Pentecost

 

Seven weeks have passed since we celebrated the Lord’s resurrection at Easter, and now it is Pentecost. Until not so long ago, Pentecost was observed very grandly as one of the greatest festivals of the Church’s calendar, on a par with Easter. It had an octave equal to Easter’s and even had its own Saturday morning vigil (complete with a blessing of baptismal water like at Easter). At one time, Kings and Queens were expected to wear their crowns publicly on Pentecost. About all that’s left of that now in Europe is a three-day holiday weekend. And here in the United States we don’t even have that!

 

“Pentecost” comes from a Greek word referring to the 50th day – originally the 50th day after Passover. Its Hebrew name, Shavuot, means “weeks,” a reference to the “week” of seven weeks that began with Passover. And from the day on which you bring the sheaf of the elevation offering, you shall count off seven weeks (Leviticus 23:15).  Pentecost originated as an annual thanksgiving festival for the late spring, early summer harvest. Whereas at Passover, seven weeks earlier, only unleavened bread had been used, at Pentecost ordinary bread was offered in the form of fully leavened loaves. You shall bring from your settlements two loaves of bread as an elevation offering; they shall be of choice flour, baked with leaven, as first fruits to the Lord (Leviticus 23:16). It was to celebrate this festival that devout Jews from every nation under heaven came as pilgrims to Jerusalem, in the familiar story in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 2:1-11). This year the Jewish holiday of Shavuot and the Christian feast of Pentecost perfectly coincide today - just as they did on that famous Pentecost in Acts 2.

 

By then (and even more so in the centuries since the destruction of the Temple), Pentecost had become a commemoration of the covenant at Mount Sinai, the giving of the Torah, God's great gift to his Chosen People (beginning with the “10 Commandments”), which had happened on the sixth day of the third month (Sivan) of the Jewish calendar. just about seven weeks after the exodus from Egypt. On the third new moon after the Israelites had gone out of the land of Egypt, on that very day, they came into the wilderness of Sinai (Exodus 19:1). Just as summer fulfills the promise of spring, the covenant at Mount Sinai fulfilled the promise of Israelite nationhood of which the exodus had been but the beginning. Likewise, the coming of the Holy Spirit fulfilled the promise of the resurrection, transforming the disciples from fearful followers of a now absent Jesus into a Church of faith-filled witnesses empowered to transform the whole world.

 

From the accounts that have come down to us – in the Gospels and in the Acts of the Apostles - one gets a sense of that original Easter season as a time of transition, as the focus perceptibly shifts from what Jesus has been doing to what the Church is going to do. As we all know, it takes time – sometimes a lot of time – to get people properly prepared for a major undertaking. So the Risen Lord prepared his disciples for the task ahead, laying out his program, and getting them “on board” to implement it, empowering them with the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Now, it’s Pentecost, and the implementation part begins in earnest.

Like the Jewish Shavuot, Pentecost is both the conclusion of Passover/Easter and an independent festival commemorating something distinctive (the gift of the Torah/the gift of the Holy Spirit) and the beginning of something new (the summer agricultural season/the time of the Church). In our current calendar, Pentecost marks the transition from Easter to Ordinary Time, the time of fulfillment, the time of the Church, empowered by the Risen Lord’s parting gift of the Holy Spirit to reflect the experience and promise of Christ’s resurrection in our ordinary lives in the world. As his Church, we worship the Risen Lord, now ascended to heaven and seated at his Father’s right hand. Meanwhile, as his Church here on earth, empowered by the Risen Lord’s parting gift of the Holy Spirit we continue Christ’s work in the world.

 

This is how one contemporary Easter hymn, Michael Ward’s In the Breaking of the Bread, describes what happened that first Pentecost: they ran out into the street to tell them, Everyone that they could meet, to tell them. Filled with the Holy Spirit, the Church left that Upper Room, never to return. Instead, they ran out into the street to tell them, Everyone that they could meet, to tell them.

 

One dimension of that work is especially highlighted in the Pentecost story. When the disciples ran out into the street in Jerusalem, they found there, as already mentioned, devout Jews from every nation under heaven, who had come as pilgrims to celebrate the feast. They were fellow Jews, but Jews from many nations speaking different, mutually incomprehensible languages. But, when the apostles spoke, each one heard them speaking in his or her own language.

 

So, a second thing the Holy Spirit did at Pentecost was to break down barriers, beginning with the basic barrier of language. To those who know their Bible, the meaning is clear. The Holy Spirit is undoing the damaging inability of people to communicate that originally come about as a result of human beings’ sinful attempt to construct a tower to get them to heaven on their own (Genesis 11:1-9). Through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, however, the Church undoes the disunity of the human race, reuniting it in something new.  Diversity is a dimension of human existence in this world, but the Holy Spirit’s accomplishment at Pentecost was to begin the journey to the unity and universality which is one of the marks of the Church. Thus, in the 19th century, at a time of increasing immigration to the United States, Servant of God Isaac Hecker (1819-1888), the future founder of the Paulist Fathers reflected upon how the Church in this country was “forming the various races of men and nationalities into a homogeneous people” (The Church and the Age, 1887), a promise still far from being fulfilled in our increasingly fractured society.

