On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and proclaimed, “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, `Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive; for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. (John 7:37 – 39).
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. (Act 2: 1 – 4)
Pentecost is one of those great events which we Christians know and experience, and yet we cannot quite understand or explain it. The glory of Pentecost is the giving of the Holy Spirit to the Church. The history of the Church is the history of Pentecost, the history of the Spirit in the world. But that is the problem – we receive the Spirit because of the glorification of Christ; we experience the eschaton in all of its glory, and yet find ourselves still of the world, living in and through world history. The end of all things is fulfilled in Christ and experienced by us in our participation in Christ, and yet the world has not ended. The glory of God is over all the earth and yet that glory appears as if it is hidden. What are we to make of this?
Before Christ, the world was divided upon itself. The effects of the fall found itself manifesting in history as humanity became incapable of unity. The greatest manifestation of this is found in the story of the tower of Babel. Because we tried, like Prometheus, to lift ourselves all the way to divinity, to become gods, not by grace but by essence, we found out that we could not bring ourselves to such great heights and remain there unaffected. We fell back to the earth, broken, divided amongst ourselves, constantly fighting one another like the Greek gods, each one of us trying to make the world and all that exists within our image, contending against all who will not bow before our own ego. And so, because we exist in our own unique way, with our own unique thoughts, with our own unique desires, with our own unique experiences – even if we speak in the same language — we cannot understand one another. The meaning behind the words we speak, even if we think they should be obvious, never is clear; those who are closer to us might understand and appreciate what we say better than those who are further away from us, but even they will never completely comprehend what it is we are trying to tell them. How can they? There is so much which lies behind the words we speak, hidden not only from those we try to communicate with, but even ourselves. Post-modernism radically proves the truth of Babel; because of it, Christians, far from rejecting its insights, should learn from the post-moderns and see how they clarify the human situation and the difficulty we must face. We are placed into the world as individuals, and unless there is something which can overcome our individualistic existence, we find ourselves living alone without any true way to break through our egoistic shells.
What makes Pentecost special, what makes it one of the key events of salvation history, is that the Holy Spirit, who once spoke impersonally through prophets, is now given to us in such a way that we know the Spirit as the Spirit of Unity and Love. We know the Spirit – not just as an impersonal force guiding human history — but as a person, as one of the Holy Trinity. We know the Spirit and are open to it, finding ourselves in true personal communion with the Spirit; we find our egoistical shell broken through by the power of love. And it is the Spirit which, opening ourselves up to grace needed for sanctification and deification, that unites us to Christ, and in Christ, to one another. The earthly barriers of fallen humanity are overcome; in Christ we become one body, working together, capable of understanding each other – capable of transcending ourselves and speaking to others in ways which they can truly hear us and understand. The Spirit, the “Heavenly King” is also the “Comforter” and the “Spirit of Truth,” for it is a comfort to be able to overcome the division in humanity and to know one another in true love – that is in Christ, who is the truth which transcends all propositional attempts to ascertain truth. In Christ we become co-Christs, anointed of the Spirit, united one to another and to all humanity because we find our one common human nature allows for true communion.
It is communion in the Spirit which allows us to overcome the difficulties of language, for it is that one Spirit, who is in all of us, who unites us and is capable of overcoming the barriers of sin. We experience these barriers every day in the world so much that we believe them to be natural, but that cannot be: they exist only in the closed-off, fallen mode of existence we live in after the sin of Adam. We are no longer who we are supposed to be by nature; the fall has made our very existence unnatural, and this is what makes for hermeneutic difficulties when we try to communicate with one another. We live in our ego, and by its nature, our ego and its experiences cannot be experienced by others. Only when we die to the self, to our ego, can we find our true existence.
It is in the Spirit, the Spirit of Life who gives us true life, a life we experience as much as our self has been overcome, that we encounter the Word behind all words, the Truth behind all expressions of the truth. Pentecost is the day of the Spirit, the day of love manifest on earth, the day which shows us the glorification of Christ because it shows us the love which unites Christians one to another, a love to be shared with the world, a love which can and will transfigure all creation. In the end God will be all in all, but in Pentecost, we already experience the reality of this: time, the last dividing line, has already been transcended. But time must not be denied; eternity is the foundation for time, and in the Spirit, we have found our place in eternity; our life in time, when we are in the Spirit, points to eternity and thus, to the eschaton which showed itself at the Cross. And thus the Church, which exists in eternity (as the Shepherd of Hermas beautifully shows), finds its birth in time at Pentecost, and finds itself, as the Body of Christ, as the continued presence of Christ in the world, the bearer of salvation to all, the pillar and ground of truth who is capable of overcoming all partial truths because, as the continued presence of Christ in the world, she is the Spirit-bearer who speaks the truth to all and is capable of meeting people where they are, even in their egoistical shell.
