THE PHYSICS OF PENTECOST

This morning  our Father Maximilian at our community mass gave a homily that I found so interesting that I asked him if I might use it as my post for Pentecost. And so it is with gratitude that I present his words hoping that you will find them as moving as I did.

When I was working as an engineer at the Naval facility in White Oak, MD, a young man in his early 20’s came to work in my department for three months. I noticed not only how diligent he was at his work, but also how attentive he was to the needs of the other employees. He was always ready and willing to lend a helping hand and go the extra mile. He had genuine goodwill. I could tell that he was brought up well, and, of course, I assumed that he was a practicing Christian. 

One day, I met him at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. He was

there for choir practice. He sang in the choir. It didn’t surprise me. But when I spoke to him, I was surprised by what he said. 

He told me that, although he sang in the church choir, he didn’t believe in God. 

When he said that, I immediately recalled something that my father said to me when I was a child, at a time when I was going through a period of doubt. I told my father that I didn’t think that I believed in God anymore. He said to me, “That’s OK. God believes in you.” 

That was one of the most powerful things that was ever said to me. From that, I learned that God works through our goodwill. We may have strong doubts about God, but our goodwill is proof that God’s Spirit is at work in us. Even when we are having difficulty giving assent with our minds, we give assent with our hearts through our goodwill. 

I shared this thought with that young man. I also shared a thought about fire and combustion, the two of us being engineers. I said that when we light a candle, we tend to think of the flame as being transferred from the lighter to the candle wick. But that is not what happens. 

The photons which make up the flame coming from the lighter provide heat to the

candle wick which triggers a combustion reaction from within the candle wick itself, and the flame that you see coming from the candle wick does not consist of photons transferred from the lighter, but photons that were already right within the wick bound up in the proton-electron bonds in the molecules of the wick, and which become released as the combustion proceeds. 

What has happened is that something which is already there is released not only to be seen but also, if allowed, to trigger combustion in other things around it. The presence of those spiritual photons within him has a divine origin. 

The photons of spiritual life - of spiritual light - were already there in him waiting for the fire of the Holy Spirit to trigger the combustion of religious fervor so that they could be released into the world to contribute to the divine light and divine life in the world. 

The divine life is already there in potency; it just has to be actualized. This divine light is hidden within every person; it just needs to be released by the combustion of faith activated by the Holy Spirit. Although we do not activate the combustion of faith in another person, our words of witness and our acts of loving service can be the occasion in which the Holy Spirit ignites the combustion of faith in another person.

I hope that my words served as such an occasion for that young man. After his three-month period in my department, I didn’t have any more contact with him, but I feel confident that the Lord had continued to work through his goodwill and that he eventually came to the point of assent with his mind as well. 

May the combustion of faith which burns in our hearts burn with ever greater intensity with the fire of love, so that, through the light that comes from the combustion of faith, hope, and love within each of us, help to serve daily as the occasion for the igniting of the combustion of faith, hope, and love in people around us!

STRENGTH IN THE SPIRIT

 This week’s post builds on a New Testament verb that I've reflected on before. I’m posting again an old homily with a couple of revisions and insertions, hoping that you might find it useful.

* * * * *

In the middle of today’s first reading we see  Paul and Silas returning to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch. This is remarkable because at the beginning of the reading  Paul has been stoned and left for dead by a mob in Lystra. Luke explains to us the reason why they are returning to those hostile towns: 

After Paul and Barnabas had proclaimed the good news to [Derbe] and made a considerable number of disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch. They strengthened the spirits of the disciples…” (Acts 14:21). They returned to strengthen the hearts of their brothers and sisters.

The verb “to strengthen” is a form of sterizo, “to make something more firm, solid.”  It’s the root of our word “steroids.” We know that body-builders take steroids to "bulk up" their bodies, and some professional athletes us them illegally to help build up muscle tissue and increase body mass. I’d like to look briefly at how the root-word sterizo is used in the New Testament. Three examples offer us plenty of food for meditation.

First, we’ve already seen the verb used in describing Paul and Silas in the passage quoted above “strengthening the hearts” of the Christians in Lystra, Iconium and Antioch.

