Pentecost 2009

Homily for Community

PENTECOST 2009.

Br. Barry

‘Now there were devout men living in Jerusalem from every nation under heaven and at this sound they all assembled, each one bewildered to hear these men speaking his own language ‘.

If we were to take these verses from Acts quite literally then the number of devout men who assembled in a bewildered state at the great event of Pentecost would have been around ten thousand. That is the number of languages estimated to have been spoken in the world at that time. Today it is reckoned that there are only half that number – about five thousand languages among the six billion plus people who currently inhabit the globe. Even here in Britain, one native language seems destined to extinction sooner rather than later although another, strange to say, has been revived from the dead, an exception proving the rule. That rule is there is an irreversible trend towards a single, universal language, English being one of the leading contenders to become that world–wide language.

Some see in this trend the influence of the Spirit leading the human race to unity, working through the natural effects of technological development shrinking distances between the peoples of the world. But this drift towards one language for all was not what happened at Pentecost. Then, the disciples began to speak foreign languages – all ten thousand of these languages maybe.

In the language of the Holy Spirit, actions speak louder than words and that includes, on the part of human beings, body language as St. Benedict is at such pains to point out. Actions speak louder than words because words, ultimately, cannot penetrate the mystery of God. They take us so far and then we hit a brick wall. We are left to look to actions and so Luke tells us that it was in the action of the breaking of bread that the disciples recognised the Lord and it is not just in the bread of the Eucharist that we hear the language of God. The blood too, according to the Letter to the Hebrews ‘pleads more insistently than Abel’s’ or as another and better translation has it: ‘ a blood that SPEAKS A BETTER WORD than Abel’s.’

This language of God is a person, the person of Jesus Christ: ‘in these last times he has spoken to us in his Son’. Not so much in the words that the Son preached in the human language of Aramaic but just Christ himself or as the Constitution on Divine Revelation of Vatican Two puts it ‘ the total fact of his presence.’ The same is true of the Church – it is not just the content of its preaching and teaching that makes the Church. Again in the words of the aforementioned document ‘ the Church in her doctrine, her life and her worship perpetuates and hands on to all generations to come, ALL THAT SHE IS and all that she believes.

Human words of course are necessary for God to be known but when they become disconnected from actions then you have the hypocricy of the Pharisees. Words are secondary, as the Evangelist John forcefully points out ‘our love is not to be just words or mere talk but something real and active’. When it comes to the Word of God, however, the distinction between words and actions is a false one for ‘the word of God is something alive and ACTIVE.’ It is an action. It is the opposite of empty words. It is full and it is effective: ‘He spoke and it came into being’.

Nor does it seem necessary to restrict the word of God in its broadest sense to Scripture . This is what Blessed Guerric of Igny says on this matter: ‘ I reckon as God’s own word whatever the Holy Spirit in his mercy sees fit to speak within you – every single word which avails to build up faith, stirring up love.’ And he goes on to speak of ‘words that build up faith, gracious words for all who hear, words that make you give grateful thanks’. So Guerric, like all the Cistercian Fathers is given to quoting the Classical pagan authors when it is useful for him to do so.

In a modern context, the words of a popular song, for example, and not necessarily explicitly religious words, might be the trigger that produces the repentance that leads to faith, the music too playing its part in preparing the ground. It does happen.

On Pentecost day there was a great tumble of words but this was only the Holy Spirit playing in the manner recorded in the Book of Proverbs ‘at play everywhere in this world delighting to be with the sons of men’. St.Paul would point out to the Galatians the real language of the Holy Spirit: ‘what the Spirit brings is……..love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control’.

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