Pentecost: "What strength will hold us when we can no longer stand? "
Happy Whit Sunday!
We know what human surges feel like and when we have the opportunity to emerge somewhat from what is conventional, or from what can be bleak in life, those moments pass as the days go by. On this day, we celebrate this surge of Joy of God who comes to let us know what he is all about. He is not subject to changes and that is why we can rejoice because there is a joy that holds. This happiness does not come from us, it is a joy, a vigor that comes from Him. Do you yearn to know the joy of God?
In words of Saint Jean-Marie Vianney, from the parish of Ars, nicknamed “Curé d’Ars”:
When you’re in the Holy Spirit, the heart expands in divine love. Fish never complain about having too much water. Without the Holy Spirit, there's nothing we can do. We think we're praying but we're not praying, we're simply talking, chatting. If you hang a fish up in a tree, it will clearly still be a fish but it will not be able to live without water.
Without the Holy Spirit, we are like a pebble on the road... Take a sponge soaked in water in one hand and a small pebble in the other and press them against each other with equal strength. Nothing will come out of the pebble, while an abundance of water with come out from the sponge. Without the Holy Spirit, the soul is like pebble from which nothing can be drawn.
The only proof we have of Jesus’ Resurrection is his action in our hearts, it is the Holy Spirit. That is why this feast of Pentecost is the birth of the Church, the birth of these women and men who discover, within themselves - what Jesus had told them but they did not believe - that rivers of living water can rise within us. We are not doomed to stay on the riverbank and say: "I would quite like to dive in but I dare not, it's too cold." We need plentifulness,
overabundance even, otherwise we are always afraid of missing something.
Is there a yearning inside us that never dies? Is there a thirst that keeps coming, even though it is sated? Is there a strong enough desire in us to avoid a total meltdown when at some point things happen? What strength has driven us and what strength will hold us when we can no longer stand? Man's yearning is to live, but not just to live forever... We very well know the difficulties of old age. Life expectancy may increase but we do not go back to our youth, and it is difficult to go into a longer lasting life that diminishes slowly but surely. There needs to be a yearning that does not die and since we all disappear, it isn’t one we can give to ourselves. For this very reason, Jesus tells us, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3.16)
Once we begin to receive God's intimate life and once we let Christ lead us, we no longer seek quick, easy yet unsatisfactory answers. We no longer have a survival drive, surges to try to get out of things by ourselves, but we have, within us, the very momentum of Divine People, God’s very love of life and a happiness of knowing Him shows. St. Paul says, "God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us." (Romans 5.5)
It isn’t just any kind of love, it is an all-encompassing one that wants the whole person, forever. This love opens up to others, and not just to others but also to the deep mystery of God because it is about loving Him and not just about expecting some kind of benefit. Many people, when they think of the Holy Spirit, think of a superpower that would come to compensate for our inadequacies as if it were a medicine taken to be fitter. It is not about that, it is about what man has in the depths of himself, this yearning for God in whom he is created every minute.
Jesus’ disciples, while experiencing that Jesus is with them, also experience that he is no longer present, reachable as he once was. Something appears within them, and while he is absent during those moments, it is as if he were present but in a new way. He is not present on the outside, but He is present on the inside. He now lives within them as they could see the presence of his Father within him in the past. But they are having a hard time getting used to it as they don’t know how to adjust and are unsure how to express and say these things. When they do speak out, people open wide eyes in shock and make them feel like they have gone mad: we have never seen anyone who died be alive!
They don't know how to say what's going on. They themselves are in the process of changing, opening up to the unknown of the One they had met. The one they saw dead and buried is the very same, this Jesus of Nazareth who appears to them as God. This is what Thomas will say: "My Lord and my God." (John 20,28) They could never have suspected that the whole divine could manifest itself in the humble Nazarene. "God"? It's got to have panache! And the one they walked with neither liked panache nor prestige. But the one who died between two criminals, crucified together with them and who was buried in haste, is Him!
That day, with Mary amongst them, there is this presence, this intensity and this flame that grows, like a fire that begins to smoke a little with the embers warming up. Being close to each other, the embers incandescence increases and the flame appears. This is what happens on that day. It needed all this time for them to dare to venture looking at each other, to dare to risk speaking out loud how Jesus made them feel. They talked, they said what they were going through... And as they spoke, they were no longer simply friends of Jesus as they were in the past. They were the same good old people, but they say how Jesus surprises them, works within them, and as and when they talk about him, a warmth appears between them. This is what the disciples of Emmaus say: "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?" (Luke 24,32) They do not know that it is him but the burning desire grows, until such time as this incandescence bursts into flames.
What is happening is an event that overwhelms and reveals intensities that, until then, were reduced to the measure of how we know to do things, of what we need... It doesn't go very far. And now it's a vibrant and intense desire, as if a sudden gust of wind was needed. It's as if God was saying, "This has to change! Otherwise, you're always going to stay in what is lukewarm. There has to be an intensity to be able to expand, to be able to open up and to see that there is more! »
We are dying of "not enough"... This fire that seizes them, that exceeds them, that they no longer control, is a surge of joy and they begin speaking out ... "Everyone heard them in their native language" What is a mother tongue? The motherly language of God is this love, deep within us, that constitutes us. We are called to existence in a cherishing of the Divine Persons. And as they start speaking out, the disciples reach a space of goodness that is in every being.
Then, this blaze appears, this event made of powerful breath, as if a noise had shaken a house ... As if, deep down inside, volcanoes, under the earth's crust, were rising. God's lava rises within us. The disciples experience all the depth, the width, the height, the length of this Love that cannot even think possible and which makes us see. One only sees where intensity exist...
Only the intensity of love overcomes death and resurrects us. Where intensity of love does not exist, everything unravels. On this Whit Sunday, the disciples are first to experience this grasping of Jesus’ body and soul and to experience what keeps them alive. They are now convinced that what they have heard and seen; they begin to discover it from within. They become sighted and they have, above all, this unwavering courage of God to go ahead, go ahead again... This vigor is coming! Once touched by Jesus, one turns relentless. One can't do anything by oneself. One needs to be lifted, to be taken and the single thing Christ asks of us is to stay with him.
Whit Sunday is this happy and joyful celebration of experiencing Jesus, which is communicated, and it is also the feast of man's yearning when he begins to open up. I wish for you to yearn for God... I wish for you to ask for Charity... Without Charity, no perception is possible. Paul will go on to say, "If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have absolute faith so as to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and exult in the surrender of my body, but have not love, I gain nothing. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a ringing gong or a clanging cymbal." (Cf.1Corinthians 13,1...3) Love only is what makes you see, love only brings the desire and love for him. And the love of him will necessarily reverberate onto my brothers because when we learn this language from Him towards others, we learn this language from each of us towards others. There are no other ways: "Without me, you can't do anything... Stay with me... »
Fr. Roger Robert
Whit Sunday - Sunday, May 27, 2012
French to English translation by Debbie Garrick and Cécile Simon
Pentecost Breeze at La Roche d'Or
"Ouvrez vos voiles", CD Tissage d'or 2 (Communauté de la Roche d'or)
To see the lyrics in French of the music "Ouvrez vos voiles"