Pentecost Sunday Reflection with Canon Robin Gibbons

19th May 2024

The Spirit, wonder and memory

One of Saint Ephrem the Syrians great hymns is this short one which connects our consumption of the wonder of the Holy Eucharist with the gift of the Holy Spirit we celebrate at Pentecost:

"In your bread is hidden the Spirit which cannot be eaten.

In your wine dwells the fire that cannot be drunk.

Spirit in your bread, fire in your wine:

It is a distinct wonder that our lips have received!"

The feast of Pentecost is not only about the descent of Spirit upon the Church, but also the abiding presence of wonder at all times, and in all places, a presence of the Spirit that Pope Francis calls the memory of the Church. 'The Holy Spirit reminds us, he reminds us of all that Jesus said. He is the living memory of the Church, and when he reminds us, he helps us to understand the words of the Lord'. (Pope Francis, Pentecost Homily June 8th 2014) Understood in this sense the Spirit continually brings us back to our role and mission, does not let us forget, so to speak, the living tradition of the Church, ever ancient, yet always new.

In order to reflect more on this image of the Spirit as abiding presence and living memory, it might be helpful for us to look at the building blocks that we are given by the anointing presence of the Spirit.

The gifts given us

As a basic starting point we can enumerate the sevenfold gifts first found in the book of the Prophet Isaiah II,1-2, which we in our Christian tradition, understand as the 'messianic' gifts poured out, not only on the Christ, but through the rites of Initiation and our incorporation into Him, onto all the believers. They are strikingly simple, but rich in their depth of spiritual and moral guidance, allowing us to interpret and then understand different situations, much as Paul expounds in his great passage on gifts in I Corinthians 13.

So for each one of us these seven: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord are real gifts, handed to us not only for our use but as aids on our Christian journey, for they are bound up with the three theological virtues of faith, hope and love.

As the letter to the Galatians puts it so well, all charisms, gifts are neatly wrapped up in the outpourings of 'the fruit of the Spirit (which is) love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.' (Gal 5: 22,23) This is part of the memory by which we measure ourselves and others.

Pentecost is about constructive change

The whole theme of Pentecost is about movement, change, and transformation those gospel images of dancing tongues of fire, rushing wind, the sounds of speaking to crowds of people in many different tongues. What we hope this image should do for us is to firstly, challenge any religious complacency (not fear, that needs dealing with differently), then secondly, move us out of any narrow, confined perhaps too nationalistic vision of God and of our world as a religion portioned out into different parcels belonging only to certain groups. This is perhaps the metaphor found in the image of our fearful apostles closed in on themselves, who are then anointed by the Spirit and empowered to go out to the whole world. Our understanding of the gifts of the Spirit should be as Ephrem puts it, a distinct sense of wonder, which manifests itself in positivity and openness, not negativity and censoriousness, not least exclusion of others.

All of us have to learn, and sometimes by the hard way, that the work and the promptings of the Spirit must never be underestimated nor ignored. I mean that each of us on our own journey will be faced from time to time with the wonder of the Spirit who asks us to either open our interior windows and let the light of new life into our own closed lives, or will call us out into ways and pastures that are beyond our chosen comfort zone and challenge us to face our bias and prejudice.

A call to the margins

To share a personal insight, my own vocation as a Christian, and monk and priest has been through a great number of challenges and changes, all of which now seem to have been doors opening onto something new, but always connected with my past journey. It has also been also a realisation that those of us who discover we are not at the centre of things, but rather keep on discovering ourselves with others on the margins of life who have been given one of the Spirits great charisms of memory, that of Christ's compassion and mercy brought out in us by the exigencies of life. This gift is crucial in ministry, because being on the margins is to be with Christ, and being there keeps us close to the little ones of Christ's love. Perhaps this isn't for all of us, but I am sure each of us need to experience this, and it often comes a point where we think we have failed or not done what we set out to do, Saul at the Damascus gate, Peter denying Jesus, the fearful disciples locked in on themselves. They all had to come to this point in order to throw open their hearts and souls and let the all powerful, all wondrous Sprit in to renew and reclaim them.

Pentecost as a way to the great Jubilee

This Pentecost we also know that we have been given the great jubilee year of Hope for 2025, and on that pilgrimage we will not only seek to redeem, release and forgive others-but seek that in ourselves. It is very much as the letter to the `Romans tells us, the Spirit's work is beyond our immediate understanding, but it brings together that great love and dance of the Trinity into our prayer of intercession for the world : "In the same way, the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings.And the one who searches hearts knows what is the intention of the Spirit, because it intercedes for the holy ones according to God's will." (Rm 22: 26-27)

This brings me back to the image of the Spirit as mover and shaker, the Holy One who rocks the boat yet brings us safe to shore!

In his homily for Pentecost in 2020, Pope Francis returned to his beautiful image of the Holy Spirit as the holder of the living memory of the Church, the wonderful One, as St Ephrem suggests, who brings past present and future into one. May the Pope's reflection help and accompany us all ! 'But if we have in our hearts a God who is gift, everything changes. If we realize that what we are is his gift, free and unmerited, then we too will want to make our lives a gift. By loving humbly, serving freely and joyfully, we will offer to the world the true image of God. The Spirit, the living memory of the Church, reminds us that we are born from a gift and that we grow by giving: not by holding on but by giving of ourselves.' ( Pope Francis Pentecost 2020)

Lectio Divina

From a sermon of St John Chrysostom on Pentecost

Paul called this Spirit the Spirit of adoption and the Spirit of grace, inasmuch as in the waters of the baptismal font we're born again of water and the Spirit, and are adopted as [God's] children. In the same way, the Lord said to Nicodemus: 'Unless people are born of water and of the Spirit, they cannot enter into the kingdom of God'.

So, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of adoption and the Spirit of grace, since grace and truth came by Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit, for those who have been born by the power of God.

Moreover, the Spirit is called the Comforter, because He's also our advocate with the Father. And not only is He with the Father, but He's always with us, too, as a gift.

'And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Comforter, so that He may abide with you forever', comforting your hearts and making them steadfast in divine patience and trust in Christ. Given that the holy Apostles received this testament after Christ's holy Resurrection from the dead, and that they were sent forth to teach and to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and since we've already been vouchsafed this true washing by the Holy Spirit, let us strive to keep our souls and our bodies undefiled as we glorify the Most holy and consubstantial Trinity, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Pope Francis Pentecost 2020

Brothers and sisters, let us pray to him: Holy Spirit, memory of God, revive in us the memory of the gift received. Free us from the paralysis of selfishness and awaken in us the desire to serve, to do good. Even worse than this crisis is the tragedy of squandering it by closing in on ourselves. Come, Holy Spirit: you are harmony; make us builders of unity. You always give yourself; grant us the courage to go out of ourselves, to love and help each other, in order to become one family. Amen.

(Image: Icon of Pentecost 18c Russian private collection.)