by CCW | 28 May 2023 10:00
“And having said thus,” Luke tells us, “he gave up the spirit;” literally, expired or breathed out his last. This seventh and last word of the Crucified complements the sending of the Spirit of the Son and the Spirit of the Father, the Holy Spirit, on the Feast of Pentecost. A Greek word, it means the fiftieth day after Easter but has been commonly called Whitsunday, which is a bit confusing since the liturgical colour for the day is red as honouring the tongues of fire that rested upon the disciples. Whitsunday or White Sunday makes sense when you realize that this was one of the premier times for baptism as well, the baptizands robed in white robes, as it were, “made white in the blood of the Lamb.” It is ‘the feast of weeks’ or Shavuot in the Jewish calendar marking the wheat harvest, on the one hand, and the commemoration of the giving of the Torah to Israel, on the other hand. In the Christian understanding, it celebrates the descent of the Holy Ghost bestowing the gifts of the Spirit upon the Church.
It marks an ending and a beginning. In the ordering of the seven last words of Christ by the Peruvian Jesuit priest, Fr. Alonso Messio Bedoya, in the 17th century, this seventh and last word reveals the underlying dynamic of God as Trinity and, ultimately, the doctrine of co-inherence: the co-inherence or mutual indwelling of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the co-inherence or mutual indwelling of the human and divine natures of Christ, and the co-inherence or mutual indwelling between Christ and the Church.
Pentecost is, as Lancelot Andrewes emphasizes, the “festum charitatis,’ the feast of love. Pentecost is the manifestation, the making visible of the Holy Spirit at the same time as it is the making known or revelation of the Trinity. Like the story of Christ’s baptism in the river Jordan, Pentecost is “the visible descending of the Holy Ghost … so that all might see and so take notice of the Holy Ghost, and indeed of the whole Trinity”. It has everything to do with the mystery of God and our incorporation into the divinum mysterium, the mystery of divine love.
“The Holy Ghost is the Alpha and Omega of all our solemnities,” Andrewes notes. This highlights the significance of Pentecost and its connection to all of the credal and doctrinal moments that belong to our lives in faith. We move from the ascension of Christ to the descent of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is “the essential love and love-knot” of the Father and the Son, “the love-knot between God and man” in the person of Christ, and “yet more specifically on this day the love-knot between Christ and his Church”. The Son gives up his spirit into the hands of the Father on the Cross and now the Holy Spirit descends upon the Church as the body of Christ inspiring and infusing the Church with the gifts of grace, things which we do hear and see in the wonder of Pentecost. “A sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind” – something heard – “and cloven tongues, like as of fire” – something seen. These rather elusive and dynamic images from the material and physical world help us to think about the reality of spiritual life as that which contains and holds all reality together in God, the reconciliation of matter and spirit, of God and man.
But what is the Holy Spirit? The principle of unity and order. “All our multitude is from unity. All our diversity is from identity. All our divisions from integrity; from one and the same entire Spirit”. Pentecost recapitulates the story of the Tower of Babel; instead of the confusion and chaos of tongues there is a common understanding, a unity in and through the different cultures and languages of the world. The human community has no unity in itself. The Tower of Babel story is not about the origins of the diverse languages and cultures of the world for that was established by God in creation as Genesis makes clear in the chapter before the story of the Tower of Babel.
That story is about the human presumption to rival God and to impose an order without freedom; in short, God’s response to our attempt to impose one language and one way of thinking, the impulse of all the forms of totalitarianism. Pentecost signals instead the redemption of the diversities and differences of culture and language by gathering them into the unity of God. Thought or thinking precedes language, not the other way around, and as such we are not the prisoners of our languages and cultures. There is a deeper unity and order that speaks to the universality of our humanity. Pentecost grounds the agendas of diversity in the unity of God without which there is only endless division. “For without the Spirit” Andrewes suggests, “all our nature and industry will vanish, and nought [nothing] come of them”.
I have referred several times to Lancelot Andrewes’ sermons on the sending of the Holy Spirit because he recognizes the primacy or centrality of the Holy Spirit doctrinally and liturgically as a kind of constant circling around and into the mysteries of God. In other words, the descent of the Holy Spirit is not simply one event in a sequence of happenings; it marks the meaning and truth of all the feasts of the Christian year. “In his coming down all the feasts begin; at his annunciation, when he descended on the Blessed Virgin, whereby the Son of God did take our nature, the nature of man. And in the Holy Ghost’s coming they end, even in His descending this day upon the sons of men, whereby they actually become “partakers,” θειας φυσεως, “of His nature, the nature of God”. He suggests that all of the other feasts in the year “are as nothing … without this day”. Pentecost gives meaning and purpose to all the feasts of the year.
It would be hard to say which is greater, the mystery of the incarnation of God or the mystery of the inspiration of our humanity. What matters is their interrelation and mutual dependence. We are simply not complete without both. This is the royal exchange that has to do with God in us and us in God. “Whereby, as before he of ours, so now are we of his made partakers. He clothed with our flesh” – the incarnation – “and we invested with his Spirit” – the inspiration. God partakes of our human nature so that we in turn can be made partakers of his divine nature. The exchange unites and preserves the distinction and difference between the divine and the human without collapsing the one into the other.
The Holy Spirit as the principle of unity and order is also the Comforter or strengthener of our humanity. “The Comforter, which is the Holy Spirit,” Jesus says, “shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” Such are the gifts of the Spirit as mentioned in the Veni Creator, drawing upon Isaiah in the Septuagint translation about the seven gifts of the Spirit that are meant to give rise to the nine or twelve fruits of the Spirit in us, the first of which is caritas, love (twelve if following the Latin Vulgate version of Galatians 5. 22). Love is the proper personal signifier of the Holy Spirit. The gifts all speak about spiritual and intellectual qualities that belong to the true dignity and meaning of our humanity and our life in the body of Christ, the Church universal, through our participation in the life of God. The Holy Spirit is the very principle of indwelling love made visible and known to us in the mystery of Pentecost through prayer, word and sacraments, a uniting of things inward and outward. Such is the mystery and wonder of Pentecost. It unites us to God in his essential life so that his life may live and increase in us. Once again, Andrewes says it best. I end with his words.
We said even now: to “dwell among us,” He must dwell in us; and in us He will
“dwell,” if the fruits of His Spirit be found in us. And of His fruits the very first is
love, And the fruit is as the tree is. For He Himself is love, the essential love, and
love-knot of the undivided Trinity.
Now to work love, the undoubted both sign and means of His dwelling, what
better way, or how sooner wrought, than by the sacrament of love, at the feast of
love, upon the feast-day of love; when love descended with both his hands full of
gifts, for the very love to take up his dwelling with us?
Christ commends his spirit into the hands of the Father. Everything is gathered to God and everything comes from God and has its unity and meaning in God.
Fr. David Curry
Pentecost, 2023
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