Author: Msgr. Charles Pope

We live in times that tend to emphasize the physical and the material. And this affects even those of us who strive to have a spiritual life. Too easily we assess our blessings in ways that emphasize the material more so than the spiritual. We feel blessed if our income is good and our physical health intact, but many seem to have little esteem for spiritual gifts like wisdom (which often comes from suffering), knowledge of the truth, and fortitude or courage.

Our prayers often skew heavily toward asking God to improve our finances, mend our health, or alleviate some discomfort in this world. While it is not wrong to pray for these sorts of things, at times it almost sounds as though we are saying to God, “Make this world comfortable enough for me and I’ll just stay here forever.” We’re a little bit like the older son in the story of the Prodigal Son, who wants a kid goat so he can celebrate with his friends rather than to go into the party and celebrate with his father (Luke 15).

But the true goal in life is not to celebrate with our friends, it is to celebrate with the Father! Yet you’d never know it from the way many pray. “King Jesus is a-listening” all day long just to hear some sinner pray for wisdom, greater love for God, deeper prayer, greater longing for spiritual things, chastity, generosity, proper priorities, and so forth.

We also see something of this in the first temptation in the desert: Satan tries to tempt the hungry Jesus to turn stones into bread. Satan’s goal is to try to distract Jesus from His fundamental mission as Redeemer and to have Him use His power to satisfy His own physical hunger rather than to liberate souls.

In and of itself, satisfying hunger is not evil. We all need to eat in order to have the strength to do what God asks. But Jesus, of course, had gone into the desert to fast as a way to strengthen His soul and prepare for His mission.

There are things that are simply more important than bodily hunger and other physical needs. Ultimately, the needs of our soul are more important than those of our body. And thus if food or drink or sex, while not evil in themselves, endanger our soul or hinder our spiritual mission, they should be refused.

Jesus counters Satan by saying that “man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Bread alone, the physical world alone, does not satisfy our needs. Man’s life does not consist in possessions (Lk 12:15). We are not only physical beings; we have a soul that it has its hungers, and the Word of God must answer these hungers.

This is balanced. But Satan would have us off balance; he would have us overly concerned—even obsessed with—the needs of the body and other worldly concerns.

Parents, for example, often pay close attention to the academic grades of their children, but many show little concern for the spiritual lives of their children or important aspects of their moral lives. Our culture shows great concern for overcoming physical maladies such as heart disease, AIDS, cancer, and so forth, but there’s little attention paid to the spiritual and moral maladies that often underlie many of our social ills and even contribute to our physical illnesses.

Jesus does not deny that there is a place for bread and the physical needs and daily life that the bread symbolizes. He merely says that man does not live by bread alone, and that the Word of God, the truth of God, the beauty, the holiness, and the glory of God, is also to be food for our soul.

Father Livio Fanzaga has eloquently written,

With the cutting sword of the Word of God, Jesus removes the mask of one of the most current and devastating Satanic lies. Man is not an animal trapped in the short-term cycle of matter. He is a spiritual being who needs to find divine truth even before material food. Never before as in our time Satan has taken succeeded in promising happiness through material good … Man is reduced to the hungers of his body … [And thus] the liar succeeds in depriving man of his dignity, his beauty, his greatness, and his immortal and divine destiny (The Deceiver, p. 118-119).

For the Church, too, there are great temptations in this materialistic time. Great esteem is given to the corporal works of mercy such as feeding the sick, clothing the naked, and so forth. It is clear that these are important, necessary, and glorious works without which we cannot be saved (Matt 25:31ff). And yet, seldom are the Spiritual Works of Mercy mentioned today in Church settings. But they are essential and, frankly, foundational to the corporal works of mercy.

Here too, Father Fanzaga has much wisdom for us:

Satan’s temptation to turn stones into bread quote is a permanent temptation for the Church until the end of time. The Church is certainly placed in this world and shares its joys and sufferings, hopes and defeats … The Church has always promoted the human growth of society, but her ends are the eternal salvation of souls. The temptation to secularize the Church, orienting her towards human promotion and removing her from her supernatural objectives, is among the most subtle and insidious. This temptation has led many parishes and religious communities to abandon prayer, catechesis, sacrifice and the supernatural means of the apostolate, involving themselves in social activities that empty the Christian presence of its meaning … [It is an] earthly messianism, a Christianity reduced to humanitarian religion, a Church that becomes a sort of Red Cross of the world (The Deceiver, p 117).

It is the subtle purpose of Satan to distract the Church from her primary mission so that he can continue to wreak spiritual havoc while the Church’s attention is directed elsewhere.

It is a kind of food fight: Bread for the body rather than the Bread of Life unto eternal salvation. Matter is all that matters. Satan does not trap us with evil, but with what is good yet out of proportion. Bread … bread … bread! Bread is all that matters. Meanwhile the famished soul is neglected.