 

Both before and after the Tower of Babel, of course, the damage done by human divisions has taken many destructive forms. In his letter to the Galatians, Saint Paul listed several of them (Galatians 5:19-21). Thanks, however, to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in the Church, there are other lists.

 

Years ago, when preparing for Confirmation, we memorized the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit – wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and the fear of the Lord. We call them the gifts of the Holy Spirit, because we don’t produce them on our own. They are given to us – to transform us into true children of God and to enable us to live in a new way. The results of that transformation, the visible effects we experience of the Holy Spirit active in our lives are what we call the fruits of the Holy Spirit. We memorized them too - charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, chastity.

 

That’s how the promise of the resurrection is fulfilled and expresses its effect in our ordinary lives. Pentecost ritualizes annually what happens weekly with the transition from Sunday to Monday. From our Sunday celebration around the unleavened bread which has become the body of our Risen Lord, we are commissioned, filled with the Holy Spirit, to renew the face of the earth as the Risen Christ’s permanent presence in the leavened bread of daily life in the world.

(Photo: Pentecost Mosaic, Basilica di San Marco, Venice. Artistic renditions of that first Pentecost frequently focus on the 12, typically depicted as grouped in a circle around Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and the Mother of the Church. In this famous mosaic in the Cathedral of San Marco in Venice, however, each of the 16 nationalities that are mentioned in the story is represented by a pair of figures, thus representing the universality of the Church.)

Up All Night

Tonight, the first night of the Jewish holy day of Shavuot (Pentecost), many observant Jews keep the custom of staying up all night studying the Torah, in anticipation, as it were, of the glorious revelation being commemorated tomorrow morning. This practice of keeping an all-night vigil is meant to contrast with the supposed behavior of the Israelites at Mount Sinai, who, according to legend, overslept on that famous morning and needed to be awakened by Moses himself. When morning comes, the vigil ends with the festival day liturgy, at which the Torah portion (Exodus 19-20) is read recalling the revelation at Mount Sinai and the giving of the Ten Commandments. (Many stand for the reading of the Ten Commandments to emphasize their special significance.) In Jewish tradition, God's giving of his Law to his Chosen People is imagined as mystical marriage between God and Israel, his bride, and thus the establishment of a new faithful household.

Corresponding to Shavuot, the Christian Pentecost, which commemorates the giving of the Holy Spirit, when the time for pentecost was fulfilled (Acts 2:1) commemorates the creation of the Church as God's new faithful household on earth, established by the mystical marriage between Christ and his Church, effected by the gift of the Holy Spirit. Wouldn't it be fitting to stay up all night in anticipation of so great a gift?

Historically of course, Pentecost did once upon a time enjoy its own all-night vigil. As at Easter, which it in some sense paralleled, the Pentecost vigil was originally baptismal in orientation. Pope Saint Siricius (384-399) associated this practice with that of the apostles who, after all baptized their first converts on the first Pentecost (Acts 2:42). The traditional Pentecost Vigil, which survived (on Saturday morning) in the Roman Rite until 1955, was essentially a shorter version of the Easter Vigil. It lacked the Gallican rituals of the new fire and candle and had only six Old Testament readings instead of twelve. But it repeated the same blessing of baptismal water, and the Mass which followed the vigil exhibited some fo the same peculiarities as that which followed the Easter Vigil - no Introit, the ringing of the bells at the Gloria, no candles carried at the Gospel. Those peculiarities survived until the promulgation of the Pauline Missal in 1969, but the vigil itself disappeared following the Holy Week reforms of the mid-1950s. Presumably, now that the baptismal water was being blessed in public at a (hopefully) well attended Eater Vigil, it must have seemed superfluous to replace it with new water seven weeks later.

Reflecting the curious ambivalence about tradition that characterizes the Pauline Missal, the new rite allows for an optional Pentecost Vigil on Saturday evening, featuring additional scripture readings but no baptismal elements. Its focus is instead on the coming of the Holy Spirit:

Dear brothers and sisters, we hav enow begun or Pentecost Vigil, after the example of the Apostles and disciples, who with Mary, the Mother of Jesus, persevered in prayer, awaiting the Spirit promised by the Lord; like them, let us, too, listen with quiet hearts to the Word of God. Let us meditate on how many great deeds God in times past did for his people and let us pray that the Hoy Spirit, whom the Father sent as the first fruits for those who believe, may bring to perfection his work in the world.

in a world where hardly anyone attends the Easter Vigil, it would probably be utopian to try to introduce a second lengthy late-night service in the current climate. In fact, in all these hers, I have never seen or heard of this Pentecost Vigil being celebrated anywhere. The culture of anticipated Saturday afternoon/evening Mass (originally intended for those who had to work or had other obligations on Sunday) has become just a quick way to get Sunday Mass over with, a prioritization of consumer convenience over worship, any prolongation of the experience is unlikely to be welcomed or even understood.