 A second  use of our verb occurs in the first chapter of the letter to the Romans. Paul writes:

"For I long to see you, that I may share with you some spiritual gift so that you may be strengthened (sterizo)..."

Then, in the First Letter to the Thessalonians he tells the church there: 
“we decided to remain alone in Athens, and sent Timothy, our brother and co-worker, to strengthen (sterizo)… you in your faith, so that no one be disturbed in these afflictions.” 

In each of these three passages, there is also a  parallel verb that expands on the idea of sterizo, “strengthening.”  In each of these passages we find the verb parakaleo. Among its many meanings we find “to encourage, exhort.” It gives us our word “paraclete.”   

On our first passage we read “they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch. They strengthened (sterizo) the spirits of the disciples and encouraged (parakaleo) them to continue in the faith,saying ‘It is through many persecutions that we must enter the Kingdom of God’.” (Acts 14:21-22).

The passage from Romans reads, more fully, “For I long to see you, that I may share with you some spiritual gift so that you may be strengthened (sterizo), that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged (parakaleo) by one another’s faith, yours and mine (Rom 1:11-12) 

Our third quotation reads, again more fully: we decided to remain alone in Athens, and sent Timothy, our brother and co-worker, to strengthen (sterizo) and encourage (parakaleo)  you in your faith, so that no one be disturbed in these afflictions (1 Thess. 3:1-3)”

So, we see how the first Christians “built up” one another: by encouraging one another to bear up under trials and persecutions.

Thus, we have this special pair of verbs: First, sterizo expresses the first Christians’ sense of strengthening one another, of “bulking one another up.  And second, that beautiful Pentecost verb parakaleo, that tells us how they strengthened one another by encouraging each other,  by being “paracletes” to their brothers & sisters. The first Christian  churches, you could say,  were communities on steroids!

Imagine for a moment a monastery on steroids, in which the members strengthen one another and build up one another by  their words and deeds of mutual encouragement.
Maybe sterizo and parakaleo can suggest a vision for us as we enter a new era in our community's history: picture Newark Abbey bulked up on steroids!

* * * * *

Think about your role within your family, community, workplace and so forth. Does your presence make that group stronger? Are you a source of

CATCHING THE SPIRIT

PHILIP AND THE ETHIOPIAN

A rather well-known passage from Acts was the first reading for mass recently. The story of Philip’s encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:26-40. It is Luke the consummate story-teller at his best. There are angels, lots of physical action, and a high-ranking and exotic personage who is open to the movement of the Spirit. Philip is portrayed in the trappings of the prophet Elijah who was addressed by an angel in 2 Kgs 1:15, who ran alongside the chariot of a powerful person in 1 Kgs 18:46, and was carried from place to place by the Spirit in 1 Kgs 18:12. The text is certainly worth a close reading:

Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Get up and go towards the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over to this chariot and join it.’ So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ He replied, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this: ‘Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.’ The eunuch asked Philip, ‘About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?’ Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?’ He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea. (Acts 8:26-40)

THE GOSPEL BREAKS OUT

You may know that the Acts of the Apostles recounts the growth and spread of the early church, especially under Peter and Paul. It tells how the Christian faith burst out of the confines of Jerusalem and began to spread to Samaria and nearby areas and then, in ever-widening circles, beyond Greece and even Rome itself and beyond. So then, where does the account of the baptism of the Ethiopian court official fit into this scheme?

The eunuch is returning from worshiping in Jerusalem and is reading the prophet Isaiah. So if he is not a Jew he is certainly one of those from far-off lands that the prophets predicted would come to worship the Lord at the temple in the great in-gathering of the nations:

At that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may call on the name of the Lord and serve him with one accord. From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia my suppliants, my scattered ones, shall bring my offering. (Zeph 3:9-10)

Incidentally, as a eunuch he would have been barred from full participation in temple worship and even in the Jewish community. But here he is being baptized and welcomed into the Christian communion. The movement seems to be toward Jerusalem rather than away from it.

Think of how before a wave breaks on the shore the water recedes as the next wave gathers itself up to then crash with full force onto the beach. The story of the Ethiopian is like that final drawing back of the tide before the wave breaks, the last Jerusalem-centered movement before the great expansion of the gospel message begins.

