Pentecost

Readings: Acts 2:1-11; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13; John 20:19-23

VIDEO 

A friend of mine tells 
of an elderly priest he knew years ago
who, expressing caution about
the growth among Catholics 
of the Charismatic Movement, 
described the Holy Spirit as 
“one of the trickiest persons of the Trinity.”
Even those who might be more enthusiastic
about the charismatic renewal in Catholicism
would surely have to agree that the Spirit can be tricky.

Indeed, we might even see some similarity
between the Holy Spirit and those figures in folklore
that scholars refer to as “tricksters.”
In folktales, tricksters are sometimes gods,
like Loki in Norse mythology,
or animals of particular cunning,
like Brer Rabbit in African-American traditions
or the coyote in Native-American stories.
I suppose in contemporary American mythology
the most notable trickster would be Bart Simpson.
Tricksters like to stir the pot and create chaos,
to shake up the normal order of things
and mock the power of established authorities.
They are usually morally ambiguous troublemakers
who are depicted as causing mischief, 
but also as embodying freedom and creativity.
As the writer Lewis Hyde put it,
tricksters are boundary-crossers,
blurring distinctions between
“right and wrong, sacred and profane, 
clean and dirty, male and female, 
young and old, living and dead.”

Though I hesitate to push the comparison too far—
the Holy Spirit, after all, is not exactly Bart Simpson—
I do think that the Spirit plays in the Christian story
a role similar to the trickster in mythology and folklore.
The Spirit is a boundary-crosser and a troublemaker.
At the baptism of Jesus, the heavens are opened
and the Spirit descends like a dove,
crossing the boundary between heaven and earth,
between the divine and the human,
to manifest Jesus as God’s beloved Son
and send him forth 

on his troublemaking mission.
On the evening of that first Easter
Jesus breathes out the Spirit upon the disciples, 
crossing the boundary between 
the resurrected life that he now leads
and their fearful, huddled existence,
giving to them his troublemaking peace
and the power to share that peace with others.
On the day of Pentecost,
the Spirit once again crosses the boundary
between heaven and earth,
descending from the sky 
with “a noise like a strong driving wind”
and resting on the apostles in
“tongues as of fire.”
And in crossing the boundary 
of heaven and earth 
the Spirit also crosses boundaries
of culture and language,
as the apostles begin to speak to the crowd
gathered “from every nation under heaven”
in a Spirit-filled language
that each can hear and understand.
And the trouble that causes
is recounted in depth in the book of Acts.

We are told that the crowd 
on that day of Pentecost is, 
as so often when tricksters are at work, 
“confused.” 
People are supposed to stay
in their cultural and linguistic boxes,
but now the pot has been stirred,
the old categories and division are blurred.
This kind of boundary-crossing
is profoundly disorienting.
But at the same time, we are told,
the people in the crowd 
are not simply confused;
they are astounded and amazed,
because they are able to hear together, 
despite their differences,
of the mighty acts of God.

St. Paul assures us that our God
“is not the God of disorder 
but of peace” (1 Cor 14:33).

But he also tells us that 

“the peace of God… surpasses 

all understanding” (Phil 4:7),

and after the risen Christ 

wishes his disciples peace

he shows them his wounds,

the price of all his troublemaking.

So, what is for God power

might seem to us weakness,
what is for God wisdom
might seem to us foolishness,
and what is for God order
might seem to us 
disorder and chaos and trouble.

And this is perhaps most evident
in what is that tricky Spirit’s trickiest work:
the body of Christ that is the Church.
For the Spirit blows into the Church
the most unlikely assemblage of people,
from the four corners of the world
and from every race and language:
men and women,
rich and poor,
thinkers and doers,
morning people and nightowls,
athletes and couch potatoes,
city-dwellers and suburbanites,
Republicans, Democrats, 
Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers,
Millennials, Zoomers,
and even Steelers fans…
all baptized into one body,
and all given to drink 
of the one tricky Spirit.

Sometimes it looks and sounds
like chaos and disorder.
When parishioners from churches
throughout the city of Baltimore
packed this Cathedral a few weeks ago
for the final listening session
of the Seek the City to Come process
it seemed at times to be pretty disorderly,
and pretty noisy,
as different voices from different places
spoke of their unique experiences
in their irreplaceable parishes.
But the hope we must bring 

to such listening
is that what will emerge 
from that welter of voices
is the voice of the one Spirit.
As with everything at every moment
in the long history of the Church,
we live in hope that it is
the boundary-crossing trickster Spirit 
who is at work;
we live in hope that it is
not simply a clamor 
of anxious human voices
but the sound of the strong 
driving wind of the Spirit 
that we hear;
we live in hope that, 
when all is said and done,
we will be able to see
different spiritual gifts but the same Spirit,
different forms of service but the same Lord,
different workings but the same God
who works them all.