That said, the vigil readings about the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9), God's manifestation at Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:3-8, 16-20), the prophecy of the dry bones (Ezekiel 37:1-14), and the outpouring of God's Spirit (Joel 3:1-5) might be just what we need to hear at this critical juncture in church and human history. And reading them needn't keep anyone up all night!

Image: Illustration for Pentecost Sunday, Roman Missal (NJ: Catholic Book Publishing Corp, 2011).

The Increasingly Post-Religious Political Right

 

The "In GOP we Trust" image from Nate Hochman's  Opinion Guest Essay, "What Comes After the Religious Right," in today's NY Times is hard to resist. But so too is his article and its argument the long-term decline of religious influence in  "conservative political project," which "is no longer specifically Christian." None of that is or ought to be completely surprising, certainly to those motivated mainly by religious concerns who have watched with growing concern the increasing subordination of religion to right-wing identity politics in so many manifestations organized American Christianity in the United States today.

From a religious perspective, I think it is almost invariably the case that when religion becomes too preoccupied with attaining and/or maintaining political power, it is power that prevails while real religion recedes. History has confirmed this over and over - in the 20th century with the disastrous Catholic integralist regimes in Ireland and Spain, and in the 21st century with the political deformation of much of American Christianity as a result of increasing alliances with the Republican party.

A fellow at the conservative publication National Review, Hochman argue that it enjoys the electoral support of most Christian-identified Republicans, the new conservative coalition "is a social conservatism rather than a religious one, revolving around race relations, identity politics, immigration  and the teaching of American history" and "focused on questions of national identity, social integrity and political alienation."

Demographically, he notes that self-identified Christians in the U.S. dropped from 75% in 2011 to 63% in 2021, while the so-called "nones" grew from 19% to 29%. Meanwhile, the percentage of Republicans who belong to a church went form 75% in 2010 to 65% in 2020. And, in that year, fewer than half of Republicans said "being Christian" was an important part of being American - a 15% drop in just the four years since Trump's election. Indeed, he directly associates the decline in Republican church membership with Trump's rise. The demographic at the heart of trump's base - what sociologist Donald Warren calls "Middle American radicals" (MARs) - "is composed primarily of non-college-educated middle- and lower-middle-class white people, and it is characterized by a populist hostility to elite pieties" but does not share traditional Cristian "moral commitments," in both "their political views" and "their lifestyles."

Hochman sees "the fierceness of today's culture wars" as "actually tied to the decline in organized religion." He cits Sam Francis' 1994 essay "Religious Wrong," which argued that cultural, ethnic and social identities “are the principal lines of conflict” between Middle Americans and progressive elites and that the “religious orientation of the Christian right" served "to create what Marxists like to call a ‘false consciousness’ for Middle Americans.” Francis, Hochman argues, saw Christianity’s universalism as at odds with the defense of the American nation, against mass immigration and multiculturalism. “Organized Christianity today,” Francis wrote in 2001, “is the enemy of the West and the race that created it.” One result, Hochman notes, is that "in the absence of a humanizing Christian ethic, white racial consciousness could fill the void."

One consequence of this change, Hochman suggests, is that "disaffected recent converts in the conservative coalition often object to the new left-wing puritanism for the same reason that they objected to its old right-wing counterpart: It prevents them from doing and saying whatever they please, free of social repercussions. That is its own kind of libertinism. Social conservatives, in contrast, do not oppose the enforcement of social norms as such; they oppose the enforcement of left-wing social norms on the grounds that they are the wrong norms." As a result, "old social conservatives will need to decide how much they are willing to concede in exchange for a political future, and secular converts will need to decide if they are more alienated by the left’s cultural authoritarianism than they are by the G.O.P.’s positions on issues like abortion."

The bottom line for Hochman is that this "new cultural conservatism may protect the embattled minority of traditionalist Christians; it will not restore them to their pre-eminent place in public life, as the old religious conservatism hoped to do."

