Where’s The Fire

Pentecost takes me back to two separate though related occasions in my life: number one (chronologically speaking) was my first “mock” homily, preached to my classmates and homiletics professor. It pretended to celebrate the Feast of the Visitation (31 May). The second day usually falls close enough to it: 8 June 2003, on which the Church celebrated Pentecost, and I my first Mass in Thanksgiving for having been ordained priest the day before.

The two feasts bear a profound relation insofar as Mary, Spouse of the Holy Spirit, was the first to communicate the Lord Jesus (who fully reveals Father and Holy Spirit as well) to the world, specifically to her cousin Elizabeth. The Holy Spirit, ever leading disciples “to all truth” (Jn 16:13), came upon Our Lady and the Apostles as a driving wind and tongues of fire.

This last manifestation—fire—was my chosen homiletic image for the Visitation. St. Luke tells us: “Mary proceeded in haste to the hill country” (Lk 1:39). In haste: the Greek μετὰ σπουδῆς pretty much means, “as if this were her business” (was she not her Son’s first and best teacher of what it means to be “about My Father’s business”? [Lk 2:49]). 

Sometimes when we see someone scampering about in haste, we ask them, “Where’s the fire?” Mary uniquely could have responded to such a perplexed passerby: “The Fire is within me.” She, the Bearer of Life, was the first “driving wind” to enlighten, embolden, and sanctify.

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The prophet Isaiah spoke of a “veil that veils all peoples” (25:7). We’ve been wearing masks that can obscure our voices, pinch our vision when we’re not wearing them properly, and in any case cause us layers of irritation—at the discomfort itself, yet also at the epidemiological and governmental reasons we’re wearing them. We want to shield not our sight or sound, but any possible droplets of COVID-19.

Meanwhile we show a certain obscurity and even obtuseness with our misuse of tongue and pen, fingers and feet. Hatred enters and escapes us, hardly veiled. We respire in fire, but of a spiritually destructive sort.

The latest ignition has been the riots in many cities across the U.S., but at their heart is righteous anger at police officers’ fatal violence toward Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, the most recent of millennia worth of racial violence. Had they not been black men, Arbery and Floyd presumably would not have been treated as they were, unto their humiliating deaths. Even though Floyd’ had exhibited actual criminal behavior, it received a gravely disproportionate response.

Widespread desecration and destruction are by no means a meritorious reaction; by proportionate means they are worth police response,.Yet dimly they reflect the burning of hearts for that justice which will bring true peace to the world (recall Pope St. Paul VI’s famous dictum: “If you want peace, work for justice”). It’s almost a type of what Saint Paul today referred to as “all creation...groaning in labor pains...as we wait for...the redemption of our bodies” (Rom 8:22-24). Not only do we not know how to pray as we ought, we also don’t know how to act, instead favoring to react.

Today I saw a photo of graffiti upon St. Patrick’s Cathedral: true profanation (L. pro+fanum, in front of the temple). True to form, I started reading the social media rejoinders. One: “All the churches in the world could burn down, and it wouldn’t be as bad as one child being molested by a priest.” Abusus non tollit usum, the Romans pithily reminded, but the kernel of truth and goodness here still obtains: human dignity is not to be violated, nobody no-how.

Return to Pentecost. As the Jewish feast of Shavuot it marks the collection of countless wheat sheaves into one granary. Eventually fire enters to transform wheat into bread. The Holy Spirit unifies and clarifies, undoing the original sin and its myriad offshoots. The primal defiance of God, further exemplified in the hate of one’s own brother, registered finally as a Babel-ing failure to communicate truth, goodness, beauty, and unity-within-diversity.

This the Spirit undoes in His descent of supernatural gifts (wisdom, fortitude, and the rest; Lk 4:18; Is 61:1), which in turn yield joy, patience, kindness, long-suffering, self-control, and other fruits (Gal 5:22). These gifts and fruits, uniformly sought and applied, would at last reconnect a disparate, disparaging humanity, turning prehistoric Babel into the new and eternal  Jerusalem. That is the hope dreadfully spelling itself out in the world in these days of viral vitriol. Clarify and purify the heart of the world, O Spirit-Fire!

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Almost a side note now, but something I never tire of telling: My alma mater of Nativity B.V.M. High School (Pottsville, PA) was built atop Lawton’s Hill, which once had been used as a KKK demonstration site. The chapel windows form a golden cross, which remains lit at night as if to redeem the crosses burned there years before. One way to make a statement, as to how the ardent devotion and service of Christians will channel the light of hope.