Jesus rebuked the men of his day who sought him out for another free meal of multiplied loaves: Jesus answered them and said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs [to have faith], but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal.” (Jn 6:27).

The bread had become their idol, for they valued it more than the very God who stood before them and provided it in the first place. They had no faith for Jesus, only desire for bread. Properly understood, their desire could have led them to Jesus, but they could not see past the bread to the Bread of Life who stood before them. Indeed not by bread alone, but by every Word from the mouth of God, by the Word made flesh, are we to live.

I know, I made the word up: “minificence.” I’ll define it in a moment. But first, I want to ponder with you the awesome mystery of size and numbers as we look out and as we look in.

Outer Space: As we look out on God’s Universe we cannot even fathom how huge, how magnificent is the size of the universe. We cannot comprehend such immensity. If we were to make a scale model of the Milky Way galaxy and reduce each star to the size of a grain of sugar, it would be two thousand miles wide and a thousand miles high. And that’s just one galaxy! There are billions of galaxies in the universe, which is expanding rapidly outward. Even the nearest star is over 25 trillion miles away.

And we are whirling around and outward! The earth rotates at a speed of about 1000 miles per hour (at the equator) while the earth itself revolves at roughly 67,000 miles per hour around the sun. And our entire solar system is also rotating around the center of the Milky Way galaxy at over 500,000 miles per hour. And the Milky Way galaxy is also flying outward and away (according to Doppler shift) at 1.3 million miles per hour!

Inner Space: But what is equally amazing is how vast a universe exists, hidden from the naked eye, in what we might call “inner space”: that tiny, almost invisible world of microbiology. In just a drop of pond water may exist hundreds of thousands of bacteria and microorganisms, a veritable universe unto itself. Indeed in every human body exist trillions of microorganisms in a kind of microbial fauna. Eighty different types of microorganisms live in the mouth alone. Every square centimeter of the human bowel contains as many as ten billion organisms. Every square centimeter of our skin contains about ten million individual bacteria. Even on our eyelashes are colonies of helpful bacteria and microorganisms that help keep harmful bacteria away. These massively numbered civilizations—universes really—of microorganisms are only recently known to us with the invention of powerful microscopes. And to those in this “micro-world,” our bodies must seem as massive as the universe of outer space seems to us. If a microorganism could think, it would consider our bodies a vast universe too large to comprehend. Just as there are trillions of stars, there are trillions of microorganisms. And to a microbe on an eyelash, a bacterium on the toe seems light-years away.

“Minificence” and Magnificence! If outer space is magnificent (from the Latin magnus meaning large or great) then inner space is (according to me) “minificent” (from the Latin minimus meaning small or tiny). The abundance of life in these tiny worlds boggles the mind. To the microorganisms that accompany me, I am a universe too vast to comprehend. But I am just one of over seven billion human beings on this planet. And I, even we collectively, am not large at all. I am an infinitesimally small speck, on a slightly larger but still tiny speck of dust, rotating around a fiery spark called the Sun, in a galaxy of over 200 billion other fiery sparks. And this is just one galaxy (about 100 million light-years in diameter) of over 125 billion galaxies in the known universe.

Time for wonder and awe! We’ve moved from contemplating inner space to outer space in a matter of moments but we really cannot comprehend numbers like these. It’s time for wonder and awe. God does all this with a simple word, and it is so. He knows the depths of our souls and the tiniest forms of life that cling to us. Every hair of our head is numbered and known to Him. He knows the farthest fringes of the universe. He made the stars and calls them by name. Ah, the Lord!

He who dismisses the light, and it departs, calls it, and it obeys him trembling; Before whom the stars at their posts shine and rejoice; When he calls them, they answer, “Here we are!” shining with joy for their Maker (Baruch 3:33-35).

One of the great hymns says, O Lord my God! When I in awesome wonder; Consider all the works Thy hands have made. I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, Thy power throughout the universe displayed. Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee; How great Thou art, how great Thou art!

Do not forget to meditate on God’s wonders. It is a great antidote to pride. God has done indescribable and marvelous things. And more is unseen than seen.

The book of Sirach says, Beyond these, many things lie hid; only a few of his works have we seen (Sirach 43:34).

Consider the scene. The Bishop has taken his place at the entrance to the sanctuary. He is prepared to confirm some twenty young people. It is a sacred moment; a Sacrament is to be conferred. The parents are in deep prayer thanking the Holy Spirit, who is about to confirm their children for their mission … oops, they’re not!

Actually, they are fumbling with their cell phone cameras. Some are scrambling up the side aisle to “get the shot.” Others are holding their phones up in the air to capture blurry, crooked shots. The tussling continues in the side aisle as parents muscle to get in place for “the shot.” If “the shot” is gotten—success! If not, “Woe is me!” Never mind that a Sacrament has actually been offered and received; the point was “the shot,” the “photo-op.”

