Come Down, Love Divine
“When you send forth your Spirit, they are made, and so you renew the face of the earth.”
Pentecost as portrayed in a Jyoti Sahi’s Life of Christ mural (1983), painted for the Holy Cross Brothers, Katpadi, Karnakata, India. As with many depictions of the descent of the Holy Spirit, Mary stands at the center of the disciples (cf. Acts 1:14); here, even more so. Mary, the mother of our Lord, who gave birth to God the Word enclosed in human flesh, is here symbolized as the mother of the Church as well: the Spirit taking residence in her womb, and the disciples circling her as a nimbus around the mandorla emanating from the center from her being.
The amount of emphasis placed on the Marian dimension of the feast obviously extends beyond what is biblically warranted, and it is reasonable to object to it on that grounds. Indeed, this is not an image that all Christians will find appealing, or even acceptable: caution is very much warranted for both principle and practical reasons. Conversely, we see depicted here an inward dimension to the miracle of Pentecost that is fundamentally and necessarily hidden. Both logically and temporally, before the Spirit sends the Church into the world so that we we hear the public proclamation of the Gospel, and see the public manifestation of the institution of the Church in the life of the world, through an inward energy, the life of the Spirit gestates invisibly within the inner being.
We cannot control whether and how the Spirit alights in this hidden dimension any more than we can control whether and how it manifest publicly. But we do know what it makes manifest, namely, the foolishness of God that is wiser than any human wisdom, the Cross of Christ, and his blood shed for our salvation. To him alone be all glory and honor and praise, now and forever!
I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth…You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
— The Holy Apostle and Evangelist St. John (John 14:16-17)
Pentecost Sunday
Texts for This Week
Prayer
Almighty God, on this day, through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, you revealed the way of eternal life to every race and nation: Pour out this gift anew, that by the preaching of the Gospel your salvation may reach to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Holy Spirit Fiya
The Hui Poly Intervarsity student group from the University of Hawaii leads song and dance invoking “Holy Spirit Fiya” in many tongues and forms for Urbana ‘15, under the leadership of Moanike’ala Nanod-Sitch of Ka ‘Ohana o ke Aloha church in Kaneohe. The first half of the song is in English (lyrics below), but starting at 3:51, the singers launch into seven different Polynesian or Native American languages: Yup’ik, ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i, Fijian, Tongan, Samoan, Hawaiian Pidgin, and Lakota.
A bonus for the feast, from art music rather than church music: here is Hiromi Uehara and Edmar Castaneda playing their “The Elements: Fire” — an intense and original duet for harp and piano. The performance defies description: although I will say — I don’t know that I had ever seen anyone “shred” on a harp before, and I’m not sure what to call Hiromi’s passionate flights across the keys of that piano, but I wasn’t sure that the instrument was going to survive!
