Robert Barron - Surrender to the Spirit
Peace be with you. Friends, we come to this great feast of Pentecost, the culmination of the Easter season, the feast that along with Easter and Christmas is the most important in the Church year, and it's sort of par excellence the feast of the Holy Spirit. I don't think we talk enough about the Holy Spirit. That's a critique, by the way, of the Western Church, of the Catholic Church, that even though, of course, we mention and we honor and we worship the Holy Spirit, we don't speak sufficiently of this third person of the Trinity. And there might be some truth to that. Vatican II, I think, tried to bring the Holy Spirit very much into the forefront, so I want to continue in that spirit.
All three readings today are marvelous, and I want to just dip in briefly to each one and bring out some features of the Holy Spirit. Listen now. Our first reading is from that second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, the famous account of the first Pentecost. "When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together", they, the disciples and the Blessed Mother. "Suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house where they were". So wind, wind, a great symbol of the Holy Spirit. Mysterious? You bet. Where's it come from? Where's it going? As Jesus himself said, we don't always know. The wind is strange, mysterious, elusive, unpredictable, and powerful.
There's the point, I think. Powerful. See, when you get in touch with the Holy Spirit, you're getting in touch with the love that connects the Father and the Son. You're getting in touch with the love that God is and therefore with the very force that gave rise to the universe. So at the risk of sounding a little bit cosmic and grandiose, you're in touch with the most powerful force imaginable. Where do we see it? We see it in the lives of the saints. We talk about politicians and generals and cultural leaders as powerful, and indeed they are. Think of a Julius Caesar or a Napoleon. But they're nothing when compared with the power of the saints. Because worldly rulers are going to use weapons and they're going to use political machinations.
And sure those are powerful forces, but they're nothing compared to the power by which the entire universe is created and sustained. And the great saints, in the measure that they cooperate with the Holy Spirit, tap into and unleash this power. Examples abound, but I always think of John Paul II in Poland. Because it happened in my lifetime, in the most extraordinary way, where this man who didn't have an army, didn't have tanks or guns or anything, had no political power in the ordinary sense of the term, but by God, he had the Holy Spirit. And tapping into that Spirit, he unleashed a power that did indeed undo the Soviet Union and the block of nations that surrounded it.
Nobody, when I was a young man, would've predicted that the Soviet Union would collapse without some great cataclysmic world war. And yet it happened because somebody who was deeply in touch with the Holy Spirit unleashed that great wind, that great power. Or think of a Mother Teresa in a somewhat different context. Mother Teresa, this tiny lady, this simple woman with no power whatsoever in a worldly sense, but she had the Holy Spirit. She cooperated with the Holy Spirit and unleashed this force.
Now, it covers the whole world, the community that she founded. It's true of all the saints. So here's the thing, everybody listening to me today: You want power? And I don't mean the little power of the world, I mean the real thing. You want the real thing, authentic power? Surrender your life over to the Holy Spirit. Say, "Lord, look, it's not what I want. It's not my projects and plans. It's your projects and plans. Lord, it's what you want to accomplish through me". You will find, trust me, you will find you will tap into this source of power to change things for good, change things for the better in your life, in your family, in your place of work.
Surrender by a conscious act to the Spirit, and you unleash this great driving wind. Same thing. And then secondly, we hear, "There appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them". Tongues as of fire. So fire is a symbol of the Spirit, obviously. Fire, which destroys what needs destroying, fire that also unleashes extraordinary power. I sensed that when I was in California and these great fires swept through forests and swept through communities. But the important thing here, I think, is not just fire, it's "tongues as of fire". What are the marks of the Holy Spirit? Power, yes indeed, but also fiery speech. Fiery speech is a mark of the Holy Spirit.
Now, this is from Paul through Chrysostom and Jerome and Augustine and Anselm and Aquinas and Ignatius and G.K. Chesterton and John Paul II and the Little Flower and Teresa of Avila. Words, the power of words, fiery speech. I don't mean the sort of mulling speech of a child or sort of hand-wringing speech, or "I got more questions than answers". Bore me to death with all that. I grew up with that, a Church that was too preoccupied with all of its questions and all of its hesitations. No, no. When you got the Holy Spirit in you, fiery speech tends to come forth from you. Words about the Lord, words about Jesus, words about the Church that are meant to set the world on fire.
Think of Fulton Sheen in the twentieth century. His fiery words changed people's hearts and lives by the millions. That's what the Holy Spirit does, fiery speech. Now, as we go on in this marvelous passage, we hear this: "There were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem," because it was the Jewish feast of Pentecost. "At this sound, they gathered in a large crowd, but they were confused because each one heard [the disciples] speaking in his own language". So this famous phenomenon of the first Pentecost. The disciples go out full of power, full of fiery speech, and all these Jews from all over the world nevertheless heard them speaking in his own language. It's the undoing of Babel, isn't it?