The very next verse following this episode introduces us to the key player in the spread of the Gospel to the gentiles: “Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus” (Acts 9:1-2). With the conversion if Saul the waves are about to begin to burst outward in earnest, breaking onto the non-Jewish world.

Indeed, Luke will immediately devote chapters 10-12 to recounting in great detail the conversion of the pagan Cornelius, an event which he clearly considers to be the great turning point since it is the conversion of the first gentile to the faith.

CHASING THE SPIRIT

I found an interesting lesson for myself in the story of the baptism of the Ethiopian official. Remember, first of all, that, as in the rest of Acts, the Holy Spirit is behind every action: “Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Get up and go towards the south,’” “Then the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go and catch up with that chariot,’” and “When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away.”

These dramatic interventions clearly show Luke’s fundamental conviction that “the mission is not first of all a result of human enterprise but of the Spirit’s impulse. The Christian missionaries are constantly trying to keep up with God’s action” (Luke T. Johnson, The Acts of the Apostles, 160) . We have in the story of the Ethiopian official a literal example of "trying to keep up with God's action: "The Spirit told Philip, "Go and join that chariot," and poor Philip had to run to catch up with it! The text makes it clear that he was actually jogging alongside the chariot for awhile listening to the Ethiopian reading the scripture aloud.

I don’t know about you, but there are periods when I get a little winded “trying to keep up with God’s action”. When my careful plans go haywire or events get beyond my control, I have to run to catch up with the work of the Spirit. When things are clearly no longer going according to my own plan I have to hustle to join in the plan that God has in mind.

The root of the word "spirit" in both Greek and Latin is the word for "breath, wind." It sounds a little paradoxical but chasing the Spirit can leave you winded sometimes. When you start to get short of breath trying to keep up with the Spirit's action in your life you may want to say a quick prayer to Saint Philip, who must be, after all, the patron saint of joggers.
.

YOUR EMPTY SPACE

I’m still re-reading Richard Rohr’s book, “The Divine Dance”. The following two excerpts are out of a much wider context form the book, but I trust that they may still challenge you as they have challenged me. I offer them as food for your own reflection -- in other words, I'll let the Holy Spirit and you do the work this week.

You must guard and protect your inner space. This is precisely what Yahweh says to Israel, “I shall come to meet you.” But most have not been taught the practice or the patience to stand guard over this seemingly empty space where your inner witnessing presence, your quiet inner Knower, dwells. You must learn to trust this Knower. The Spirit is doing the knowing and loving in you, with you, and for you. This is at the heart of a contemplative, and truly Christian epistemology. 112

You yourself are a traveling ark of the covenant; you hold and guard the space where the Presence shows itself. But the Presence, the force field, is already held with in you. It only needs allowing and appreciate it. 113

SANDPAPER SPIRITUALITY

 I recently attended a three-day conference for Benedictine priors at St. Leo Abbey in Florida. The featured speaker was Dom Cuthbert Brogan, the abbot of Farnborough Abbey in England. His four talks were very down-to-earth and helpful.

Peace Among Thorns

Peace among thorns

In his very first talk he offered an insight that I found really helpful. The main idea was this: We tend, these days, to forget that at the center of the monastic life is the mystery of the cross. This sense of the cross is often missing among young people coming to the monastery today: "When things get tough, you leave."

The mystery of the cross needs to be at the center of our idea of community life. Without it our community will have no room for imperfect members or for people struggling with difficulties in their personal lives. The ideal of a ¨perfect community" will  discourage us from facing and dealing with the ugly realities of monastic life. The Benedictine motto of ¨peace" must always refer to ¨peace among thorns.¨ Difficulties in our monastic life should not surprise us.

Turning the Tables

At this point Abbot Cuthbert began using the image of sandpaper, and the fact that if a surface is in need of smoothing and polishing we set to work with the abrasive surface of sandpaper. I got ahead of his thinking, however, figuring that he was going to say that the brethren should approach a problem monk and try to fix him, smooth him out so to speak. But the Abbot turned my thinking on its head: Rather than seeing difficult monks as problems to be fixed (sanded down), I should see them as the sandpaper that improves me by requiring me to exercise patience, empathy, gentleness and so on. I am the one who is improved by facing the cross in my own life.

