[Acts 2 is read on Sunday and Gen 11 is an option for the Vigil. As I had a Vigil and Sunday morning Mass, I varied the below homily by giving reminders of the reading they hadn't heard proclaimed.]
Fire fascinates us. I was just out at a retreat center this week
with some of my brothers in Holy Cross, and for some of our small group
sessions, my group happened to in a room with a gas fire-place. It wasn’t
particularly cold, but I noticed that almost instinctively one of the members
of my group turned the fire on whenever we went into the room. I guess it’s
similar to how we light candles even though the electric lights here work
perfectly well. Fire captures our gaze and delights us. This is as true with how a fire place makes a
space feel more humane, more conducive to reflection, to when we gaze up at
those firey dots in the night’s sky, or think about some campfire conversations
maybe you’ve had. Fire not just warms
us, it lights up our world, it cooks our food, it fascinates us and attracts
our gaze.
I invite
you to raise your heads and look up.
Because those of us who are baptized (and if you’re not, let me know and
we’ll see about getting that sorted) have been gifted with God’s own dignity
and life, through water and the Spirit and resting on us are tongues as of
fire, descended from above, as they descended on that first Pentecost after
Jesus’ resurrection. Tomorrow at the
cathedral in Fort Wayne, and next week at St. Matthew’s cathedral, adults from
all over this diocese will come together to receive the sacrament of
confirmation. For those of us who are
confirmed (and again, if you’re not, talk to us), those tongues of fire are
strengthened, made firmer, more vibrant.
It’s a blazing fire, tenderly lapping the top of your head, and it
should capture our gaze, it should draw us up, to the full stature God created
us to have, to gaze with longing at the heavens for which God has claimed us,
by making us mature, confident, heads-held-high, missionary disciples, gaze
captured by the delightful fire of the Spirit.
Ninety-six
days ago, we were marked with ashes on our foreheads and remembered that we are
dust. We lamented that sometimes that’s
all people can see when they look at us, the leftovers, the remnants of God’s
fiery passion in which we each have been embraced, because a fire in which what
grabs your attention first is the ashes isn’t much of a fire. But there are no ashes without flames. There is lamenting to be done for each of us
and for all of us, but not today. No,
today, we celebrate. We have lamented
and sought to grow in grace and virtue through our fasting, prayer and
almsgiving; we have celebrated Easter, set alight the new fire, and watched our
Paschal candle burn throughout these fifty days of Easter. And now, we celebrate, that God has gifted us
with His own fire. That fire, the Spirit,
rests on us. It is pulling us up and,
however far we have to go, we will blaze triumphant with him forever.
And that
fire that lifts our heads high, that increases our longing for Easter, doesn’t make
us like the people who built that tower at Babel. They desired heaven, which is
a good and holy desire. But, they thought the way to get there was to build their
way there. Their desire wasn’t a desire for closeness to God in the sense of
intimacy, but in the sense of rivalry. They want to be as high as God is high,
and not because they want to be with Him, but because they’re ashamed, ashamed to
be below Him. No, when the flame of the Spirit draws our heads up, it draws
them up not for envy, but for delight, for awe, for wonder, for marveling, for
praise. We marvel at the gift precisely because it’s gift, precisely because it’s
an expression of God’s radically free sovereign love. St. Paul talks about the
Spirit in us, praying in sighs too deep for words. That’s what the Spirit
invites us to, not to see heaven as far and try to build our way there, but to
marvel that heaven has come close to earth in Christ, in the Spirit that rests
upon us.
This holy
desire, this wonder, this awe, doesn’t just end there, though. It doesn’t just
end in a feeling, or in even prayer. It ends in sharing. It ends in
proclamation. At that first Pentecost after Jesus’ resurrection, when the
Spirit came to rest of the disciples’ heads like tongues of fire, they didn’t
just stand around being amazed, but their amazement drew out of them
proclamation. They proclaimed to all what God had done for them in Christ, what
gift had been given to them.
They did
this because amazingly good news is hard to keep secret. The good news that God
has sent His own Spirit to rest upon, to draw us up, is amazingly good news.
But they also did this because part of what was warmed within them was their love.
One of my favorite titles for Jesus, that we use in the Litany of the Sacred
Heart, is when we call him “fiery furnace of charity.” Fiery furnace of love.
Desiring heaven just for ourselves is not really desiring heaven. Our God is
not that small. Desiring heaven is desiring heaven as much for our neighbors as
for ourselves. Heads-held high missionary disciples do not gaze at heaven in a
way that ignores the earth, but are inspired by the vision we’ve been given, by
the Spirit who enlivens our hearts, to tell others of this, of what God has
done for us in Christ.
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