The Tower of Babel, when human speech was divided; we're set apart from each other, separated, scattered. In this great act of Pentecost, this great day of Pentecost, the speech of the world is united. Now, it doesn't mean, obviously, that now all particular languages are eliminated, but see, it means something deeper, more important. It means that when you speak of the Holy Spirit and the things of God, you are communicating with the deepest part of the person you're talking to. You can talk about the weather. You can talk about sports teams. So what? But when you're talking about the Holy Spirit, when your tongue is on fire with the power of the Spirit, you will, trust me, reach the deepest part of the person you're talking to.
Same the other way. When he or she speaks of the Holy Spirit, it will resonate in the deepest part of you. See, deep down, despite all the differences on the surface, we all do indeed speak the same language because we come forth from the same source, from the Holy Spirit. That's the point here, I think, everybody. And look at this: I love this detail when the author of Acts, St. Luke, bothers to tell us where all these people are from. They're Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians. They're from Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Egypt, Libya, near Cyrene, even travelers as far as Rome. Now, if I had a map, I could show this to you.
Think of Jerusalem here right in the middle where this is happening; the countries and places he's describing form a kind of ellipse around Jerusalem. If you were to just take them one by one, like an ellipse that surrounds Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit is a gathering power because the diabolic, I've told you before, "diabalein" in Greek means to scatter, and so "diabolos," the devil, is a scattering power. You know the Holy Spirit is in you, you know the Holy Spirit's around, when people start coming together. Remember now in the prophet Isaiah: In the day of the Messiah, Isaiah prophesized, all the tribes of Israel will go up to Mount Zion. But then, he says, even all the tribes of the world will come together.
You see what Luke is saying? It's happened. It's happened. Here they are on Mount Zion. Here they are in Jerusalem. And through the power of the Spirit, all these nations, once scattered, come together around this central place. And the many languages, in a way they're eliminated because the one great language of the Spirit's being spoken. If you want one of the clearest signs that the Holy Spirit's operative, look for gathering and unifying power. You want the diabolic, the dark spirit? Scattering, scattering power. That's what's happening on the day of Pentecost through the power of the Spirit. How about a quick word about the marvelous second reading from First Corinthians? Such a marvelous letter.
Paul says this: "There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit", capital S, "different forms of service, but the same Lord... different workings but the same God". Again, there's the unifying, gathering quality. I love how the Church Fathers played with this image. They often compared the Holy Spirit to rainwater. Think of the rainwater that falls. It's this one element, water, falling from the sky. But look what it gives rise to. Think of all of the plants and all of the flowers and all of the trees in their practically infinite variety to which the one rain gives rise.
So the one Spirit. Yes indeed, the one Spirit, the love that connects the Father and the Son, is breathed forth into the world. What's it give rise to? Think now of all the different types of saints. Think of all the different types of activities in the Church. Think of across space and time all the ways the Church has expressed its life, the fecund variety of holiness. Well, those are the many flowers and plants and trees to which the one Spirit gives rise. And then this, I'll close with it. There's so much more to say. I always run out of time when talking about the Holy Spirit. There's so much to say.
Listen: "For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons, and we were all given to drink of one Spirit". Go back to Paul's time, first-century Eastern Mediterranean. These are two of the most fundamental divisions in the human family. They would've referred to Jews and Greeks or Jews and Gentiles. It's two groups. It's one of the most basic ways they oriented themselves. What are you? Are you a Jew or a Gentile, Jew or Greek? What Paul is saying is something new has happened so that those divisions and separations don't really matter, because whether you're a Jew or Greek, you've got the one Spirit in you. And then, maybe even more radically, slave or free person.
Again, in his time and place, one of the most fundamental divisions you could find. Slaves were very thick on the ground in Paul's time. Millions and millions of slaves. There's a fundamental division. Paul's saying, well, but they share in the one Spirit. And so what unites them is far, far more important than even this most basic division.
Can I make this remark? I think N.T. Wright might have said this, or maybe it was Tom Holland: Paul is planting a sort of time bomb here. In time, this idea, radical, radical idea, would give rise to liberation movements, including and especially the abolition of slavery. But see, I would argue in the West, it begins with a text like this. The Holy Spirit is more fundamental than anything that divides us. There's the unifying power of the Spirit. Again, everybody, much more we could say, but savor today this great feast of Pentecost. And bottom line, in prayer today, today, open yourself to the Holy Spirit. I think you'll be surprised at the power you thereby unleash. And God bless you.