I am happy to say that I had excellent experiences of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal when I was in college. I have seen it as a place where people learned to live their faith to the fullest, and I learned there to believe in the Holy Spirit as a real force in our lives. I learned a lot about Pentecost there.
I am sad to say, then, that in one respect, Charismatic prayer serves as a perfect example of what the Holy Spirit is not. I think there is something to the modern phenomenon of “speaking in tongues,” meaning gibberish, as a way of discovering prayer that transcends our minds. But in the New Testament, speaking in tongues is the opposite: not gibberish nonsense, but sense. In defense of charismatics, I can only add that, ironically, Traditionalists make the same mistake, thinking that prayer is more legitimate if it’s in a language you don’t understand. So does a certain kind of “contemplative” spirituality that thinks that silence is truer prayer than the Liturgy or lectio divina.
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“When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled . . . there came from heaven a noise like a strong driving wind. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them.” Thomas Aquinas points out that one of the main characteristics of tongues of flame is that they stretch upward. When the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Son, comes upon us, he becomes a power within us leaping upward toward heaven.
But in a pun (that doesn’t exactly work in English), Acts then says they “began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.” Charismatics, Traditionalists, and contemplatives are all correct in thinking that the Holy Spirit is tongues of fire leaping upward, in a way that transcends human strength, toward heaven.
But they fail to see that what happens then is not gibberish but intelligence. The most confusing thing of all is that we become intelligent: “they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language” (or “tongue”). “We hear them speaking in our own tongues of the mighty acts of God.”
The Spirit does not make the apostles dumb. He makes them intelligible. And in so doing, he binds together what man had separated.
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For the second reading, we have a choice between 1 Corinthians 12 or Romans 8, two of Paul’s greatest passages on the Holy Spirit. In both, we learn that the Spirit teaches us to speak: “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” “A spirit of adoption, through whom we cry, ‘Abba, Father!’” Mumbo jumbo is mysterious. But the greater mysteries are to call God Father and Jesus Lord. Nothing that empties the mind can fill us with deeper awe than these words.
The Spirit brings order, too. In Romans 8, he “raised Christ from the dead” and “will give life to your mortal bodies also,” for “the spirit is alive because of righteousness.” It is not mindless chaos that the Spirit brings; rather, he undoes that chaos by teaching us to live as sons. So too in 1 Corinthians 12 the Spirit binds the many together in one body, the body of Christ. “To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.” The Spirit teaches us to speak, and to bring order.
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We have two options for the Gospel, as well, one from John’s Last Supper discourse, the other from Jesus’s appearance on Easter night (at the same supper table, in the upper room). In the first, Jesus says the “Advocate” (or “Paraclete” or “comforter” or “helper”: all the same word in Greek) will lead us to “keep my commandments”: not to be unruly, but ruled. So too we will “keep my word.” “The word you hear is not mine but that of the Father who sent me,” for the Father is an intelligent, wise God, a God of words, who speaks his word in Jesus Christ. And their Spirit “will teach you everything”—that is “remind you of all that I told you.” The Spirit does not replace Scripture, but takes us deep into the words of Jesus.
And this is the way of “peace.” On Easter night he twice says, “Peace be with you.” He shows them his hands his side, reveals to them who he is, not in a cloud of mystery, but in the deeper mystery that can be spoken in words, and infinitely transcends any cloud of mystery. And then he gives them the Spirit of peace: “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” The balance creates an orderly ministry: not a lawless chaos where sin doesn’t matter, but an orderly ministry of forgiveness. And the conclusion of that forgiveness is not sin, but peace, union, intelligence, and order.
Are there any ways that you under-appreciate the wisdom of God?