Consider another scene. It is First Holy Communion. Again, the children are assembled.  This time the parents have been informed that a single parishioner has been engaged to take shots, and are asked if they would they please refrain from amateur photography. This is to little avail. “Who does that deacon think he is telling me to refrain, denying me the shot?” The cell phones still stick up in the air. Even worse, the parish photographer sends quick word via the altar server, “Could Father please slow down a bit in giving the children Communion? It is difficult to get a good shot at the current pace.” After the Mass, the photographer brings two children up with him; could Father perhaps “re-stage” the Communion moment for these two since, in the quick (normal) pace of giving Communion, their shots came out poorly.  “You see, the autofocus wasn’t able to keep up.  Look how blurry they are, Father.”

It would seem the picture is the point.

I have seen it with tourists as well. I live just up the street from the U.S. Capitol and it is fascinating to watch the tourists go by on the buses. Many of them are so busy taking a picture of the Capitol (a picture they could easily find in a book or on the Internet) that I wonder if they ever see the Capitol with their own eyes.

The picture is the point.

Actually, I would contend that it is NOT the point. Real life and actual experience are the point. Further, in the Liturgy, the worship and praise of God, the experience of His love, and attentiveness to His Word are the point. Cameras, more often than not, cause us to miss the point. We get the shot but miss the experience. Almost a total loss if you ask me.

At weddings in my parish, we speak to the congregation at the start and urge them to put away all cameras. We assure the worried crowd that John and Mary have engaged the services of a capable professional photographer who will be able to record the moment quite well. “What John and Mary could use most from you now are your prayers for them and your expressed gratitude to God, who is the author of this moment.” Yes, we assure them, now is the time for prayer, worship, and joyful awareness of what God is doing.

Most professional photographers are in fact professional and respectful and know how to stay background and not become a part of the ceremony but rather to record it discreetly. It is rare that I have trouble with them. Videographers still have a way to go as a group, but there are many who I would say are indeed professional.

Pastorally it would seem appropriate to accept that photos are important to people and to make reasonable accommodations for them. For major events  such as weddings, Confirmations, First Communions, and Easter Vigils, it seems right that we should insist that if photos are desired a professional be hired. This helps keep things discreet and permits family and others to experience the sacred moments more prayerfully. Infant Baptisms are a little more “homespun” and it would seem that the pastor should speak with family members about limiting the number of amateur photographers and be clear about where they should stand.

That said, I have no photos of my own Baptism, First Communion, or Confirmation. And yet somehow, I have managed to survive this (terrible) lack of “the shot” quite well. Frankly, in the days I received these Sacraments, photos of the individual moment were simply not done in the parishes I attended. Some parishes did have provisions for pictures in those days. The photo at the upper right is of Cardinal O’Boyle at St. Cyprian’s in Washington D.C. in 1957. But as for me, though I do have a photo of me when I was on my way to Church for my First Communion, there is no photo of me kneeling at the rail. And I am alive and well. There are surely photos of my ordination. But, I will add, the Basilica and the Archdiocese were very clear as to the parameters. Only two professional photographers were allowed (my uncle was one of them), and the place where they worked was carefully delineated.

Hence pastoral provisions are likely necessary in these “visual times,” to allow some photos. Yet as St. Paul says regarding the Liturgy, But let all things be done decently, and according to order (1 Cor 14:40).

A final reiteration: remember, the photo is not the moment. The moment is the moment, and the experience is the experience. A photo is just a bunch of pixels, lots of 0’s and 1’s recorded by a mindless machine and then printed or displayed by another mindless machine. A picture is no substitute for the actual experience, the actual prayer, the actual worship that can and should take place at every sacred moment and at every sacred liturgy.

If you missed my post from yesterday on the Extraordinary Form of the Mass as a preservative for culture, I would be grateful if you would click over and read it. For some reason readership was very low on the blog yesterday. I also know that Newadvent did not pick it up for some reason. Here is the article: The Extraordinary Form of the Mass and the Evangelization of Culture

Below is some very rare footage from a nuptial mass. It is of my parents’ wedding in May of 1959. What makes it rare is that it is film, not mere pictures, and that it was filmed from the sacristy. My parents told me years ago that they presumed it was filmed by a priest, who alone in those years could get access to the sacristy and other back areas.

We tend to think of evangelization as focused on individuals. But cultures need evangelizing too, perhaps even more so, due to the influence of culture on so many. In her strongest periods the Church has been instrumental in forming the culture and ethos around her. In her weaker periods the Church begins to parrot and reflect culture which, without her leadership, is too easily ephemeral, disedifying, and at worst, debased.

It is hard to contend that we are in a period in which the Church has a key influence on culture. It is rather more the case that popular culture has far too greatly influenced us. Few Catholics get most of their information or influence from God, the Scriptures, or Church teaching. Most are far more aware of and inclined to listen to secular leaders, pop musicians, entertainers, sports figures, and the general cultural din. And this is where they develop even their most critical insights about God, family, sexuality, and many significant moral questions.

