Uncorking the Spirit

[A reflection on the readings for the Mass of the Solemnity of Pentecost, which readings may be found at this link: Pentecost2026]

One thing I have noticed in my ever-increasing years in this world is the tendency of the faithful to romanticize the events of Pentecost, especially on its annual celebration. With the exception of the Pentecostal and Charismatic traditions, it has become more of a story or metaphor. The clergy (at least in traditions that use them) dress in red vestments to represent the fire of the Holy Spirit, many congregations read Acts 2 together in as many languages as they can (well or badly, with that much going on, who can tell?), there are hymns, prayers, and then everyone goes home for life as normal.

And we try to put the Spirit back into the closet for another year. The problem is that the Spirit is a real person and does not do closets unless it is to root out a reluctant believer hiding in one.

Truth be told, we try to keep the Spirit at arm's length because the Spirit is scary. If we do not keep guard, the Spirit has been known to blow through someone and empower them to do many mighty things, whether it be deeper prayer, greater insight, or to the horror of many who just want a normal life, a radical change of goals and direction (think of those driven into the slums, the hospitals, the prisons, war zones, and any other number of dangerous places) to bring the light of God's love where it is needed the most.

Perhaps we fear that letting the Spirit loose in our lives will cause us to change habits we've grown comfortable with, whether good, bad, or neutral in nature. Perhaps the change is to abandon the economic security one has worked hard to establish for a life more on the edge. Perhaps the Spirit will put us in front of people when all we wish to do is work from the sidelines and the shadows. It is no accident we often represent the Spirit with fire, because the Spirit burns up what we thought our life was like to experience new growth in a completely different direction. The Spirit is likened to wind, which blows away old ideas and plans and assumptions to open up new and uncharted territory to explore.

Perhaps the most frightening thing for many is that the Spirit makes real the indwelling of God. What was once the purview of the Holy Trinity, where each Person indwells the other in mutual love and self-giving, is suddenly given to us, where God indwells us and we in turn dwell within the love of God. The veil in the Temple is torn, the boundary between Heaven and Earth is gone, and we are left with not even a fig leaf between us and God, wholly exposed and visible as we were before the Fall. All of us, what we like and most especially what we do NOT like, things we do not even want to face within ourselves, is suddenly on display and out in front of us and the Holy Trinity through the action of the Spirit. And that scares us witless.

Yet therein lies our freedom. Freedom from hiding, freedom from shutting ourselves off from the very source of Life itself, freedom from the chains that hold us back. Without this wonderful presence of the Spirit, we are untended weeds under a plank in the yard, pale, listless, unhealthy, and eventually cut short, our true potential wasted and relegated to what might have been. Yet we fear the light, which dazzles and even burns, the wind, which bends and whips us around, the fire, which prunes away the broken and unhealthy and cracks open the seeds of new and wonderful things. The Spirit introduces the pain of growth, but only because we are stunted and sickly.

So instead of relegating the Spirit to the storybook, perhaps we too need to let the Spirit blow through us that we may grow in the presence of God to be all that God created us to be.