Pentecost and Mission

In a recent conversation, a Dominican friar shared that in an American diocese where he worked, every other year occasioned a priests' meeting where the latest "programme" or "plan" was marshalled as the thing which would usher in new life for an otherwise languishing Church.

"The problem with these," he said, "was that they expected to do something without the aid of grace."

Or, as St Paul put it:

...my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration fo the Spirit and power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God (1 Cor 2:4-5).

It was not without reason that the Church was "born" on that first Pentecost.

The Jewish Feast of Weeks or Shauvot celebrated, among other things, the "first fruits" of the grain harvest (cf Ex 23:16; Num 28:26).

In the gospels, the motif of wheat-harvest was often used to indicate a 'harvest of souls.'  St John the Baptist made use of it (cf Mt 3:12).  The Lord Jesus called the first band of missionaries "labourers" of "the harvest" (cf Lk 10:2).  On the Last Day, the angels are said to "reap" the harvest of souls (Mt 13:39; cf 13:24-30).

By the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, St Luke the Evangelist wanted to highlight the first 'preaching mission' of the Church as the harvest of the first-fruits of the nations (hence the Gospel being preached in different tongues).  It was in being empowered by Pentecost that the apostles and disciples were able to reap the first harvest.  As we Cursillistas sing--

    Faithfully, faithfully
    we will slake the great thirsting
    of Christ the Immortal.
    Joyfully, joyfully
    we will bring to our Saviour
    a harvest of souls
    pouring outward the light from within
    the grace of our God his infinite Life!
    Pouring outward the light from within
    the grace of our God his infinite Life!

Yet it is the Holy Spirit who is the primary agent of evangelisation.  As St John Paul the Great wrote, "The mission of the Church, like that of Jesus, is God's work or, as Luke often puts it, the work of the Spirit" (Redemptoris missio, §24).

It's one thing to say as much, it's entirely another to live it out.  So how is Pentecost the paradigm for mission and evangelisation?

Most Confirmation preparatory workshops seldom go beyond enumerating the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit and what they do; more seldom still do we hear of how to put the gifts of Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety, and Fear of the Lord to use.  There will be plenty of time for that when I return to Edmonton, but for the moment we must recall what the Seven Gifts are for:  They make our souls docile and amenable to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit.  To put the same point more crudely:  It is like an "app" downloaded into graced souls in order to read, interact, and respond to the Holy Spirit.  To do so requires, first, surrender and, second, cooperation.

The Holy Spirit--and, by extension, grace--do not work 'accidentally' as if it just 'happens' to us.  Rather, there must be an intention on the part of the Christian to openly receive the Holy Spirit's motions.  When that happens, among other things, the Christian soul becomes sensitive to certain situations she finds herself in and discovers these situations to be an "evangelical moment."  As another Dominican friar and spiritual writer once said, "apostles do not go looking for souls, but are sent to them by God."  But this can only happen when one intentionally lives out the Mystery of Pentecost.  In other words, Pentecost is not a past event, it is a present reality when the Christian makes it the paradigm of 'being Church.'

Every other attempt at 'techniques' or 'methods' in the work of expanding the Church is a desperate attempt to lock up the Holy Spirit in a kind of solitary confinement, because it is (rightly!) sensed that the Holy Spirit is a threat to self-security and self-determination.  In reality, however, it is not how much the Holy Spirit changes lives that frightens so many would-be Christians; it is being frightened by the prospect of that authentic, wholistic freedom which the Holy Spirit alone brings.

At the end of the day, lethargy in the Church's mission arises from that servile fear of being free; this choice of remaining enslaved is the unstrange bedfellow of that cosmic malevolence conspiring to keep souls enchained to Adam's primordial sin.  For the Church to flourish, Christians must dare to live out the perennial freedom of Pentecost which also frees us to preach the Gospel, thus 'paying it forward' as that freedom which liberates new believers from age-old bondage.

    Missionaries, missionaries
    of Christ with His courage
    determined to conquer.
    Cursillistas, Cursillistas
    who don't pay attention
    to human opinion.
    Let the cowards, let the cowards
    deride us and taunt us
    but it is the truth
    that they really desire the pleasure
    of being in grace, in colors with us!
    That they really desire the pleasure
    of being in grace, in colours with us!

Again, Pentecost is not an event locked up in history, but the Church in her fecundity.