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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
May 15, 2005
Pentecost
On this, the 50th day from Easter, Christians commemorate the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles. In the account we read in the book of Acts, “they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.”Many ancient Jewish events are echoed in the moment -- the Feast of Weeks on the 50th day from the Passover; the Feast of Harvest (the barley harvest in Israel), with the bearing of “first fruits”; and perhaps, the giving of the Law to Moses on the 50th day from the Exodus. Pentecost is the second feast of the Christian year, after Easter -- the second great occasion for baptisms, and receptions into the Church. It is the day upon which St. Peter answered the people in Jerusalem, who were startled by what they had seen and cried, “What should we do?” He told them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ.” We call it “Whitsunday” in English, for it is the day on which those to be baptized were, traditionally, dressed in white garments. The French blow trumpets in their churches, the Italians scatter rose leaves from the ceiling, to symbolize the tongues. The priests’ vestments everywhere are red, as tongues. A couple of generations ago, it would not have been necessary to sketch this out; for until so recently in the history of the West, everyone knew such things, whether or not they happened to be practising Christians. The miraculous account of Pentecost in Acts could be taken as legendary or real; I take it as real. But for anyone wishing to be acquainted with the last 20 centuries of our cultural inheritance, some knowledge is required of the Christian times and seasons. That might be taken as a controversial statement. But I did not take it as controversial, as an affront to my own cultural identity, when I lived in Thailand many years ago, and became acquainted with the Buddhist times and seasons. I did it from curiosity, but also from respect, for even a Christian surrounded by a Buddhist culture has an obligation to know what is touching the lives of his neighbours. There, incidentally, they now approach Visakha Puja, which commemorates the birth, enlightenment, and death of Lord Buddha (each of which happened on the full moon of the sixth lunar month) -- the most auspicious day of their year. All over the country, the crowds will stream into the temples to hear the sermons of revered monks, perform acts of merit, and at dusk, wend in candlelight processions around the temple grounds. Lustral waters will be blessed, and sprinkled: for we find echoes throughout the world’s great religions of every Christian sacramental act. Since the world began (or at least, was peopled), in every culture, in every place and time, the passage of time has been sacramentalized. And it is in the nature of each sacrament to be communal, to be the opposite of an act of personal expression. Instead, the individual is taken up in something larger than himself, and restored in the acknowledgement of the divine, the miraculous, operating in the world. What makes our own time and place so remarkable, against the background of the ages, is the absence of this communal life. Our altars have been stripped, with an air of finality, we each go our own way; even the smallest communal unit of the family is reduced by law to an arbitrary combination of “persons”. Paradoxically, individuality is lost, in this deadly experiment in public nihilism. For a man or a woman is more than a biological object; everything that contributes to the identity of each is bestowed from outside. Take away religion, and we are truly reduced to the condition of talking animals, who acknowledge no power beyond the animal urges that goad us: for food and drink, physical safety and comfort, and periodic sexual thrills. Perhaps this is “the end of days”; perhaps only a period of moral darkness, from which by God’s light we will emerge. What, then, should we do? What Peter said: “Repent, and be baptized.” David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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