This is great advice for a prior in a monastery, who can easily get caught up in correcting imperfections in his brothers, in fixing wayward monks. 

From now on I will try to keep an eye out for the sandpaper that the Holy Spirit sends into my life whether in the form of a struggling brother or a painful situation.  

PASS IT ON!

 

We had a short reading at Lauds this morning from Second Corinthians, It's so beautiful that I decided that I should share it in my post this morning.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the merciful Father and the God who gives us every possible encouragement; he supports us in every hardship, so that we are able to come to the support of others, in every hardship of theirs because of the encouragement that we ourselves receive from God." (2 Cor. 1:3-4)

A KEY WORD

An interesting thing to know about this passage is that it contains a Greek noun that occurs half a

dozen times, but which has such a variety of meanings that you don't notice the repetition in the above English translation. The word is paraklesis (related to the word "paraclete" which also has several meanings). Here's the passage again, but this time I've underlined the words that translate "paraklesis" or its verb form "parakaleo."

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the merciful Father and the God who gives us every possible encouragement; he supports us in every hardship, so that we are able to come to the support of others, in every hardship of theirs because of the encouragement that we ourselves receive from God."

Here's a different translation (New King James Version) that translates the Greek consistently each time:

Not the whole picture

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God."

The translation of paraklētos/parakalein as "comforter/to comfort" is however, a poor and misleading one. The story of how this mistranslation came about is worth looking at. When John Wycliffe used “Comforter” his English translation of the Bible in 1382, the verb "to comfort" still had its original Latin meaning, based on the adjective fortis, "strong:" it meant "to give strength," as a general might do in getting his troops ready for battle. Back then a “comforter” was not a passive presence but an active force. In modern English, however, we call on the “Comforter” in times of trouble thinking that we’re asking the Spirit to come and pat our hand and stroke our brow. But the Paraclete will come to “comfort” us only in the original sense, to give us courage for the struggles of life, and to help us to keep fighting our daily battles without losing heart.   

WHAT´S THE POINT FOR US?

Now let's look at the point of the passage. In the first translation above, we saw the words
"encouragement" and "support." Having received these gifts from the Lord (from the Paraclete" if you will), we must now pass these gifts on to others. We are called by the Lord to encourage, strengthen and help our brothers and sisters who are in need of a "paraclete" on their life’s journey.

 

But just who is it that we're supposed to encourage, strengthen and help? People we like, who think the way we do, or who look like us, or who have the same religion or language? The passage makes it pretty clear that we are given these gifts "so that we are able to come to the support of others, in every hardship of theirs because of the encouragement that we ourselves receive from God." We are to pass along God's gifts to others, with no restrictions except that the other be in need of help.

It's a challenge, I suppose, for us to encourage and support others, especially people we may not even like. But this passage makes it pretty clear that it is part of our vocation as members of Christ, who sent us the "Paraclete" to strengthen and encourage us, to pass along these gifts and not just clutch them selfishly to our hearts.

EMPTY PROMISES

When you think about it, our world is full of empty promises -- and not just the obvious ones from advertisements about losing weight or attracting members of the opposite sex. Everything in our culture seems to be based on promises: you will be happy if you have possessions, power, prestige, pleasure, or whatever else the world can offer you.

But humans have learned from experience since the earliest days of history, that none of these things can give us ultimate satisfaction, ultimate meaning. Yet still, we find ourselves in headlong pursuit of these things, setting ourselves up for inevitable failure each time.

Was it Saint Augustine who said something like “there’s a God shaped hole in the center of each of us, and the only thing that can fill it is God?.”

A moment's reflection can reveal the fatal flaw in the promises made by the world: The "world: is bounded by time and space, so by definition there can nothing outside that time-space box, nothing beyond death, nothing "ultimate": The world of the senses is all that we get. So naturally, anything that the world promises cannot be "ultimate" but only passing. At the last supper, Jesus reminds us, that we are not of this world, and that its promises will never be fulfilled, never make us who we are meant to be.  This is why Augustine wrote that God has made us for himself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in him. Everything else is empty promises.