Platinum Queen

On April 21, 1926, the city of London awoke to booming gun salutes celebrating the birth of a daughter to their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of York. The newborn Princess Elizabeth was then third in line to the British throne - after her still unmarried uncle, the Prince of Wales, and her father, the two eldest sons of King George V and Queen Mary. As such, she was hardly expected ever to inherit the throne. But British politician and diarist "Chips" Cannon (1897-1958) somewhat prophetically wrote, "I have a feeling the child will be Queen of England." Cannon's "feeling" famously came true. In 1936, the Prince of Wales would accede to the British throne as King Edward VIII and abdicate in less than a year, thus fulfilling his father's fearful prediction in a letter to Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin in 1934,  “After I'm dead, the boy will ruin himself within 12 months.” Then, in 1952, after admirably leading the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth through the Second World War, King George VI died, at the relatively young age of 56, and was then indeed duly succeeded by his 25-year old daughter, Elizabeth II, who this year celebrates 70 years on the throne, her "Platinum Jubilee" - longer than the Austrian Kaiser Franz Josef's memorable reign of 68 years.

In these final years of her lengthy reign, Elizabeth II seems to have taken on some of the symbolic resonance of Emperor Franz Josef in his later years, when he functioned as the paternal symbol holding together his fractious multi-national family. 

Queen Elizabeth's Platinum Jubilee is a personal tribute to the important part she has played in British and Commonwealth life for these 70 years - through 14 British prime ministers, 13 U.S. presidents, and 7 Catholic popes. It should also be an act of gratitude for Britain's good fortune in having such a resilient institution as the Crown. (It is worth remembering how unsatisfactory the alternative American presidential system has proved. The newly independent United States replaced the British parliamentary model with a novel presidential one, which has seldom been adopted by authentically democratic states. Most European democracies, which in the 20th-century were deprived of their monarchies because of the vicissitudes of war, have nonetheless retained the parliamentary model rather than adopting the American presidential one.)

Queen Elizabeth is also, of course, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Even more importantly, she is personally a devout Christian whose life has been shaped by her sense of vocational commitment. Nowadays, we regularly lament the paucity of vocations to priesthood and religious life (and increasingly also to marriage and parenthood). There are, of course, many factors that contribute to this problem. But one factor for certain is simply the loss of a real sense of vocation itself, the idea that one's entire adult life be given over to a purpose greater than oneself and which is not about one's individual autonomy or personal choices. The Queen's lifelong commitment to her vocation, ritualized at her solemn coronation in Westminster Abbey 69 years ago today, has made her the most vivid exemplar of what it means not only to have a vocation but also to persevere in being guided by one's vocation for the long haul.

Thy choicest gifts in store/ On her be pleased to pour/ Long may she reign!

TR

 

Only four presidents' faces look down from the South Dakota mountainside upon America. Washington Jefferson, and Lincoln were probably pretty obvious choices at the time. The fourth face may perhaps seem less automatically obvious, the 26th (and youngest) President, Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), President of the United States 1901-1909. TR's majestic presence on Mount Rushmore reflects the monumental impact his presidency had upon a changing country at the turn of the 20th century as well as the important part the American West played in forming him into the man and the president that he became. And, if Mount Rushmore were insufficient fame, TR is now the star of a two-night History Channel series, based  upon historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s New York Times bestseller, Leadership: In Turbulent Times.

The History Channel describes the program as "a rich, panoramic portrait of the first modern President of the United States – Theodore Roosevelt, a champion of social justice, a passionate conservationist and the self-proclaimed “bull moose” who once delivered an 84-minute speech bleeding from the chest after being shot in a failed assassination attempt." There is so much to unpack in that description - "the first modern President," "a champion of social justice" (in the turn-of-the-20th-century Progressive-movement sense), "a passionate conservationist," who among other things gave us the National Parks, and the self-proclaimed “bull moose,” a reference to his outsized, energetic, engaged personality, which is widely and rightly remembered, both positively and negatively.

There are at least two lenses through which to view TR. The first, which obviously accounted for much of his popularity and still resonates on our personality obsessed celebrity culture today, is how larger-than-life personality, which he aggressively cultivated in part to overcome his physical weakness as a child and in part to overcome his personal experiences of familial loss and sorrow. Unlike so many modern celebrities, TR was the real thing - a patrician cowboy, who translated his outsized and extroverted personality into a force for making the American Dream a reality for more people than ever before and began the gradual 20th-century process of moving toward greater justice and equality in American life. The second, of course, is the public policy lens, the enormous transformation of the role of government in the United States, in which he played such a substantial part in making the federal government much more involved in ordinary people's lives and expectations, which his "Square Deal" came to personify, and made the presidency as JFK would later call it the center of action, as well as commitment to making the hitherto largely isolationist U.S. a Great Power on the world stage.

More than a century later, we as a nation still seem to be struggling with what those transformations mean and how both to reinvigorate the progressive spirit of TR's "Square Deal" and to maintain and adapt our increasingly complicated role in the wider world.