An eighty-five-year-old window went on a blind date with a ninety-year-old man. When she returned to her daughter’s house later that night, she seemed upset.
“What happened, Mother?” the daughter asked.
“I had to slap his face three times.”
“You mean he got fresh?”
“No,” she answered, “I thought he was dead!”
An odd choice of story for the introduction to a reflection on the Feast of Pentecost, is it not? Well, if we have not seen the connection between the story and what we are celebrating, at least I hope the story provided a good laugh.
Today, on the Feast of Pentecost, we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles. Too often, in artistic depictions, the great moment of the descending of the Holy Spirit was seemingly romanticized. The artists would portray the apostles and the Blessed Mother posed in serene and prayerful positions as the tongues of fire descended upon them. As beautiful and inspiring as these depictions are, they fail to capture the moment which ought to be absolutely terrifying.
The book of the Acts of the Apostles recounted,
“When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them.”
The coming of the Holy Spirit, as we just read, was far from serene. It seems, on the contrary, rather “violence.” The apostles, I imagined, would have been scared out of their living day as the “strong driving wind” filled the room in which they were. Then, a bunch of tongues of fire started resting upon their heads. Who in the right mind would not be scared? The experience of the Pentecost, therefore, ought to be that of a great “shaking up.”
I found the term “shaking up” captured the message of today’s celebration eloquently.
The Holy Spirit, upon his coming, shook up the apostles from their slumber. He shook them out of their grief of no longer having their Master Jesus. He shook them out of their fear of being persecuted by the Jews. He shook them so that they might be reminded that they had a mission entrusted by Jesus. And he, the Advocate, had come to enable them to carry out this mission with necessary graces.
The role of the Holy Spirit has not changed. He continues to be the strong driving wind which continually shakes the Church out from her slumber. In the process of doing so, he holds the Church together and keeps her true to her identity as the Living Body of Christ.
When the Church was endangered from forgetting who she was, when her leaders, instead of being models of virtues, were sunk in sins and shameful conducts, the Holy Spirit raised up those people like Francis of Assisi, Dominic of Guzman, and Catherine of Sienna whose examples of virtues challenged the Church to re-examine herself.
The Holy Spirit’s role is the same in the life of each of us today. He is the voice which challenges us when the voices of the world seem to delude us from the Truth of Jesus Christ. He is the shaking up which every one of us need to wake up from the slumber of mediocrity and lukewarmness which are the deadliest state of spiritual and apostolic life.
The Holy Spirit, for the lack of an eloquent way of expression, is the slap that we need so as to remain true to our calling as Christ’s followers. It is no coincidence when the bishop, as he ministers the Sacrament of Confirmation, would lightly slap the cheek of the confirmandee as a symbol of the waking up call from the Holy Spirit.
Let us then not allow this “shaking up” to be forgotten.
Let us then not allow this “fire” to be extinguished in our lives.
For if we do allow that to happen, we eventually will drift into a deadly sleep which leads us through life as living deads.
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