Pentecost Sunday ( C-cycle )
May 27, 2007

Tuesday I went to the Hebrew Home to offer Mass, and I had a devil of time finding a parking space. The reason, I learned, was that Jews were celebrating the feast of Sukkoth, which means “tents”. Jews from all over---Brooklyn, Brookline, Laguna Beach and Miami Beach, Israel---had come to be with their elderly loved ones. Sukkoth was originally a harvest feast in which Jews thanked God for the harvest of grapes and olives and prayed that the next harvest would also be plentiful. Along the way, it became a time for thanking Yahweh for guiding the ancient Hebrews through the desert.  The people were encouraged to put up tents or other temporary structures to remind them of those days when they hardly had roofs over their heads and depended totally on God for their survival. An important aspect of this week-long celebration was to thank God for the law God gave them at Mount Sinai, which was summed up in the ten commandments.. It may seem strange to thank God for a series of dos and don’ts, but they recognized that God’s law gave meaning to their lives and provided concrete ways to show their love for God. Remember how Peter at the Transfiguration wanted to put up three tents for Jesus, Moses and Elijah? He wanted to celebrate Sukkoth there on the mountaintop! Later Sukkoth came to be associated with hopes for national independence, led by a Messiah who would be a Son of David.

 

Sukkoth was celebrated 50 days after Passover. Pentecost, a Greek word, meaning 50, is celebrated 50 days after Easter. Parking spaces would have been rare in Jerusalem 50 days after the first Easter, if Jews had been big on chariots. Jerusalem was overflowing with pilgrims, Jews, not from Brooklyn or Brookline, but from places like Phrygia and Pamphlia, as well as Athens and Rome, when suddenly something momentous was unleashed Some Jews, mostly Galilean fishermen, who appeared to be intoxicated, were preaching that the Messiah had come: Jesus the Crucified and Risen One. And these menial workers were making themselves understood in all the many languages being spoken in the streets of Jerusalem that day. It was as if the story of the Tower of Babel was being given a new ending, a great tide of new understanding.

These Galilean fishermen and their associates had been occupying their own temporary shelter, an upper room. There, clustered around Mary, they had waited for the Spirit,. Like the Jews in the desert, they were painfully conscious of their dependence on God. Without God’s help, they and their message would be lost. And then the Spirit came with a mighty wind and fire, and the Church was on its way to the ends of the earth.

Pentecost shows us, I think, that the Spirit brings courage. May we have the courage to stick to ancient, counter-cultural truth and the courage to make necessary changes? The Spirit brings wisdom. Imagine Peter, who could hardly be understood by other Jews---remember the servant girl at the Passion saying, “Your accent gives you away”, imagine Peter speaking Phrygian and Pamphyllian! But above all, the Spirit erases boundaries and brings love. The Sukkoth-Pentecost story, not accidentally, I think, reminds us of our Jewish roots. I had a small experience of the Spirit in preparing this homily. I once was a student of a Canadian Jesuit names Bernard Lonergan, a great theologian and mathematician. He has been compared to Einstein. I will always remember him as a kindly examiner with great compassion for lesser mortal. I once benefited from his mercy. He was capable of amazing sustained reasoning. You and I, in making appoint might say, “In the first place, in the second place. In his books you will find phrases like< “In the 168th place! As I was preparing this homily, I came across a quote from him, I’ll share with you. He thought the essence of the Christian life was continual conversion which he defined as “ohterworly falling in love. It is total and permanent self-surrender, without conditions, qualifications, reservations. For Christians, it is God flooding our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us. It is the gift of grace, the replacement of the heart of stone by a heart of flesh...” Come Holy Spirit, make us holy.