Pentecost: To woo back a world’s desire.

arli­er this year, in the weeks lead­ing up to Lent, I had been look­ing at a few of Christi­na Ros­set­ti’s poems for the litur­gi­cal year.  On Pen­te­cost, I’d like to return to Ros­set­ti, and her poem “Whit­sun Day.”

At sound as of rush­ing wind, and sight as of fire
Lo! flesh and blood made spir­it and fiery flame,
Ambas­sadors in Christ’s and the Father’s Name,
To woo back a world’s desire.

These men chose death for their life and shame for their boast,
For fear courage, for doubt intu­ition of faith,
Chose love that is strong as death and stronger than death
In the pow­er of the Holy Ghost.

DEAth FOR tHEIR LIFE AND sHAMe for their boast

When I reread this poem, I think of the mid­dle two lines as par­tic­u­lar­ly apt.  Although they com­prise the end of one sen­tence and the begin­ning of the next—the end of one stan­za and the begin­ning of the next—they could cred­i­bly be thought of as a sin­gle sen­tence, a sin­gle state­ment about the first-cen­tu­ry apos­tles and first-cen­tu­ry Church:

“To woo back a world’s desire[, t]hese men chose death for their life and shame for their boast.”

Con­sid­er the mar­tyr­dom that the ear­ly Church embraced for the truth of Christ!

St. Stephen was stoned to death for blas­phe­my after pro­claim­ing that he could see Jesus Christ stand­ing at the right hand of God.

St. James, the son of Zebedee, was exe­cut­ed by the sword at the order of King Herod.

Pope St. Peter was cru­ci­fied upside down.

St. Paul was behead­ed dur­ing the reign of Nero.

St. Poly­carp was burned at the stake for refus­ing to burn incense to the Roman emper­or Anton­i­nus.

Justin Mar­tyr, like St. Paul, was behead­ed.

The first sev­er­al cen­turies of the Church were an age of mar­tyr­dom.  But (or there­fore!) these apos­tles and mar­tyrs and saints con­vert­ed an Empire and, in the cen­turies after that, built West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion.  To woo back a world’s desire, they chose death for their life and shame for their boast.  It began at Pen­te­cost.

Above is a 2008 pho­to­graph of the tra­di­tion­al site, on Mt. Zion, of the Last Sup­per and the first Pen­te­cost.  Accord­ing to Bargil Pixn­er (1921–2002), archae­ol­o­gist and Bene­dic­tine monk, the orig­i­nal Church of the Apos­tles is locat­ed beneath the cur­rent struc­ture.  Not all schol­ars are sure; it makes for a good sto­ry for tourists and pil­grims.  But the events and loca­tions of the first-cen­tu­ry Church should not be rel­e­gat­ed to the dusty provinces of schol­ars and tourists and monks.  Pen­te­cost is not just an event that once hap­pened in his­to­ry, 2000 years ago.

The more I look at the world I find myself in today, the more I am con­vinced that the twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry Church must become the first-cen­tu­ry Church.  We must allow our hearts, our spir­its, our lives to be an upper room—a cenacle—in which the fire of the Holy Spir­it can ignite and prompt us, if nec­es­sary, to shame and to mar­tyr­dom.  For today the Church is con­front­ed with the very same evil it was con­front­ed with in the first cen­tu­ry:  pagan­ism.  The only dif­fer­ence today is that it is a sec­u­lar, and often a sta­tist, pagan­ism.  But it is no less hos­tile to truth and to the ways of God.  It is no less ugly a place to find your­self in in time.

first build the temple

St. Paul wrote to Tim­o­thy that he was to preach the truth in sea­son and out of sea­son (2 Tim. 4:2).  No Chris­t­ian who looks at the world today can doubt that we are out of sea­son.  But if in the ear­ly cen­turies of the Church the saints and mar­tyrs wooed back a world’s desire, well, the world has once more lost its desire and is once more in need of woo­ing.  We need to love the world enough that we can refuse to rec­on­cile our­selves to its ways, so that its ways may become the ways of Christ.  And to do that, we must be will­ing to accept death for our life and shame for our boast.

In a poem I hope to be look­ing at in more detail dur­ing the remain­der of the year, “Cho­rus­es from the Rock,” T.S. Eliot writes:

Why should men love the Church?  Why should they love her laws?
She tells them of Life and Death, and of all they would for­get.
She is ten­der where they would be hard, and hard where they like to be soft.
She tells them of Evil and Sin, and oth­er unpleas­ant facts.
They con­stant­ly try to escape
From the dark­ness out­side and with­in
By dream­ing of sys­tems so per­fect that no one will need to be good.
But the man that is will shad­ow
The man that pre­tends to be.
And the Son of Man was not cru­ci­fied once for all.
The blood of mar­tyrs not shed once for all,
The lives of the Saints not giv­en once for all:
But the Son of Man is cru­ci­fied always
And there shall be Mar­tyrs and Saints.
And if blood of Mar­tyrs is to flow on the steps
We must first build the steps;
And if the Tem­ple is to be cast down
We must first build the Tem­ple. (p. 106)