Liturgically, too, there are many problems associated with the triumph and primacy of modern and popular culture. Most of our modern trends in liturgy reflect the preferences of our culture, rather than the ability to challenge and influence people. And thus liturgy must be convenient, fast, entertaining, youthful, “relevant,” accessible, completely understandable even by the smallest child, warm, comfortable, respecting of diversity, friendly, etc. To be sure, most of these are not bad qualities. But the emphasis on them to the exclusion of balancing principles (such as mystery and tradition), and the often shallow understanding of those balancing principles, shows that popular culture rather than the Church is really in the driver’s seat.

I’ll be honest, I don’t know where exactly to draw the line. When exactly is a song too secular or in bad taste? When does something go from being understandable to being “dumbed down”? When does emphasizing a warm and welcoming environment become too anthropocentric and unprayerful? When does respecting diversity become a Balkanization and “stove-piping” of communities? When does “youthful, vibrant, and relevant” do harm to what is ancient, enduring, and time-tested?

Somewhere in all this concern for evangelizing the culture, as opposed to being dominated by it, is the quiet and stable presence of the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, often called the Usus Antiquior (the older use or form), that was in use, largely intact, from antiquity until 1970.

A recent article by Tracey Rowland in Sacred Liturgy (The Proceedings of the International Conference on the Sacred Liturgy 2013) develops the way in which the usus antiquior can act as a kind of salve or preservative in the rapidly changing climate of the post-modern West. I want to offer a few excerpts from the lengthy article and add a few comments of my own (in plain, red text). Rowland writes,

Specifically the usus antiquior may be an antidote to the ruthless attacks on memory and tradition and high culture typical of the culture of modernity. [And it can supply] a coherent, non-fragmented tradition that is open to the transcendent … Participation in this form of the rite does require a deeper intellectual engagement, if one is not to get completely lost, but this form is also more contemplative …

Yes, once one overcomes the notion that he or she must be hearing, seeing, and interacting with every aspect of the Mass, one is drawn to a more quiet contemplation of God and to the fact that many things are being done by God “for me” in a quiet and hidden way. So too in the Mass when the priest acts on my behalf, it is not required that I hear or understand every word. It is often enough that the priest ministers for me and that God both enables and receives this ministry. To pray quietly is thus an acceptable demeanor rather than to (only) relentlessly participate. Thus the usus antiquior emphasized a more contemplative dimension.

In arguing this, one need not take the view that the usus antiquior should be the only form of the Roman Rite … The older and newer forms … Should be mutually enriching. (p. 117, 130)

Yes, at least in our current setting, the “liturgy wars” are a sign that charity, which ought to be preeminent when it comes to Sacred worship, is lacking. But the main point here is that the usus antiquior acts as a kind of preservative of the overall Roman Rite by holding up “old-time religion.” This helps the newer forms from becoming detached from their proper roots and from the more fully Christian culture that preceded our current secularist and ephemeral culture. The usus antiquior evangelizes current Catholic culture (too easily swayed by modern notions) by showing forth the ancient holy traditions that have sustained us over the centuries.

Yves Congar argued that … the liturgy is truly the holy ark containing sacred tradition at its most intense … He said (in 1963), “We need only step into an old church in order to follow a Mass which has scarcely changed, even in externals, since St. Gregory the Great … Everything has been preserved for us, and we can enter into a heritage which we may easily transmit in our turn, to those coming after us. Ritual … as a victory over devouring time … and a powerful communion in the same reality between men separated by centuries of change … (P. 116)

The charcoal drawing at the upper right, if one does not look closely, could be of a Mass from almost any time period going back to at least the 4th Century. But it is a Mass celebrated just two days ago, by me here in my parish. The actual photograph is just below it. This is a demonstration of what Congar says.

Sadly, shortly after 1963, the “holy ark” was “lost to the Philistines” (cf  1 Sam 5) and has only recently been recovered through a series of indults and the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum.  We can only pray that the holy ark will now stay among us and grow in the influence and “mutual enrichment” for which Pope Benedict XVI longed.

If modernity is a culture of forced forgetting, postmodernity is more of a fragmented culture of retrieval, the mood is less self-assured and more melancholy and nostalgic. Postmodernity, unlike modernity, is not hostile tradition … but it is hostile to the idea that the human intellect can be used to discern that one tradition is to be preferred over another. Most post-moderns tend to think that one’s preference of tradition is likely to stem from one’s aesthetic sensibility, rather than from intellectual judgment. (p. 129). Amen! If we are not careful, our tolerance of aesthetic preferences too easily becomes just another form of relativism.