Today is Pentecost Sunday, when we celebrate that the disciples were “filled with the Holy Spirit.“ They

and those who listened to their preaching, were filled with the spirit of the risen Christ. And this spirit can never disappoint, because it is the spirit of the Easter mystery. The Paschal mystery in which we believe, never disappoints us. Even in our worst moments of sin, or suffering, of disappointment, or depression, the spirit is there with us to shed light in our darkness, to give consolation in our suffering, and to bring life out of death itself. We Christians don’t see this as an empty promise but as the central mystery of life, pointing us to life beyond the grave. .

We are Easter people. Christ has already risen from the dead, and we have already risen with him. The promise is that he will come again to finish the job. But this again is hardly an empty promise.

What can ultimately fill our yearning hearts? We know the answer, and so on this feast of Pentecost we pray:

“Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful!”

SPIRIT AND STEROIDS

 This week’s post builds on a New Testament verb that I reflected on last week. I had occasion to base a homily on iot a few days later, and a couple of brothers thanked me for my words. (Of course it’s always the Holy Spirit who gives the words, but I gratefully answered “You’re welcome!” as if I had been responsible.) I’m posting that homily with a couple of revisions and insertions, hoping that you might find it useful.

* * * * *

In the middle of today’s first reading we see  Paul and Silas returning to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch. This is remarkable because at the beginning of the reading  Paul has been stoned and left for dead by a mob in Lystra. Luke explains to us the reason why they are returning to those hostile towns: 

After Paul and Barnabas had proclaimed the good news to [Derbe] and made a considerable number of disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch. They strengthened the spirits of the disciples…” (Acts 14:21). They returned to strengthen the hearts of their brothers and sisters.

The verb “to strengthen” is a form of sterizo, “to make something more firm, solid.”  It’s the root of our word “steroids.” We know that body-builders take steroids to "bulk up" their bodies, and some professional athletes us them illegally to help build up muscle tissue and increase body mass. I’d like to look briefly at how the root-word sterizo is used in the New Testament. Three examples offer us plenty of food for meditation.

First, we’ve already seen the verb used in describing Paul and Silas in the passage quoted above “strengthening the hearts” of the Christians in Lystra, Iconium and Antioch.

 A second  use of our verb occurs in the first chapter of the letter to the Romans. Paul writes:

"For I long to see you, that I may share with you some spiritual gift so that you may be strengthened (sterizo)..."

Then, in the First Letter to the Thessalonians he tells the church there: 
“we decided to remain alone in Athens, and sent Timothy, our brother and co-worker, to strengthen (sterizo)… you in your faith, so that no one be disturbed in these afflictions.” 

In each of these three passages, there is also a  parallel verb that expands on the idea of sterizo, “strengthening.”  In each of these passages we find the verb parakaleo. Among its many meanings we find “to encourage, exhort.” It gives us our word “paraclete.”   

On our first passage we read “they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch. They strengthened (sterizo) the spirits of the disciples and encouraged (parakaleo) them to continue in the faith,saying ‘It is through many persecutions that we must enter the Kingdom of God’.” (Acts 14:21-22).

The passage from Romans reads, more fully, “For I long to see you, that I may share with you some spiritual gift so that you may be strengthened (sterizo), that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged (parakaleo) by one another’s faith, yours and mine (Rom 1:11-12) 

Our third quotation reads, again more fully: we decided to remain alone in Athens, and sent Timothy, our brother and co-worker, to strengthen (sterizo) and encourage (parakaleo)  you in your faith, so that no one be disturbed in these afflictions (1 Thess. 3:1-3)”

So, we see how the first Christians “built up” one another: by encouraging one another to bear up under trials and persecutions.

Thus, we have this special pair of verbs: First, sterizo expresses the first Christians’ sense of strengthening one another, of “bulking one another up.  And second, that beautiful Pentecost verb parakaleo, that tells us how they strengthened one another by encouraging each other,  by being “paracletes” to their brothers & sisters. The first Christian  churches, you could say,  were communities on steroids!

Imagine for a moment a monastery on steroids, in which the members strengthen one another and build up one another by  their words and deeds of mutual encouragement.
Maybe sterizo and parakaleo can suggest a vision for us as we enter a new era in our community's history: picture Newark Abbey bulked up on steroids!

* * * * *

Think about your role within your family, community, workplace and so forth. Does your presence make that group stronger? Are you a source of encouragement for others?