthcare system which 40-50 million citizens can’t afford. //We make peace with violence. Why, in fact, we turn it into fun, which we all sell and all buy as entertainment. //We make peace with children making babies in a father-less society. No problem with that, we say. No stigma to that, we say. That the boys should go scot-free -- no problem with that! That one lonely human being should be saddled with the immense task of raising a human being in this day and age -- no problem with that! That a child is born into the world who will not be adequately nurtured and loved, and who quiet probably will end up either on welfare or in prison -- no stigma to that! Make peace with that?
//We make peace with the lobbyists who have bought our government out from under us (that “government of the people and by the people and for the people”). They have bought our government out from under us and have given it corporate America. We make peace with that. We are not disturbed. And that’s why there isn’t going to be any honest-to-God campaign finance reform.” //We are now, it seems, making peace also with zilch, with nada, with niente, with zero in family life. Your son builds a good healthy bomb in your very house in order to execute a good sound school massacre, and you’re not aware of it, and you even say of him, “Why we loved him very much and tried to raise him as best we could.” That sounds like “peace, a patched-up affair” in family life.
//Franciscan Father Leonardo Boff says we have a cultural crisis on our hands, and he characterizes it as, ”a terrifying lack of compassion and care that has settled in on us all.” We are not as terrified as we should be. Will our cultural crisis carry us to the point where we will eventually make peace even with our school massacres? (As we are eventually going to make peace with gas two dollars a gallon?)
Peace - peace
a
patched-up affair everywhere
but
no “shalom,” no kiss of peace,
anywhere.
Good Pope John and Jesus
before him came to destroy our peace (our patched-up affair) and to give us the
gift of “shalom” (the kiss of peace) in
its place.
That’s the atmosphere of Pentecost: fear and “shalom.” That’s the coin of Pentecost: fear on one side and “shalom” on the other. //You parents and kids, //you Israeli and Palestinians, //you straights and gays, / you Democrats and Republicans, //you followers of Trent and you followers of Vatican II, “widen the horizons of your hearts and minds.” Open the windows and doors, and let in the wind and the fire of Pentecost. The wind will blow away our fear of each other, and the fire will reduce to ashes our patched-up affairs and will enkindle “shalom” in our midst, and turn our city into Jerusalem, into “Jeru-shalom,” into a “City of Peace.”