In the midst of the decadence and fragmentation and Philistinism,  the usus antiquior can continue to be, in the words of Congar, a holy ark, a victory over devouring time, and a means of communication between Catholic separated by centuries of change … It does however need to be disentangled from ghetto culture, either ignorant or suspicious of the genuine reforms of the Council.

Therefore, we must be careful to find a balance that celebrates and insists upon the preservative role of the usus antiquior, but which does not devolve into the smug superiority and dismissiveness that threatens the very influence we seek to foster.

These are just some thoughts about how the usus antiquior can help evangelize culture both within and outside the Church. In this older form of the Mass we step back to what proved right for centuries, to the Mass most saints knew, to what time had tested and retained. This is important in a constantly shifting culture that has lost its moorings.

To have in our midst something that is fixed, stable, proven, and deeply connected to the wisdom of the past is a glorious gift. The newer form of the liturgy also brings gifts (a wider selection of readings, greater access to the vernacular, and some cultural flexibility). But without the stability of the usus antiquior, we see too many risks for wild and inauthentic shifts. And this is just what we have experienced in recent decades.

Both forms are currently the reality for us, but the new without the old is unanchored and drifts too wildly. The usus antiquior, the Extraordinary Form, restores our needed moorings.

What a wondrous and challenging feast we celebrate at Pentecost! A feast like this challenges us, because it puts to the lie a lazy, sleepy, hidden, and tepid Christian life. The Lord Jesus said to the Apostles and still says to us, “I have come to cast a fire on the earth!” (Luke 12:49). This is a feast about fire—about a transformative, refining, and purifying fire that the Lord wants to kindle in us and in this world. It is about a necessary fire, for as the Lord first judged the world by fire, the present heavens and the earth are reserved for the fire. Since it is going to be the fire next time, we need the tongues of Pentecost fire to fall on us to set us on fire and bring us up to the temperature of glory.

The readings today speak to us of the Holy Spirit in three ways: the portraits of the Spirit, the proclamation of the Spirit, and the propagation by the Spirit. Let’s look at all three.

I. The Portraits of the Spirit – The First Reading today (Acts 2:1-11) speaks of the Holy Spirit using two images: rushing wind and tongues of fire. These two images recall Psalm 50, which says, Our God comes, he does not keep silence, before him is a devouring fire, round about him a mighty tempest (Psalm 50:3).

Rushing Wind – Notice how the text from Acts opens: 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.

This text brings us to the very root meaning of the word “Spirit.” For “spirit” refers to “breath,” and we have preserved this meaning in our word “respiration,” which means breathing. So the Spirit of God is the breath of God, the Ruah Adonai (the Spirit, the breath of God).

Genesis 1:2 speaks of this saying, the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And Genesis 2:7 speaks even more remarkably of something God did only for man, not for the animals: then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

So the very Spirit of God was breathed into Adam! But as we know, Adam lost this gift and died spiritually when he sinned.

Thus we see in this passage from Acts an amazing and wonderful resuscitation of the human person, as these first Christians (120 in all) experience the rushing wind of God’s Spirit breathing spiritual life back into them. God does CPR and brings humanity, dead in sin, back to life! The Holy Spirit comes to dwell in us once again as in a temple (cf 1 Cor 3:16). It has been said that Christmas is the feast of God with us, Good Friday is the Feast of God for us, but Pentecost is the Feast of God in us.

Tongues of Fire – The text from Acts says, Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them.

The Bible often speaks of God as fire, or in fiery terms. Moses saw God as a burning bush. God led the people out of Egypt through the desert as a pillar of fire. Moses went up onto a fiery Mt. Sinai where God was. Psalm 97 says, The LORD reigns; let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad! Clouds and thick darkness are round about him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. Fire goes before him and burns up his adversaries round about. His lightning lights up the world; the earth sees and trembles. The mountains melt like wax before the LORD, before the Lord of all the earth. The heavens proclaim his righteousness; and all the peoples behold his glory (Ps 97:1-6). Scriptures call God a Holy fire, a consuming fire (cf Heb 12:29), and a refining fire (cf Is. 48:10, Jer 9:7, Zec 13:9, Mal 3:3).

And so it is that our God, who is a Holy Fire, comes to dwell in us through His Holy Spirit. And as a Holy Fire, He refines us by burning away our sins and purifying us. As Job once said, But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold (Job 23:10).

And He is also preparing us for judgment, for if God is a Holy Fire, then who may endure the day of His coming or of our going to Him? What can endure the presence of Fire Himself? Only that which is already fire. Thus we must be set afire by God’s love.

So in the coming of the Holy Spirit, God sets us on fire to make us a kind of fire. In so doing, He purifies us and prepares us to meet Him, who is a Holy Fire.

II. The Proclamation of the Spirit. – You will notice that the Spirit came upon them like “tongues” of fire. The reference to tongues is no mere accident. For notice how the Holy Spirit moves them to speak and ultimately to witness. The text says: And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem. At this sound, they gathered in a large crowd, but they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language. They were astounded, and in amazement they asked, “Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans? Then how does each of us hear them in his native language? We are Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene, as well as travelers from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs, yet we hear them speaking in our own tongues of the mighty acts of God.”

