| Readings for May 20, 2012
This Sunday's Solemnity has a special meaning for our parish because we are named for this final event in the earthly record of the life of Jesus. The copper statue of the ascending Christ, perched atop the church dome, is a constant reminder for everyone in the neighborhood of that core Christian belief that Jesus ascended into heaven 40 days after his resurrection. I "commute" to Ascension from the north side of Chicago, and I am always heartened at the end of my drive (35 minutes on a quiet Sunday morning; an hour or more if I am arriving on a First Friday evening for Taizé Prayer) when I can look up and see Jesus rising in the distance.
But in reading the appointed selection from the Acts of the Apostles I am a bit chastened that I have focused so constantly on the embodied Christ leaving the earth. The white-garmented men who appear as Jesus disappears into the heavens ask the assembled apostles, "Why are you looking at the sky?" Their work --and mine--- remains on earth!
As recounted in Acts, Jesus tells his friends to prepare for the promise of the Holy Spirit, that energetic, uncanny aspect of God's presence that will propel them as witnesses "to the ends of the earth." Although we will formally celebrate the "arrival" of the Holy Spirit next week on Pentecost Sunday, in his final valedictories recounted in Acts and in our Gospel reading from Mark, Jesus prepares the apostles for this special gift that will formulate the direction of the early church and energize these early missionaries of a new faith.
It is unfortunate that the Holy Spirit is so often depicted as a fluttering bird, hanging between the embodied representations of God the Creator/Father and God the Redeemer/Son. In the accounts of Jesus' baptism, when the Holy Spirit appears as a dove or, like a dove there is no indication that the Holy Spirit IS a dove, but we have taken the metaphor and made it an artistic reality. In the second chapter of Acts, which recounts the arrival of the Holy Spirit to the followers of Jesus on Pentecost, the occasion of a Jewish holiday, 50 days after both Passover and Easter, the Holy Spirit arrives with wind and fire. Indeed, the root words for "spirit" in Greek (pneuma), Hebrew (ruach) and Latin (spiritus) are synonymous with the word wind: And not an ephemeral intuition, but a powerful presence that needs no embodiment or further metaphor.
In most religious education curricula, when we teach our Confirmation candidates about the Holy Spirit, we often make our junior high and adult confirmandi memorize the "Gifts of the Holy Spirit" and the "Fruits of the Holy Spirit," as if this Person of the Trinity were just another part of the curriculum. We rarely talk about the Holy Spirit as the Holy Comforter, unless we are talking about the Anglican parish in Kenilworth, IL, of the same name! How many of us, when we are sad or afraid, or looking for comfort, call on the Holy Spirit? Or do we leave that Person on the shelf, to be taken down a few times a year when the Bishop comes in his red garments to bestow the Sacrament of Confirmation, or when we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus, at the tail end of the Christmas season, or on Pentecost, closing out Eastertide?
At the same time that early Christians were developing an awareness of the Holy Spirit, post-Biblical Rabbinic Jewish texts formulated the concept of the Indwelling Presence of God, called in Hebrew the Shekhinah, meaning "the one who dwells." In the texts of the time, the Shekhinah was the presence of God that dwelt above the Ark of the Covenant, where the tablets of the Ten Commandants were originally kept. Later, when the Jewish people were taken into exile and the Temple destroyed, the Shekhinah went with the people into exile. The Shekhinah was often described in mystical texts and folklore as having wings, like the Holy Spirit. There is a night time prayer that is in almost every traditional Hebrew prayerbook that gives the following comfort: at the corners of your bed are four angels to protect you, and all around you is the Shekhinah.
In the transition from medieval to modern conceptions of Judaism, the Shekhinah was set aside or forgotten by many Jews, but in the last 50 years, with a resurgence in interest in Jewish mysticism and female conceptions of God (Shekhinah is a feminine noun in Hebrew), the Shekhinah is again recognized as an important aspect of the Jewish expression of God's presence on earth. In the Paulist Press series on Jewish-Christian theological issues, there is a volume which explores the Holy Spirit and the Shekhinah as parallel recognitions of God's intimate presence to us.
When I was a nurse's aide in college forty years ago, I noticed that when contemporaries would come to visit those Catholic patients who were 50 years of age or older, they would often sing, "Come Holy Ghost" (either in English or in Latin) as a way of soothing, comforting and praying through song. At the time I scoffed at such "retro spirituality," but now, in my pastoral work with Mexican immigrants, in times of stress or trouble (and quite often at the Broadview Deportation Center), we sing the song, "Espiritu Santo, Ven!" ----Come, Holy Spirit!--- calling out to that part of God who reaches out to us, who understands us, who is always available to us, even when we are not aware of his/her presence. It comforts me, and brings me back to those hospital rooms of long ago.
Both Christian and Jewish mystics over the centuries have talked about the "birth pangs of the Messiah" --- that events both joyous and tragic may be signs that the Coming (or Second Coming) of the Messiah is imminent. In today's reading from Acts, we are witness to the "birth pangs of the Holy Spirit." That gift of great grace is a'comin' soon, as one of the great African American spirituals expresses. And if we have the awareness, it is the gift "that keeps on giving," and dwells with us forever.
Kate Kinser is an interfaith educator and immigrant advocate who happily schleps 20 miles to Ascension from her home in Rogers Park.
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