Bring on the Storm

Fr. John Riccardo

May 26, 2021

“Whoever...meets the average Christian of today must ask himself: Where is the tongue of fire?… Only when we do not fear the tongue of fire and the storm it brings with it does the Church become the icon of the Holy Spirit. And only then does she open the world to the light of God.” Pope Benedict XVI

For many of us who serve in the Church, our minds are deeply formed and informed by the liturgy and liturgical seasons. For those of us who are ordained and who attend daily Mass, we’re constantly being reminded what season we are in, what feast or saint we are celebrating, and the like.  

We’ve been discussing amongst ourselves in ACTS XXIX this past week, that—I’m not sure what to call this—an unfortunate side effect of our minds being shaped by the liturgy is that Pentecost seems to become something like an afterthought. What do I mean by that? 

We celebrate the Incarnation of the eternal Son of God for an octave, and there is a short Christmas season that follows. Jesus’ glorious resurrection and defeat of the powers of Sin and Death also gets an octave and a much longer season afterwards. But Pentecost, the climax of the Easter season, is celebrated only for one day (though the extended vigil in the Missal amplifies that celebration a bit more). Maybe, just maybe, for some (or maybe it’s just me), this “reduction” of the Solemnity of Pentecost to a day, with no successive octave to draw out the celebration, hinders us from giving the attention this feast requires. 

Why is this so important as we continue to discuss the transformation of the Church? Because nothing—absolutely nothing—happens without the Holy Spirit. The Apostles saw the Risen Jesus; they ate with Him after His resurrection and interacted with Him on many occasions during the time between Easter Sunday and His Ascension. In a passage that continues to be a rich source of prayer for me personally, Peter tells the Jewish leaders, “It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard” (Acts. 4:20). Imagine what they heard! Surely, if they were anything like we are, they would have asked Jesus all sorts of questions about where He went after He died, about His harrowing of hell, His confrontation with the devil, what it was like to rise again, and so much more. And yet...despite having seen Him alive, put their hands in His glorious wounds, and heard all that He shared with them, nothing changed until the Spirit fell upon them. Good grief, Matthew tells us that even on the day of the Ascension, some who were present, looking at Him, still doubted (cf. 28:17)! Doesn’t that make you feel a bit better when doubts arise in our minds?

It was the Spirit who changed the Apostles, who filled them with courage, who compelled them to go out and preach, who enabled them to work signs and wonders, who forged them into one body, and so much more. 

And so, it will be for us. 

I was speaking with a priest recently who shared with me that he wanted to concentrate the rest of his time and energy on doing ministry with those people who understood that it was the Spirit that enabled anything and everything of value to happen, not their own strength and power. Amen.

We find ourselves now in “Ordinary Time,” Of course, for those of us in the know, “ordinary” refers to those weeks of the liturgical year that we count by numbers (ordinals). But “ordinary” still conjures up all sorts of thoughts and images for me, all having to do with dull or average. The birth of the Church and the work of the Spirit is anything but that! The rescue mission that Jesus began and that continues in and through us by the power of the Holy Spirit is extraordinary. 

So, then, let us do all we can to hold on to the Solemnity of this past Sunday. Let’s observe, perhaps, our own version of an octave of Pentecost, mindful that He is the One who will do in and through us what He did in and through the disciples about whom we read in Acts. 

We really are living the 29th Chapter of Acts. The same Holy Spirit who wrote those pages through those men and women wants “to write” through us here and now. Let us beg the “tongue of fire” to fall anew on the leaders of the Church and on all of us. Let us pray for the Holy Spirit to stir up a mighty storm again, so that we might be transformed, made courageous, compelled to preach the gospel, all so that more and more people might come to know that Jesus is LORD.