So behold how the Holy Spirit moves them to proclaim, not just within the safety of the upper room, but also in holy boldness before the crowds who have gathered.

Notice the transformation! Moments ago these were frightened men who gathered only in secrecy, behind locked doors. They were huddled together in fear. But now they go forth to the crowds and proclaim Christ boldly. They have gone from fear to faith, from cowardice to courage, from terror to testimony!

And how about us? Too many Christians are silent, dominated by fear. Perhaps they fear being called names or not being popular. Perhaps they are anxious about being laughed at, or resisted, or of being asked questions they don’t feel capable of answering. Some Christians are able to gather in the “upper room” of the parish and be active, even be leaders. But once outside the “upper room” they slip into “undercover mode.” They become “secret agent” Christians.

Well the Holy Spirit wants to change that, and to the degree that we have really met Jesus Christ and experienced his Holy Spirit, we are less “able” to keep silent. An old Gospel song says, I thought I wasn’t gonna testify, but I couldn’t keep it to myself, what the Lord has done for me. The Holy Spirit, if authentically received, wants to give us zeal and joy, and burn away our fear so that testifying and witnessing are natural to us.

Note also how the Spirit “translates” for the Apostles, for the crowd before them spoke different languages, yet each heard Peter and the others in his own language. The Spirit, therefore, assists not only us but also those who hear us. My testimony is not dependent only on my own eloquence but also on the grace of the Holy Spirit, who casts out deafness and opens hearts. Every Christian should remember this. Some of our most doubtful encounters with others can still bear great fruit on account of the work of the Holy Spirit, who “translates” for us and overcomes many obstacles that we might think insurmountable.

III. The Propagation by the Spirit – In the Great Commission, the Lord said, Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age (Matt 28:19ff). He also said, as we have noted, I have come to cast a fire on the earth and How I wish the blaze were already ignited (Luke 12:49).

But how is the Lord going to do this?

Perhaps a picture will help. My parish church is dedicated to the Holy Spirit under the title Holy Comforter. Above the high altar is the Latin inscription Spiritus Domini, replevit orbem terrarum (The Spirit of the Lord, filled the orb of the earth). (See photo, above right, of our high altar.)

The walls of my parish Church answer the question. The clerestory walls are painted Spanish Red and upon this great canvas are also painted depictions of the lives of 20 saints, surrounding us like a great cloud of witnesses (cf Heb 12:1). (See also the video below.) And above the head of every saint is a tongue of fire.

THIS is how the Spirit of the Lord fills the earth. It is not “magic fairy dust”; it is in the fiery transformation of every Christian, going forth into the world to bring light and warmth to a dark and cold world. THIS is how the Lord casts fire on earth; THIS is how the Spirit of the Lord fills the orb of the earth: in the lives of saints, and, if you are prepared to accept it, in YOU.

In the end, the Great Commission (Matt 28) is “standing order No. 1.” No matter what else we do, we are supposed to do this. Parishes do not deserve to exist if they do not do this. We as individual Christians are a disgrace, and not worthy of the name, if we fail to win souls for Jesus Christ. The Spirit of the Lord is going to fill the orb of the earth, but only through us. The spread of the Gospel has been placed in your hands—scary, isn’t it?

Beginning two years ago, my own parish, after a year of training, stepped out into our neighborhood and went from door to door as well as into the local park. We announced Jesus Christ and invited people to discover Him in our parish and in the Sacraments. We were in the local park and the market just last week doing “sidewalk evangelization.”

Before we count even a single convert, this is already success, because we are obeying Jesus Christ, who said, simply, “Go!” “Go make disciples.” And, truth be told, we ARE seeing the results in my parish. Our Sunday attendance has grown from about 450 to 520, roughly a 15% increase. We are growing, and our attendance—while average for a downtown city parish—is going in the right direction. God never fails. God is faithful.

Spread the news: it works if you work it, so work it because God is worth it. Go make disciples. Ignore what the pollsters tell you about a declining Church and let the Lord cast a fire on the earth through you! Fires have a way of spreading! Why not start one today? The Spirit of God will not disappoint.

I know this: my parish has a future because we are obeying Jesus Christ; we are making disciples. How about you and yours? If parishes do not obey they do not deserve to exist, and they can expect to close one day no matter how big they may be today. I, in my short 50 years on this planet, have seen it: parishes once big, booming, and (frankly) arrogant are now declining and some are even near closure. It happens to the best if they do not evangelize, if they do not accomplish “Job 1.” The Lord wants to light a fire. Why not become totally fire? Let the Spirit propagate the Church through you. (I am not talking to the person next to you; I am talking to you.)

