Pentecost Sunday, St Patrick’s Soho Square
Look around, we’re so diverse. Strikes me as people come forwards to receive communion – especially when people receive on the hand. Old and young, rough and delicate, all skin tones, manicured and dirty from the street. Jewellery, wedding rings, phone numbers in biro… Such different people, but united. What unites us? The Holy Spirit. This uniting Spirit is what makes us one body. Gives us a common language. Makes us one people, members of one worldwide community.
But for that, we have to let the Spirit move us. In our life we are constantly being moved; we’re constantly being prompted. But a lot of the time what prompts us is what Paul calls (more literally translated than in the second reading) the “desires of the flesh.” We live according to whatever captures our imagination; whichever ad we’ve just seen; whatever emotion passes through us. The desires of the flesh are essentially private, individual desires; they have no reference to the common good, indeed you need laws to protect the common good from them. They’re selfish. Because of original sin, our wounded flesh, if left to itself, will always be in a logic of possession, a zero-sum logic of competition with others.
Paul says that those who do the works of the flesh will not inherit the kingdom of God. Why is that? The list he gives – fornication, idolatry and sorcery, jealousy, quarrels and so on – is not an arbitrary list of things God happens not to like. They have in common that they all opposed to the common good. Those who do these things won’t inherit the kingdom of God because they don’t care about the good of others; so how could they know the joy of truly belonging to a community?
The Spirit meanwhile opens up to us goods that we don’t have to fight with others over, on the contrary, goods that can only be shared: friendship, love, forgiveness, unity. God himself, the common good of the universe. (When one of us possesses him, it doesn’t take away from what others can have, on the contrary it manifests further his goodness to everyone else and thereby makes it more accessible.) With the Spirit, we go from a logic of selfishness to a logic of love. We come to want, with God, the good of all things, for “God is good to all and loves all that he has made” (Ps 145:9). We are built up in the original harmony for which God made us, we become one, one body, the just and harmonious kingdom of God.
The day of Pentecost isn’t the first gift of the Spirit. The gospel today reminds us that the Spirit is given from the day of Easter onwards. What is happening today is that the Spirit, having gradually conquered the disciples throughout these fifty days in the presence of the Lord Jesus, finally overflows. Like the image of a champagne tower, where the glasses are filled to the brim and then overflow onto others. And the conquering that the Spirit has done during those fifty days, is from the flesh. It’s from the wounded emotions and passions of fear, despondency, shame. Think about the apostles, locked in a room out of fear. Think about Mary Magdalene, trapped in despondency at the loss of her “rabbuni.” Think about the disciples of Emmaus, their discouragement. The Lord Jesus comes to these and conquers them by sharing his Spirit. All those apparition stories end with a new and excited joy of being together as Church: “go and tell my brethren” “they ran back to Jerusalem and found the apostles.” The list of apparitions goes on: Peter, conquered from the shame of his betrayal to shepherd of Christ’s flock. Thomas, conquered from mistrust and scepticism to the most beautiful profession of faith, Saul – Saul! – conquered from murderous hatred to apostle of the nations.
Wherever you are stuck in the flesh – fear or mistrust or shame or lust or hatred – let the risen Jesus approach you and breathe his Spirit upon you. Discover the joy of belonging to his body. Let yourself be moved not by the dumb itches of the flesh but by the gentle yet powerful motion of the Spirit. “Since the Spirit is our life, let us be directed by the Spirit” (Ga 5:25).
–fr Philip-Thomas
Casting Fire 