Pentecost Sunday, Mass During the Day – Year C
Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 104:1, 24, 29-30, 31, 34; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13; John 14:15-16, 23b-26.
Many of you, no doubt, have spent some time at the Campion Renewal Center
just down the Mass Pike in Weston.
For those of you have never been there,
it is worth taking a quick detour off the highway for a look.
Currently, the house doubles as a retirement home for older or infirm Jesuits
and also as a site for individual and group retreats.
Originally, it regularly housed well over 100 scholastics, that is,
young Jesuits studying philosophy and theology
in preparation for ordination to the priesthood.
The pièce de résistance of the building, at least in my opinion,
is its chapel, which is dedicated to the Holy Spirit.
I like chapels dedicated to the Holy Spirit.
In fact, I like just about anything dedicated to the Holy Spirit
because I agree with what Pope Francis said this past Monday morning:
“[T]he poor Holy Spirit always comes last and finds no place in our lives.”
He is right: the Holy Spirit is most often the bronze medal winner of the Trinity.
The Father gets a central panel on Michelangelo’s ceiling in the Sistine Chapel;
Christ gets a whole religion named after him;
and the Spirit gets…a chapel in Weston, Massachusetts…not even inside 128.
But today is the Spirit’s day. Pentecost.
This day, the one whom we call the Lord, the giver of life,
the one who enters rooms “like a strong, driving wind” (Acts 2:2),
who appears in “tongues as of fire” (Acts 2:3)
or even “in bodily form like a dove” (Lk. 3:22), commands our attention.
And what the Spirit wishes to say,
at least if we believe the words that Jesus spoke in today’s gospel,
sits right on the front wall of that chapel in Weston,
etched in stone.
“The Spirit of truth will guide you to all truth” (cf., Jn. 16:13), proclaims the inscription.
The words come from the sixteenth chapter of John’s gospel
which, given the author’s predilection for repeating himself,
echo, more or less, the final words of the gospel I just read:
“The Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name,
will teach you everything and
remind you of all that I told you” (Jn. 14:26).
The front wall of the chapel is only so big, so it does not include this whole verse.
But if it were just a few feet wider, I would like to think that those last words,
the ones about reminding, would have made the cut.
So, let us go where the wall could not.
Let us focus for a bit upon the Spirit’s role as reminder in chief,
or even, as the church’s institutional memory.
First, it is worth understanding what reminding is not.
It is not simple recalling, the sort of operation I would perform if someone were to ask me,
“What did you eat for lunch yesterday?”
The Spirit’s function of reminder in chief, of the church’s institutional memory,
does not make her the ideal Trivial Pursuit partner,
empowering us to dig into the back of our minds
to retrieve long dusted-over and, well, trivial facts.
When Jesus talks with his friends – then and now –
about how “The Holy Spirit will…remind you of all that I told you,”
he did not mean to add,
“Until they start printing bibles; then you can just look up
what I told you without bothering the Holy Spirit.”
No, when the Holy Spirit starts reminding us, either as individuals or as the church,
something very different, something not at all trivial, is happening.
When the Holy Spirit reminds us of something, we feel it.
This, to be sure, is the testimony of the gospels.
The Greek word that John uses, the word that translators render as “remind,”
occurs only one other time in the four gospels,
but that one appearance tells us quite a bit about how the Spirit reminds.
Luke uses it in his twenty-second chapter.
The Last Supper has ended;
Jesus has predicted that all of his friends will abandon him,
and Peter does what Peter does:
he doubles down on his commitment to Jesus, declaring,
“I am prepared to go to prison and to die with you” (Lk. 22:33).
But Jesus loves Peter and knows how weak he is,
just weak enough to be the sort of rock upon which the church is built” (cf., Mt. 16:18).
We know how the story goes from there.
Peter does what Peter does:
he denies knowing Jesus; he denies it three times; and then he remembers.
Luke puts it this way:
“And the Lord turned and looked at Peter;
and Peter remembered the word of the Lord...
and he went out and wept bitterly” (Lk. 22:61-62).
The remembering, the way that Jesus’ look reminded Peter of something,
was not a simple recall, an “Oh, right. I had forgotten about that.”
He felt it. It must have been like a kick in the gut.
I like to think that Cleopas and the unnamed disciple had a similar feeling
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when they walked and talked with the stranger on the road to Emmaus.
Their question to one another – “Were not our hearts burning within us” (Lk. 24:32)? –
has the feeling of, “Were not our hearts being reminded of something as he spoke?”
Our patron here at this parish, St. Ignatius of Loyola,
might have thought likewise when he wrote,
“Take, Lord, and receive all my memory” (Sp. Ex., §234).
His is a plea not for amnesia, but for a gut that gets kicked,
a heart that burns,
a Spirit-inspired memory that feels the past
until it becomes present
and starts pointing the way toward the future.
And so, the big question: of what is the Holy Spirit reminding you and me?
The big answer: I have no idea.
If I did, it would deprive all of us of the joy of discovering
the wonderfully-surprising and never-tamable voice of the Spirit.
But with fear and trembling, I will offer this observation:
it is no coincidence that, starting tomorrow, the church returns to ordinary time.
The Paschal candle has moved from its place of prominence in the sanctuary
to the shadows in front of the baptistery.
We trade out Easter white and Pentecost red for plain green.
We go back to daily gospels that tell the stories of Jesus’ public ministry:
no crucifixion, no resurrection, no passing through locked doors;
instead, we hear of his encounters with the poor, the sick, the unsure,
encounters with people like you and me.
But these encounters changed people’s lives forever.
These encounters of ordinary time were profoundly extraordinary.
And if we let the Spirit do what the Spirit does,
if we let the Spirit be the reminder in chief, the church’s institutional memory,
if we try to feel that of which the Spirit reminds us,
our lives might just be changed as well.
Our lives will be extraordinary.
Come, Holy Spirit!
Remind the hearts of your faithful!
Kindle in us the fire of your love!
Send forth your Spirit, and we will be created!
And you will renew the face of the earth.
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