On this feast of Pentecost
let us pray that that trickiest Person
of the most Holy Trinity
would shine within our hearts,
breaking down the boundaries between us,
making us into the one body of Christ,
enlivened by the Spirit.
And may God, who is merciful,
have mercy on us all.

Vigil of Pentecost

Readings: Genesis 11:1-9; Exodus 19:3-8a, 16-20b; Ezekiel 37:1-14; Joel 3:1-5; Romans 8:22-27; John 7:37-39

VIDEO

Collapsed towers and confused tongues;
fire and thunder and trembling mountains;
the sun turned to darkness,
and the moon to blood;
a valley filled with rattling bones 
reassembling themselves
into spiritless bodies;
all creation groaning in labor pains 
even until now.
Welcome to the feast of Pentecost.

The ancient Vigil of Pentecost
offers us what appears to be 
catastrophic image 
after catastrophic image
as it prepares us 
for the descent of the Spirit.
It might feel more like 
a dystopian disaster movie
than the arrival of the Paraclete.
It might feel more 
like catastrophe than comfort.

This word “catastrophe,” 
which we associate with 
the sudden arrival of bad fortune,
comes from Greek
and means literally an overturning.
It is a catastrophe when peoples’ lives 
are turned upside down
by wars or natural disasters,
by serious illness or personal tragedy,
by fickle fortune
or deliberate deception.

But the greatest of all catastrophes is sin,
which overturns the order 
of our very existence,
as we try to place ourselves above God,
above the one who is 
the source of our existence.
The 14th-century mystic Julian of Norwich
wrote, “Adam’s sin was the greatest harm 
ever done or ever to be done 
until the end of the world.”
In rejecting the true source of life,
we overturn the order of creation,
so that what we call life is nothing but 
one long catastrophic decline into death.

The arrival of sin in the world 
is a catastrophe, an overturning.
The arrival of the Spirit is likewise 
a catastrophe, an overturning,
but of a radically different sort.
It is the comforting catastrophe,
because the Spirit takes the world
that we have turned upside down
and turns it over once again;
the Spirit comes
to overturn our overturning,
to blow into our lives like a whirlwind
that dispels our disobedience,
and sounds like thunder and rattling bones,
breathing itself into the living death
that we call life.
The Spirit arrives 
with catastrophic comfort
that can seem to us quite uncomfortable
because what we take to be 
the proper order and peace of the world
is actually the disorder and strife of sin.
We think it is only right
that the strong should oppress the weak.
We think it is only right 
that we should amass all the wealth we can.
We think it is only right
that we should live for ourselves first,
and judge others on the basis
of how useful they are 
to our life projects.
We grow comfortable with the world’s fallenness;
we make our peace with sin and call it order.
And when the Spirit blows into this fallenness
and blows apart this illusion of order,
it seems to us to be chaos and peril.

But the fire and the thunder 
and the trembling of the mountain
are but the echo
of God’s call to his chosen people:
“if you hearken to my voice…
you shall be my special possession…. 
You shall be to me 
a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.”
The sun turned to darkness,
and the moon to blood
are but signs of the day on which
the Spirit shall be poured out on all flesh,
so that everyone who calls 
on the name of the Lord
will be saved.
The valley of rattling bones
is but the prelude to impending resurrection,
when the Spirit will come from the four winds
to breathe new life into our bodies.
The groaning of all creation
is but the sound of the Spirit
who prays within us 
with sighs too deep for words
as we await the redemption of our bodies.
The catastrophic comfort of the Spirit 
shakes apart the world of sin
and wakes us from the slumber 
of its false promises of peace.

And once we are awakened by the Spirit
we can hear the voice of Christ:
“Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink.”
Come to me and drink of my grace.
Come to me and receive the Spirit
of wisdom and understanding,  
of right judgment and courage, 
of knowledge and reverence,
of wonder and awe.
True life is found not in dreams
of power and wealth and self-seeking,
but in a gift freely given.
The Spirit awakens us 
to hear the voice of Christ 
calling us into his body,
so that the deep thirst of our souls 
might be quenched,
and his love in us 
might be kindled, 
and our weary hearts 
might know true peace—
his peace, 
which surpasses all understanding.
May God, who is merciful,
have mercy on us all 
and grant us peace.

 

Loyola University Baccalaureate Mass

Readings: Jeremiah 29:11-14; Philippians 1:3-6, 8-11; John 15:9-17 

VIDEO

We began in boxes.
We didn’t think we would,
but then on August 6, 2020
we got the word: 
classes for the Fall semester—
for most of you, your first semester—
would all be online.
So there we sat on Zoom,
staring at each other in our little boxes,
swallowing our disappointment 
and wondering if we 
would ever get out of them.
And we did get out of them,
slowly at first:
during the Spring semester
in our boxes only half the time,
meeting every other class in person
in spaces too large for real connection
and with masks hiding our faces.