Eliot is speak­ing here of the Tem­ple of your body.  That is the Tem­ple to be built; as St. Gian­na Beretta Mol­la said, “Our body is a cena­cle, a mon­strance:  through its crys­tal the world should see God.”  Build in your­self the steps and the tem­ple upon which mar­tyrs may be slain, and through which the world in its clum­si­ness may find its way back to God.  Our task as Catholics is not mere­ly to look at the world and point an accusato­ry fin­ger and cry, “Shame!”  Our task is to show the world how to fall in love with God again.  The world’s desire can be wooed back, but first the Church must kin­dle the fire of Pen­te­cost with­in itself.

And by “the Church” I mean all its mem­bers.  This is not an age for lazy or casu­al Catholics; we can­not afford to take our Catholi­cism light, or only when we desire it.  In Lumen Gen­tium (here), the Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil said this about the mis­sion of the laity:

For all their works, prayers, and apos­tolic endeav­ors, their ordi­nary mar­ried and fam­i­ly life, their dai­ly occu­pa­tions, their phys­i­cal and men­tal relax­ation, if car­ried out in the Spir­it, and even the hard­ships of life, if patient­ly borne—all these become “spir­i­tu­al sac­ri­fices accept­able to God through Jesus Christ. (LG 34)

All their works; all their prayers; all their endeav­ors; all of their life.  We are not Catholics because we hap­pen to show up for Mass, only to make a bee­line for the park­ing lot before the last verse of the last song has been sung, and then for the rest of the week live just as do the pagans around us.  We are Catholics, rather, only when Catholi­cism is the air that we breathe.  In 2007, while arch­bish­op of Den­ver, Charles Cha­put had this to say when address­ing the top­ic of anti-reli­gious big­otry and how it must be con­front­ed:

If [the world you find your­self in today] does­n’t make you want to defend and push back for your faith, maybe you need to take an hon­est look at how Catholic you real­ly want to be.  This isn’t a time for tepid or half-heart­ed believ­ers.  If you claim to be Catholic, if you claim to be a per­son of reli­gious faith, then you need to live it all the way. …

If you want to serve the com­mon good and build a bet­ter future, you’ll nev­er do it by hid­ing your faith in the clos­et.  You’ll nev­er do it by being Catholic in pri­vate and some­thing else in pub­lic.  His­to­ry is made by peo­ple with con­vic­tions, and the courage and pas­sion to live those con­vic­tions. … [We must] live our faith more deeply and authen­ti­cal­ly, not less.

Today, Pen­te­cost, is the birth­day of the Church.  Dea­con Alex Jones, who was a Pen­te­costal min­is­ter before con­vert­ing to Catholi­cism, likes to say that Catholics are the orig­i­nal Pen­te­costals.  But we need to become that Church again.  We need to become the Church of the first cen­tu­ry again—not by throw­ing all away all the devel­op­ment that has occurred since, but instead by recov­er­ing the faith in the air that we breathe and the will­ing­ness to be mar­tyrs to con­vert a pagan world to Christ.

let the fire not be quenched in the forge

Again in “Cho­rus­es from the Rock,” T.S. Eliot tells us how we are to do that:

Where the bricks are fall­en
We will build with new stone
Where the beams are rot­ten
We will build with new tim­bers
Where the word is unspo­ken
We will build with new speech
There is work togeth­er
A Church for all
And a job for each
Every man to his work.

Much to cast down, much to build, much to restore
Let the work not delay, time and the arm not waste
Let the clay be dug from the pit, let the saw cut the stone
Let the fire not be quenched in the forge.

Let the fire not be quenched in the forge. 

Else­where, Eliot says, “Make per­fect your will.”  Pen­te­cost is not about get­ting excit­ed fuzzies at the thought of being “inspired” by the Holy Spir­it; it’s not about jump­ing up and down and wav­ing your arm every which way and talk­ing in tongues and think­ing that you are say­ing some­thing coher­ent or mean­ing­ful.  I mean, please; get ahold of your­self.  Pen­te­cost is not about you; it’s about keep­ing the fire alive in the forge and mak­ing per­fect your will.  The apos­tles who received the Holy Spir­it at Pen­te­cost were about to go out and get them­selves killed.

Much to cast down, much to build, much to restore.  We can do the work that lies ahead, but only if we make per­fect our will, only if we become Catholics through and through, down to our breath and our blood and our bones.

So today, remem­ber the apos­tles who first received the Holy Spir­it at Pen­te­cost.  To woo back a world’s desire, these men chose death for their life and shame for their boast.

Hap­py solem­ni­ty of Pen­te­cost.