Baxter goes a little crazy from time to time. I don’t know what comes over him. It usually occurs in the evening, but there have been incidents in the middle of the day, and even the morning. What happens is that he bolts upright on all fours, stands at attention for a second, then he starts running through the house. He stops when he gets to his destination, pauses for a moment, and then starts his run at full speed again back to where he started. Usually, these episodes come with two or three repetitions. After that, he lies down in one of his normal prone positions as if nothing just occurred -- a brief moment of madness in an otherwise boring day.
Pentecost seems like such a moment from the descriptions we hear about it in the scriptures. The Holy Spirit descends on the first disciples like tongues of fire, and they begin speaking in different languages so that all can understand. This frightened group of followers of the Lord Jesus, hiding in the upper room, is now set ablaze with energy and conviction to announce the good news of God’s salvation in Christ to anyone who will listen. The resurrection victory over sin and death explodes with the outpouring of the Spirit, and it seems that nothing will stop its spread through those who believe.
We share the same Spirit, but would anyone know it from the way we speak and act? Centuries after the first Christian Pentecost the Church became conventional. It started under Constantine who wanted to consolidate his empire with the Church at its center. Eventually, the persecuted became the powerful, the outcasts became the establishment, and what was new and exciting for the first Christians became conventional and taken for granted by later faithful. The fire of Pentecost began to smolder, creating at times more smoke than light, and the energy of the Spirit was now tamed by rules of order and management. The surprising God who opened tombs and appeared in unexpected settings eventually became the God of the court, dressed in finery and regulated by the protocol of royalty. The madness of the Word made flesh, the dead raised to new life and the Spirit bringing peace, forgiveness and understanding to all was hidden away.
Perhaps that is why Blessed John Paul II called for a new Pentecost in the Church. From time to time in the history of the Church, someone comes along to stir the Spirit and revive the energy and fervor of the original time. The Irish monks after the Dark Ages came with missionary zeal to Europe to re-Christianize the continent. Saints Francis and Dominic and their followers broke with conventional monasticism to bring the gospel in a new way to the new cities and universities arising in the Middle Ages. Saints Ignatius of Loyola, Jane Frances de Chantal, Vincent de Paul, and many others started new ways of spreading the Good News that were “outside the box” but where the people were struggling to live with meaning and dignity. In the more recent past, figures like Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, Dorothy Day, Saint Damien of Molokai, Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, Blessed John Henry Newman, Saint Edith Stein and others have shown the power of God in various settings and new ways to both the elite of this world and the least in it. Indeed, the Spirit has been moving through the Church over the centuries.
Now it is our turn. What will it take for a new stirring of the Spirit in the Mon Valley, its churches and communities? We have been through hard times, but in the history of the Church, it was precisely in such times that the Spirit found a new fervor. When the old ways don’t work any longer, the Spirit inspires new wisdom to try a different approach. When people are abandoning the church out of ignorance, poverty or complacency, the Spirit raises witnesses who show that belief is reasonable, effective for bettering the human condition, and a source of happiness because it calls for a life of service driven by a divine purpose and meaning. We rely upon the past not to repeat it, but to give us confidence in the present and future. God did not abandon the Church during difficult times in the past, and He will not do so now. But we must rise to the challenge with the gifts of the Spirit we each have been given.
Use your head, trust your gut, get off your duff, and give the Spirit a chance to move you in new ways to bring new life and hope to a different, but still redeemable, world. Let Baxter’s mad dashes inspire you to get moving in the Spirit again.