But eventually 
we left our boxes behind
and we got into regular classrooms
and around seminar tables,
and the masks came off
and friendships formed,
and we began to learn together.

This is the story of the Class of 2024,
but in some ways, it is the story 
of every undergraduate class
that I have ever taught 
in my thirty years at Loyola.
They have all begun enclosed in boxes:
boxes of their limited experiences
and certain ideas they have 
about themselves and their world,
boxes that may seem 
comfortable or comforting
but are also constraining and isolating.
And what we who work at a university 
try to do over the course of four years
is get our students out of those boxes.

This is, I think, true of every university,
but it is true in a particular way
at a liberal arts university like Loyola.
You arrive in the box of thinking 
“I’m not a STEM person”
and we will make you take math.
You arrive in the box of thinking 
“I’m really focused on becoming an accountant”
and we will make you take philosophy.
You arrive in the box of thinking
that you know something
and, well, we won’t tell you that you know nothing,
but we will show you that what you know
is but a tiny speck compared to what you could know.

We call them “the liberal arts”
because they involve cultivating the skills 
necessary to live as a free person, 
which includes the skill 
of overcoming our isolation
by becoming curious about human experience 
in all its variety.
The ancient Roman writer Terrence,
who began life as a slave from northern Africa
and ended it as a celebrated playwright,
famously said, Homo sum, 
humani nihil a me alienum puto. 
For those whose Latin is a little rusty,
this means, “I am a human being, 
I consider nothing that is human alien to me.”
We want you to be free,
and so we have pressed you to get out of your box
and live your life against a broader horizon,
the horizon of all of human thought and experience.

But Loyola is not just a liberal arts university;
we are a Catholic and Jesuit liberal arts university,
which means that the education we offer
is set against a horizon far vaster 
than even the totality 
of human thought and experience.
Your education has been set against
the horizon of the infinite love that lies
at the very heart of existence, 
the love that, as Thomas Aquinas would put it,
people call God.
When St. Paul writes 
to the Christians at Philippi
that his prayer for them is
“that your love may increase ever more and more 
in knowledge and every kind of perception, 
to discern what is of value,”
he is not praying that they will study math,
as good as that is,
or that they will read philosophy,
as good as that is,
or that they will come to appreciate
the vastness of the world of human experience,
as good as that is.
He is praying that the love that is God
would come to possess them,
so that their lives might expand
beyond the limits of the human
into the divine.
He is calling them out of the box
of the humanly possible
to live in the dizzying freedom 
of the children of God.

This is the most important thing
that Loyola had to teach you.
This is the magis, the “more,” 
of which St. Ignatius spoke—
not simply the endless striving 
for human achievement,
but the ever-greater glory of God.
The great Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner
said that the Christian is one before whom 
the abyss of existence opens up,
one who knows that he or she
“has not thought enough, 
has not loved enough, 
has not suffered enough.”
The magis at Loyola 
is not about a smooth path 
of continuous quality improvement,
or rising U.S. News rankings,
or the implementation of strategic plans;
and for our graduates 
it is not about higher salaries,
or bigger houses,
or more fame and recognition.
The magis means 
thinking and loving and suffering
until we find ourselves 
lost in the wilderness of God,
out of all the boxes in which 
we have packaged ourselves,
confronted by Jesus, 
the one who in living and dying
shows us that being possessed
by the love that is God
asks from us 
nothing less than everything:
“No one has greater love than this, 
to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
If we have not taught you this
then we have taught you nothing,
and you are still in the box you arrived in.

This might sound kind of harsh, 
and pretty terrifying,
as if all we have prepared you for
is a life of hardship and sacrifice,
which is what most people 
go to college to avoid.
But here is the mystery,
the mystery revealed 
in Jesus’s cross and resurrection: 
it is precisely in laying down your life
that you can take it up again in freedom.
The ultimate box in which we encase ourselves
is the illusion that freedom means 
being in charge of our own lives,
rather than giving those lives away
in love of God and neighbor.
And to emerge from that box
is finally to find a life worth living:
not a life of higher salaries
or bigger houses,
of more fame and recognition,
but a life that brushes up against
eternal love.

God says through the prophet Jeremiah,
“I know well the plans I have in mind for you…
plans for your welfare and not for woe, 
so as to give you a future of hope.”
God’s deepest desire for all of you,
and most especially for our graduates,
is that you emerge from your box
to know that love for which
you will lay down your life,
so that you might truly have
a future of hope eternal.
I pray that God’s desire for you 
might be fulfilled, 
and that God, who is merciful,
might have mercy on us all.