As we venture past the Easter Season, the Gospels this week have been rather striking to me; for the past three weeks, we have been walking with Jesus from the Upper Room and into Gethsemane, listening to Him, hearing His prayer -- but now we see Him doing miracles. And that is rather striking. We are reminded of how His public ministry began: at His baptism in the Jordan, the Holy Spirit descended upon Him, not because Jesus needed the Holy Spirit, but for our benefit: that we would know the Holy Spirit was with Him. Shortly thereafter, he arrives in His hometown, Nazareth, where He enters the synagogue, and pulls a scroll from Isaiah which says, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me, to bring glad tiding to the poor ... and to announce a year of favor for the Lord."
Jesus brings the Holy Spirit with Him and it is by the power of the Holy Spirit that He cures such people as Bartimaeus. It is the Holy Spirit who accompanies Mary at the Visitation. And Elizabeth, when she hears Mary's greeting, is also filled with the Holy Spirit. John the baptism, still in her womb, is sanctified by the Holy Spirit. And Mary and Elizabeth, seeing what the Holy Spirit has been doing in their lives (see the pregnant bump!), rejoice in the Holy Spirit.
In former days, we used to have what was called an Octave of Pentecost. It was one of the mini-seasons like the Triduum, or the days before Christmas (which we call the days of the O Antiphons). We have the twelve days of Christmas and the Octave of Easter. The Church, in Her wisdom, once had eight days -- an octave -- celebrating the gift of the Holy Spirit and the gifts which He brings (much like celebrating the gifts Jesus brings at Christmas). But whereas at Christmas we celebrated the coming of the Second Person of the Trinity, here we celebrate the Advent of the Third.
In former days, too, the Sundays after Pentecost were not numbered as, for example, the Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Rather, it would be the First Sunday after Pentecost (Trinity Sunday). Every Sunday was numbered in relation to Pentecost. The Second Sunday after Pentecost, the Third, and so on.
The Church understood that we lived in the days of the Holy Spirit -- the Spirit who comes not simply to save, but to sanctify. It is by His power that we can become holy, saints (from the Latin: sanctus, meaning holy). It is by His power that martyrs can give witness to Jesus unto death and receive the crown of glory (as we see in the case of St. Justin -- a contemporary of Saint John, the Beloved Apostle).
It is important, then, that we do not simply go from Easter to Ordinary Time -- as if these days were Ordinary. They are full with the power of the Holy Spirit! -- the Spirit of Truth, which sets us free. The Spirit that convicts us of sin and which pours through the Church's priests in the power of the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
Well before the Second Vatican Council and the liturgical changes that happened after it, the Church was already battling a kind of iconoclasm -- that is, the destruction of images and symbols.
Images and symbols are important. Destroy them and you hurt the faith of those who see what the symbols represent. And, beyond that, destroy the faith and you destroy the community. Case in point: if we saw the destruction of the American Flag (and there are many these days who would do it), that destruction of the symbol of our country would destroy and would be an indicator of the destruction of the ground on which this country has been built; as a result, there would also be a ripping apart of the country. Communities and faith are built upon the symbolic. So when the symbolic is lost, so is the community of faith.
It is one of the reasons why we have emptier pews that years past. The solution is not found in fancy programs or strategic initiatives -- as necessary as they are to prune the vine so as to produce more fruit. Rather, the solution is found in the recovery of the symbolic.
Take, for example, the Easter Candle. One of the coolest things I have seen in our Holy Mass was, when I was celebrating the Solemnity of the Ascension in the ancient use. During the Gospel, as the Deacon proclaimed that Jesus ascended into heaven, a server came to the Easter candle and extinguished it.
The natural question was: why did this happen?
The symbol of the extinguished candle was clear: Jesus is the light of the world. And that the Ascension, that light was taken away.
And it would forever be taken away -- unless, and until the moment that, the Holy Spirit came upon the Apostles as tongues of fire, relighting the candle, casting fire upon the earth.
I found that awesome.
We did lose something when we took away the symbolic numbering of Sundays in relation to Pentecost and turned them into days of "Ordinary Time."
Ordinary. It is about as inspiring as a white-washed protestant church.
And that's the problem. Can we be surprised at a loss of faith and the community when we describe our religion and our time as ordinary? Catholic Churches are known for their sacred art, their smells, their bells, their vestments. There is nothing ordinary about them.
Strangely, they manifest to the senses the Incarnational reality that God, who is spirit, became flesh. The senses are important. And the Holy Spirit came upon the flesh and its senses at Pentecost -- elevated them, sanctified them, and everything about them: the people, the place, and the time.
These are the days of the power of the Holy Spirit, God, the Third Person of the Trinity. To Him be all glory forever. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment