At the Pantheon in Rome each year, Pentecost is celebrated with a mass. However, it’s what happens following the mass that is truly spectacular. A team of firemen scale the dome of the Pantheon and sit poised above its oculus (the “eye” or opening at the centre of the dome).
As the clergy leave the church, the firemen throw thousands of red rose petals through the oculus and these flutter to the floor, a symbol of the Holy Spirit descending to earth.
Those who attend the mass ooh and awe as the flower petals cover the centre of the building, then rush in madly to scoop them up, stuff them in pockets, or throw them into the air once again.
The great feast of Pentecost is sometimes described as the birthday of the church.
Well it didn't start out very well.
The disciples were huddled together in a single enclosed room.
They were closed in on themselves too.
Their hearts were afraid. They had been told to wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit. It was a promise. Jesus had also left them with a mission to go out to all the world and make disciples.
During the ten days between Ascension and Pentecost, they must have been increasingly aware of the magnitude of the task that lay ahead of them.
During the three years of Jesus’ ministry, they had enjoyed His exhilarating presence with them.
During the forty days between the Resurrection and Ascension they had been encouraged and blessed by his visits and appearances.
But during those ten days they must have felt very empty.
They were more aware than ever of the importance of Jesus' presence with them – and now he was gone.
Jesus had told them, “Apart from me you can do nothing,” and how obvious that was.
They were weary, lonely, despondent, grieving and confused.
They were not like minded individuals - far from it- they were grappling with the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus - they were arguing as to what it all meant.
Their emotions oscillated between the joy of knowing Jesus was alive and their grief at standing on the threshold of a baffling life without him.
They had been initially overjoyed to see a new richer life of Jesus after his death and ascension- but they still found it all a mystery and were having a rough time giving up clinging to what had been.
They still did not really know how they were to continue to receive Jesus in a new way.
They could not conceive what the future had in store for themselves or how to live it.
It was now at Pentecost that they were to receive the breath and fire of the spirit to open up the new life that was within them.
This radical new life enabled them to open up to each other their vulnerabilities.
Then they could carry each other to transcend their differences.
They were reconciled in an apostolic community.
Now they were free to move out into the world.
The power of the Holy Spirit was at work in them in a deep and loving way.
The hallmarks of their common vision were
peace,
joy,
love,
faithfulness,
humility,
self control,
patience,
goodness
and long suffering.
They now shared in prayer, the rites of passage, their joys and fears and their hospitality.
Now their hearts had many rooms;
stretched wide open and all encompassing for persons of every temperament , language or background imaginable.
They had a mission.
They had fire in their souls.
Now they could step over the threshold of their fear and spread the message.
Pentecost is not only a singular event but a continuous process of renewal in our individual lives and in the community of the church.
We find ourselves in the world in the space between Easter, Ascension and Pentecost at various times .
At the heart of much of our life and activity a deep spiritual crisis exists.
Despite attempts by the church at reassessment and relevance there remains the haunting sense of something lacking or unfulfilled and a feeling of spiritual impotence.
To be responsive to the Holy Spirit today requires an emptiness, just as it did for the disciples .
The paradox of personal emptiness means we can open up.“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
We all need to rediscover the Pentecostal reality ; we need the dynamic breath and fire of the Holy Spirit to renew us all.
This is a beautiful piece of music with images to match for Pentecost. Lyrics in Latin and English follow below.
There are four Sundays to go before we reach Pentecost Sunday. This marks the end of the Easter season and I am thinking of the fire, light and air that are symbolic of the Holy Spirit.
I have a strong visual sense and I always look for an image to help me along in my reflections and this remarkable series of paintings by a young artist called Randall Stotzfus stirs my soul.
There is something so subtle about these luminous paintings of visionary landscapes…for me Pentecost is about asking God for the gift of vision, to be enlightened, to see through the dim recesses of my soul, to see through into the light in wonder and awe, to breathe deeply in the Spirit of God. The link to his full portfolio is here and the one below is called Pentecost - but there are many others in his collection that could also fit the theme of Pentecost. The small version here does not do justice to the original
but by going to his site you can click on the paintings and get them in their full size- much better. Here is also a link to some background on the artist and gives insight into his faith as a Mennonite which is well worth a read too.
There are no visible figures in his works, although if one looks at the images long enough, strange faces and ghostly apparitions emerge.
Indeed this is the magic of his art. The name of his website, sloweye.net, suggests his intention to slow down vision, recalling Andre Gide’s advice to his readers “Do not understand me too quickly.” What a wonderful phrase : "to slow down vision." I shall try and do that for the next few days -and let my Celtic imagination sit with what God brings me.
The Portuguese writer Jose Saramago says in the epigraph to his novel, Blindness: "If you can see, look. If you can look, observe."
In Portuguese the word observe means to repair/restore/compensate/admit/notice/criticizeand in Saramago's Notebook that I am reading at the moment he has this to say :
"It is possible to see without looking at anything; and it is possible to look without observing, depending on the degree of attention we afford to each stage of the process.
We are all familiar with the way a person will look at his watch and then, if someone asks him the time no more than a second later, has to consult it all over again. When I was a child, the words to observe, (or to restore, as in sight) meant little to me. Then one day one of my uncles called my attention to the particular way bulls always had, of holding their heads up. My uncle used to tell me, " He sees you, and when he has seen you, he looks at you, and this time there's something different about it: he observes you." ======================================================================== My own understanding of this can be related by describing my experience some years ago as an undergraduate studying for my degree in Medical Microbiology. Not surprisingly we spent a fair amount of time looking down microscopes and it always took several minutes to adjust my eyes to the tiny scale of microbial life.
For the first few minutes I was seeing, then as my eyes adjusted I began to look and finally after a few more minutes I really was able to observe.
This is a skill that has to be learnt. It takes a lot of time and patience but once acquired the end result was for me a revelation. I vividly remember the huge impact this had on me, not just as a scientist in a material sense of grasping what was there but on an emotional and even spiritual level .
Later on, as a lecturer, I was able to see (and observe !!) the same excited response , that A Ha !, moment in my students when for the first time they actually got it !!
Once I began to really observe the boundaries between myself and the microbial life began to dissolve and it was as if I had crossed a threshold and merged into their environment. It was precisely at that point that I was awestruck by the immense aesthetic beauty of the world beneath my eyes.
( Yet, my emotional and spiritual reponse is another whole story: for it says in The Little Prince " It is only with the heart that once can see clearly: what is essential is invisible to the eye !! )
So it is with my approach to learning about God through prayer and reflection . First I have to give it time and by that I mean really slow down ; then and only then can I cross that boundary between myself and God and then I can look at God. Then I can observe God and with that my heart can be opened, my separateness, my isolation and longing for wholeness can be restored and all my criticisms and questions can be admitted and noticed !!
Presumably God as God does not have this problem as God being God is always seeing, always looking at me , always observing me.
So that's what I am going to try and spend some time on these next few weeks.
I need to practice looking and not just seeing and also observing God !!
Wish me luck and if you try it yourself let me know how you get on and we can compare notes !!
Image via Wikipedia
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