Reflection for the Vigil of Pentecost 2010
22 May 2010

by Therese Elias, OSB

Has there ever been a more momentous promise than the one given to us in tonight’s Scriptures? It’s given twice, in fact: first through the Prophet Joel and then more compellingly by Jesus in the Gospel. “The Father will give you the Spirit, an Advocate to be with you forever.” An advocate, according to the dictionary, is a “supporter, backer, promoter, sponsor, one who encourages.” The Spirit is on our side, “always,” Jesus says, moving us and, through us, our world toward Reign of God.

To have the Spirit as our advocate is to be under the sway of a powerful dynamism. When the Spirit appears on the biblical stage as “Ruah” in the first book of Genesis, she comes, not as the stereotypical feminine presence - unassuming, gentle, retiring - but as “a mighty wind sweeping over the waters.” Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, Ruah is forceful and formidable. She is the “wild side of God.” She turns worlds upside down. She changes lives. She sends forth preachers and prophets to revolutionize the world. As the Breath of God, she purifies, transforms, animates and renews. At Pentecost she birthed the Church, sending forth men and women empowered by the fire of the Good News. They were ready to give it all, and did.

Meanwhile - like the apostles on the morning of Pentecost - we wait, huddled in the upper room. We wait for the Spirit to come and revitalize our church. We wait, during this painful time of disillusionment and disappointment, for her to heal the Church of its moral failings. We long for her to fire us with the purity of vision and the passion to serve that marked the Church on that first Pentecost. We wait for her to transform the heart of the church from the highest Vatican authorities to those seated in the back pews of our churches. We pray for the vitality that will enable us to serve the Gospel of love without thought for its cost to us.

There is a time for waiting in the Upper Room. Peter Maurin (Dorothy Day’s cohort) supposedly said, “If you don’t know what else to do, go to meetings!” We’re not sure what to do, but we do know that being together in fidelity is essential. We wait together and we pray and we open ourselves as a community to the Spirit’s ongoing transformation. Each of us also waits in our own personal upper room, in that interior space where we make ourselves available to the Spirit of Jesus. We hand ourselves over so that our pride and self-centeredness might be converted to the desire to pour ourselves out in love.

It is often when we turn toward action, when we leave that Upper Room that our courage fails us. But if we have listened, personally and communally, the power of the Spirit will charge us with the energy to live out what we hear. We can perform the essential action. We can do impossible things. We can forgive those who have hurt us. We can be faithful to prayer and the demands of community life. We can speak truth to power. We can bring good news to the poor. Tonight’s and tomorrow’s readings are unequivocal in their assurance that the Spirit has been given to us. “I will ask the Father and he will give you the Spirit of truth who will abide with you forever.”

In my own case, it’s easy to doubt the presence and power of the Spirit within me and among us as a community and as Church. Yet, we hear through Joel and through Jesus: “I will pour out my Spirit upon you.” In his letter to the Romans, Paul declares the promise fulfilled, using the same image of God’s extravagance: “Love has been poured into our hearts through the Spirit who has been given to us.” It’s clear that the Spirit is not meted out in a paltry trickle, tiny drop by tiny drop, but “poured out” in a torrent. She is present in abundance. We have all we need, and more.

Tonight’s Gospel was a favorite of the mystics. “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.” Julian of Norwich delights in a “Homely God” who has made a dwelling with us. Meister Eckhart teaches that the Word has become flesh in our hearts. Their writings awaken us to the reality of the divine indwelling – something we know, but which we tend to forget. Meister Eckhart says, “God is at home. It’s we who have gone out for a walk.”

May our celebration of the mystery of Pentecost open us and all the Church to a deeper Indwelling of the Trinity. May we allow the Spirit within and among us to turn our lives upside down – if need be - as is perhaps happening now in the higher levels of our Church. May she purify and renew our Church, bringing us all to the spirit of the self-emptying Christ. May she inflame our sleeping passion and rouse us, eager to serve the reign of God, the rule of love in our world.

We have all we need, and more. “The Spirit has been poured into our hearts.”

© 2010 Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica
Atchison, Kansas