Happy feast of Pentecost! But don’t forget that the basic image is very challenging, for it means getting out of the “upper room,” opening the doors, and proclaiming Christ to the world. Let the Holy Spirit light a fire in you and then you can’t help but spread light and heat to a cold and dark world.

Let the evangelization of the whole world begin with you.

This video features details from the clerestory (upper window level) of my parish of Holy Comforter here in DC. Notice the tongue of fire above each saint. The paintings show how the Spirit of the Lord fills the orb of the earth (see photo above) through the lives of the saints (this means you, too). It is not magic; it is by grace working in your life, through your gifts and your relationships, that the Lord will reach each soul. The witnesses on the walls of my Church say, “You are the way He will fill the earth and set it on fire.” Let the blaze be ignited in you!

The song says, We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, looking on, encouraging us to do the will of the Lord. Let us stand worthy, and be faithful to God’s call … We must not grow weary!

Here is another video I put together which has scenes from the Pentecost event and is set to Palestrina’s Dum Complerentur. I like this musical version since it is sung in dance time. The Latin text to the motet is below the video along with its English Translation.

Dum complerentur dies Pentecostes,
erant omnes pariter dicentes, alleluia,
et subito factus est sonus de coelo, alleluia,
tamquam spiritus vehementis,
et replevit totam domum, alleluia.
–
When the Day of Pentecost had fully come,
they were all with one accord in one place, saying: alleluia.
And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, alleluia,
as of a rushing mighty wind,
and it filled the whole house
where they were sitting, alleluia.

Some years ago when I was in the seminary, an older priest in a rectory where I stayed had an unusual piece of furniture in his sitting room. He used it like a chest or large travel trunk. He stored books in it. I told him it looked like a coffin. He said it was. “One day I will be buried in that.”

Sure enough, at his funeral some ten years later, I saw that plain pine box that had sat against the wall in his sitting room. What once held the treasure of his books waiting to be read again now held the treasure of his body waiting to rise again.

Coffins, often called caskets today, have become a bit too removed from the old wooden boxes that once sufficed for most. Made of strong steel, with airtight seals and cushioned satin interiors, they seem designed to insulate not only the dead, but also us from the reality that the earth must reclaim our bodies until the great resurrection of all the dead. Add to that the fact that these sealed capsules are then placed in concrete liners (to preserve the level of the round above), and burial really doesn’t seem to be burial anymore. It’s more like storage in an underground basement or cellar. Modern life can be very insular, even in death.

I do not wish to appear insensitive. Burial customs vary from age to age and have various things to recommend them and to critique about them. Death is perhaps the hardest reality we face, not merely our own but also the deaths of those we love.

The beautiful video below shows a man making a traditional wooden coffin. For him it is obviously a very spiritual act, deeply rooted in his Catholic Faith. Such care and thoughtfulness goes into each action of the process!

It might strike you as odd to watch a man build a coffin. But take the time to watch this three-minute video. The coffin maker speaks great wisdom and love as he plies his craft. It is clear this is no mere box; it is a precious and sacred container for the body and a doorway for the soul.

Here are a couple of his quotes that I find especially meaningful:

I never feel like it’s finished. But I guess that’s a fit thing since that’s how we likely feel at the end of our lives too.

I think one of the most important aspects of the coffin is that it can be carried. I think we’re meant to carry each other. Carrying someone you love is very important when we deal with death … to know that we played a part and shouldered our share of the burden … If we make it too easy we deprive ourselves of a chance to get stronger so that we can carry on.

Enjoy this strangely beautiful video.

The Coffinmaker from Dan McComb on Vimeo.

http://mariancaskets.com

There is a rather humorous aspect of the story of the Tower of Babel in the Book of Genesis. You likely know the basic story, which begins with the men of that early time saying, Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves (Gen 11:4). It was an image of pride, of grandiosity.

The humor is that when the great tower, with its top reaching to the heavens, is finally built, it is actually so puny that God has to come down from Heaven in order to see it! The text says, And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built (Gen 11:5).

Now of course God, as omniscient,  clearly sees everything, and the humor in the text is not in some primitive notion of God. Rather the humor is for our benefit. In effect it says that our greatest, tallest, most prominent and glorious work—a tower that we saw as reaching Heaven itself—is in fact so small that God has to stoop to “see” it. He has to descend to get even a glimpse of it. What ultimately DOES alarm God is how colossal our pride is, and thus he has to humble us by confusing our language and scattering us about the planet.

I recalled this story as I viewed the video below. It is wonderful footage of Earth, taken from the Space Shuttle. There is audio commentary by a NASA scientist explaining some of the features we are seeing and where on the globe we are looking as the images pass by. The view is truly remarkable. But what is even more remarkable is what we do NOT see: us!

