Pentecost

Fifty days ago, the Light of Christ, in the single flame of the Paschal Candle taken from the Easter Fire pierced the darkness of this church at the beginning of the great Vigil of the Lord’s Resurrection. In the Easter days since, the same Light of Christ has continued to burn before us in this Candle, and we have basked in the warmth of its rays as the most sacred mysteries of our Christian faith have been renewed. But now, on this day, when the time for Pentecost has been fulfilled, the Light from this Candle no longer remains at a distance, but it leaps down upon us in tongues of flame to burn us, to consume us, and to make us into people of fire to carry this Light of Christ from this holy place to pierce the darkness of a broken world.

Reflecting on who she is in the light of God, Saint Catherine of Siena once prayed, “In your nature, eternal Godhead, I shall come to know my nature. And what is my nature, boundless love? It is fire, because you are nothing but a fire of love. And you have given humankind a share in this nature, for by the fire of love you created us…. What nature has your God given you? His very own nature!” It was the same Catherine who also famously said, “Be who God meant you to be, and you will set the world on fire.” 

 

Christ himself once declared, “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!” (Lk. 12:49). God is fire, and the fire that is God created us and shared his fire with us, that we would become fire to set the world ablaze. No less than on the day of Pentecost two thousand years ago has the Holy Spirit descended upon us in tongues of flames and come to dwell personally within us, to transform us by his burning presence, into a people radiating and spreading the fire of his love. 

 

My brothers and sisters, the Holy Spirit has made us people of fire. And although in recent days the sun in the sky has shone brightly, recent events have also reminded us all too well that the world still lives under the dark shadow of death. Could the feast of Pentecost have come at a better time? Not at all, for Pentecost is perfectly suited for every time, because the Holy Spirit is constantly at work among us, brooding over the world with his warm breast and bright wings to restore the entirety of his creation from the ways that humanity has defaced it. As every morning the sun rise to awaken the world, all the more does the Holy Spirit breathe every day, in every moment, the breath of life from the fire of his heart to heal the world. In this dark moment in our history, the Holy Spirit beats his wings all the more vigorously to spread the fire of his love. 

 

The Spirit is at work in the world through the Church. As members of his Body, Christ commissions us to bring the fire we have become to every corner of our wounded world.  At the Easter Vigil, we prayed that the Light of Christ burning from the Paschal Candle would be “a fire into many flames divided, yet never dimmed by sharing of its light.” By sharing his divine nature with us, Christ is not diminished in the least but magnified, as he passes his light through us to reach the furthest ends of the earth. We work through him, with him, and in him, in union with the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, to set the earth ablaze with the fire of his divine love. 

 

We have been made into people of fire, but the flame that we have become could still burn more brightly and spread more widely. One of fire’s most important functions is to purify, and thus the fire of divine love must first purify us before it can work through us to purify the world. For although we live in the Spirit, we still also live in the flesh; and although we burn with the Light of Christ, we still also live with one foot in the valley of darkness. That is why Saint Paul encouraged the Church in Rome, as he does now the Church in Baltimore: “you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a Spirit of adoption, through whom we cry, ‘Abba, Father!’” We have been adopted to be members of God’s family, and as his sons and daughters, God has given us a share in all that God is – that we have become, like him, fire.  

 

On this feast of Pentecost, that for which we must pray before all else is for the Holy Spirit to renew the face of the earth by first renewing that fire within us – within you and me. It’s not without reason that in the Gospel of John, Jesus gives the Holy Spirit to the apostles in literally the same breath in which he gives them the power to forgive sins. It is by the sacraments, especially in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, that the Spirit renews his creation within us by his grace, to salvage the flame that our sin has threatened to extinguish, and to allow it to burn brightly once again in the depth of our humanity. 

 

So too, we must warm ourselves by the furnace of charity each and every day in our personal prayer, when possible, before the Blessed Sacrament. For it is there where Christ stands in our midst, as he did on the day of his Resurrection before his apostles, and breathes upon us once again the gift of his Spirit. In and through prayer, the flame that burns within us, however small, expands and spreads, for Christ did not envision that his Church would spread fire on earth by his people bearing only the small fire of a taper; no, he calls us to spread like wildfire and to burn everything in our path. Only when that fire burns deeply within us can it reach the world and set it ablaze. 

 

To return to the imagery of Saint Catherine of Siena, she said that we are like coals, and coals are supposed to be on fire. The hotter a coal blazes, the more it becomes all that it is supposed to be, and the better it does the thing for which it was made. We are no different. The more that we are consumed by the fire of divine love, the more we become who we are supposed to be, the better we carry out the mission for which we exist: to give the fire of God’s love to the world that needs it. By the sacraments and by prayer, we as people of fire come to shine more brightly and burn more hotly with the love that lives within us. 

 

The Church is called to be a light brightly visible. It is through the Church that the Light of Christ, which scatters all darkness, shines splendidly in her members by the fire of his Spirit burning deep within the hearts of the faithful. And now, at the end of this Easter Season, when at last we truly know the praises of this pillar, this Paschal Candle can now be extinguished. On the Sundays that follow this, it shall not be lit again, for it does not need to be. The Light of Christ it has carried has passed over into us, his Body. As that Light was brought into this church by one Candle, its flame has been divided and shared with each of us, the people of fire, who now carry it out into the world. 

 

We ought to pray today on Pentecost and every day for the Holy Spirit to come and fill our hearts, to enkindle in us the fire of his divine love, that we may burn more ardently and shine more luminously that world may be covered by the all-consuming fire that is the love of God.