Beautiful Henry! I was actually reflecting on the importance of the coming of the Holy Spirit of Christ tonight. What you said about language is very important. The Spirit is the Language of the Word of the Father.
I was thinking…What did Pentecost do? What was it? It was when Christ brought God to the world. It was when mercy could be visible. It was an event that brought people *in* Christ. In Jesus of Nazareth, we see the face of God. In the Spirit, we become Christ’s. A very good concrete example of this is what you gave…unity in our diversity: even in our differences we find a common humanity.
In the Spirit, the word of God is incarnated once again in our hearts. After the fall, the world found itself in loneliness and confusion. What is God’s response to sin? What is God’s response to the fallen world? In the Spirit, we can say: we are.
Apolonio
Thanks! I am glad something good came out of my own contemplation of the feast (like you, I took the time to reflect upon it).
When dealing with matters of the Holy Spirit, I find it difficult to say much — St Basil is right when he talks about the Spirit as the unwritten God. Of course we can say things about the Holy Spirit, but theologically, it is much less, and more difficult, than discussing the Father or the Son. And this is because of how the Spirit works in the recesses and remains hidden to help provide us visual freedom (and unity).
This is among the best blog posts I’ve read, Henry. Stellar reflection!
Henry,
“When dealing with matters of the Holy Spirit, I find it difficult to say much”
But it seems to me you do say much, perhaps without realizing it.
Aren’t Spirit and Beauty intrinsically related? Shouldn’t that relationship be the catalyst for plentiful reflections on the presence of the Holy Spirit in the World? Isn’t this central to the message of Balthazar?
Given this, I’m not sure what you mean when you say you find such difficulty.
On another point, when Mercy infuses Language, Discourse takes a different Form. Empirically, it would appear that this infusion of the Spirit is not wide-spread, even among Catholics. Spiritual alienation is still too much with us.
I rececnt reflected on the gifts of the Spirit over the nine days of the Novena. This is from the last days ‘wrap up’ and it has to do with the Spirit’s communication with ‘groanings’, transcending our words, for us to God.
Let me recall from Day One’s opening scripture passage: “The Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in speech. He who searches hearts knows what the Spirit means, for the Spirit intercedes for the saints as God himself wills.” [Romans 8:26-27]
I interpreted that passage this way: “The Holy Spirit knows us in a way that words can’t express; knows us in the way of God; and the Father knowing us in this manner, acts according to His own Will.”
Let me offer on the final day of the Novena, this passage: “Similarly, no one knows what lies at the depths of God but the Spirit of God. This Spirit we have received is not the world’s spirit but God’s Spirit, helping us to recognize the gifts he has given us.[cf. 1 Cor. 2:10-12]”
This brings us full circle. The Father knows us because the Holy Spirit penetrates our being and ‘groans’ (intercedes for us) to the Father on our behalf. The same Holy Spirit knows the depths of God and provides ‘gifts’ to his children, according to our Father’s holy will. Our understanding of this connection between God and us via the Holy Spirit has the potential to alter our awareness of how God is acting in our life. In a sense, if we could ‘eavesdrop on this divine conversation’ of the Spirit pleading on our behalf as our advocate; and hear the Father’s response with his good gifts; then we would come away with a heightened sense of what our prayer life should be. The ‘wavelength’ of our own personal prayer would begin to look identical to the Spirit’s signal. Once we see that God is acting in ways we’ve missed (or even resisted), we can try to discern his actions with more clarity and sensitivity.
It is astounding to contemplate that the very intimacy between the Father and Son, the foundation and fruition of their very self-giving for and to each other, that very Person who is their identity in difference, comes to dwell in our each of our hearts and in our mended relations with each other. It seems almost too much.
dude, that’s like reading my breviary
Gerald
The field of theology called Pneumatology is, for me, one of the most difficult ones. It feels that there is far more speculation going on, and a belief that, if one is discussing the Spirit, something has to be said about the filioque.
Certainly there is a connection between beauty and Spirit, as there is with logic and Logos. And you are right, I try to follow through with Balthasar with aesthetics… but I also feel when I try to discuss aesthetics and beauty, it is only a shell of the reality being discussed — beauty is best experienced beyond words, while with logical analysis, with Christology, while human words still do not reach the fullness of truth, there is just something in it that it makes it an enterprise I can deal with more. Christology has always been one of my main theological areas of study — but that does not mean I try to stay within its limits and don’t try to push myself; obviously, I do.
Kyle
I am glad you appreciated it — I hoped you would.
Hermeneutical and exegetical questions have been in the forefront of my mind of late (I am trying to see if I can figure out Balthasar’s exegetical methodology, since I think it is an important way to understand his interpretation on hell). So this post flowed easier than I thought it would once I started writing.
Tausign
Interesting.