It is an astonishing thing that even though the shuttle is passing over highly populated areas there is no visual evidence that we even exist. No cities or buildings are visible; no planes streak through the skies; even large scale agricultural features seem lacking. There is only one mention of a color difference across the Great Salt Lake, and that is due to a railroad bridge preventing circulation. But the bridge is in no way visible, only its effect.

We think of ourselves as so big, so impressive. And yet even in low Earth orbit, we cannot be seen. It is true that at night our cities light the view, but during the day next to nothing says we are here. Even the magnified picture on my 30″ iMac screen shows no evidence of us below.

And having viewed the video, I think of Psalm 8:

O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens … When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? Yet, You made him a little lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Yes, we are so powerful (by God’s gift) and yet so tiny as to be nearly invisible from a short distance into space. Our mighty buildings rise, but they rise on a speck of space dust called Earth, which revolves around a fiery point of light called the Sun. And our huge sun is but one point of light in the Milky Way galaxy of over 100 billion stars. And the Milky Way galaxy, so huge to us as to be nearly incomprehensible, is but one of an estimated 200 billion galaxies.

What is man O Lord that you are mindful of him? Jesus says of us, And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered (Matt 10:30). Yes God, who knows the numbers of the stars and calls them by name, also knows the number of the hairs on each of our heads. Nothing escapes him.

And old preacher’s saying goes, “We serve a God who sits high, yet looks low!” Indeed, never forget how tiny you and I are, yet never cease to marvel that God knit you together in your mother’s womb and sustains every fiber of your being. We cannot even be seen from low Earth orbit, but God, who sees all, looks into our very heart. Do not cease to marvel that, though tiny, you and I are wonderfully, fearfully made (Psalm 139), and He has put all things under our feet.

I write this blog post humbly confessing that I am not an economist or a politician. I am not an expert on the oil industry or on “alternative fuels.” Neither am I an agricultural expert.  I write as a priest and a moral theologian to ponder a puzzling trend that I might provocatively title “Burning food for fuel.”

Most notably, this is done in the production of ethanol, which uses corn. Increasingly, the government, likely pressured by certain industries and lobbies, is requiring that 10% of fuels be composed of ethanol.

Of course this requires an enormous amount of corn, which would seem to skew agriculture and the food supply. At a bare minimum it would seem that the price of corn would rise. Corn is a fairly basic staple of the world’s food supply and raising its price would seem to harm the poor especially. Further, as corn becomes more lucrative, it seems likely that more of it would be planted and less of other necessities such as rice, barley, and other grains. This doesn’t seem very good either.

Consider some excerpts from an article (on Oxfam America’s website) that I read recently:

Ethanol has been touted as the solution to our energy and climate crises. [But] Ethanol is not the answer to our oil dependency. Even if all the corn grown in the US was used for fuel, it would replace only one out of six gallons.

Meanwhile, ethanol is contributing to global hunger. Last year, 40 percent of corn grown in the US went to fuel instead of food. If all the land used to grow biofuels for the EU in 2008 had instead been used to grow food, it could have fed 127 million people for an entire year. Major land grabs are happening all over the world, often propelled by the market’s demand for biofuels, leaving marginalized communities without access to traditional land and water to grow food….

The governors of North Carolina and Arkansas have asked the EPA to waive the renewable fuel standards mandate, which requires at least 10 percent of unleaded gasoline be made from ethanol. Waiving the corn ethanol mandate will lead to an estimated 7.4 percent drop in global corn prices, which will in turn lower prices for meat, milk, eggs, and more. For people living in poverty who spend up to 75 percent of their income on food, this small change can make a big impact.

Turning corn into fuel only compounds global hunger. America cannot build our own energy security on the back of people living in poverty—it is morally indefensible and wrong for our own energy, climate, and national security interests. We have an opportunity right now to press the pause button on misguided US corn ethanol policy by telling the EPA to waive the corn ethanol mandate.

These are excerpts; the full article is here: Burning down the house to heat it.

I cannot vouch for or verify all of the points in this article, and I know nothing about Oxfam. But to put it again in a provocative way: burning food for fuel seems to go against common sense to me.

Food is a very precious and necessary commodity. Fuel is surely important, but it is secondary to food. Given that we can easily fuel our machinery with something other than food, it seems foolish to burn large quantities of food for fuel.

I would like to know your thoughts on this. Perhaps you will want to school me on some basic economic issues that I’m forgetting. Perhaps it is possible that we have such an overabundance of food that burning some of it for fuel actually makes sense.

But something tells me this is a very bad idea—maybe even immoral if it has severe effects on the poor and the hungry throughout the world, as I suspect it will.

Something else tells me that this is rooted more in an irrational fear and hatred of the petroleum industry, pressure by agricultural lobbies, and a misguided environmentalism that worries more about pollution than feeding the hungry.

But I realize these are complex issues, and what I really want to do is generate a discussion, share information, raise concerns, and perhaps alleviate some of them. Let me know what you think.

Here’s a different point of view: