Reflecting upon Pentecost, the Church over the centuries has given us, immediately, three feasts to celebrate great truths of our faith:
Holy Trinity
Corpus Christi
Sacred Heart.
In a sense it is the ‘big’ Church reminding itself and us, to reflect deeply upon the gift of the Holy Spirit and put into practice what we learn and hear. So, we proclaim our understanding of the true God…Trinity.
We proclaim our understanding of the gift given at the Last Supper.
We proclaim our understanding of the nature of Jesus, “true God, true Man”.
These post-Pentecost feasts are but further encouragement to us to, I repeat, ponder the Spirit and allow the Spirit to help us discover more and more the mystery of God’s great love for each one of us.
In his book ‘Damascus’, the novelist Christos Tsiolkas of the Greek Orthodox culture, reminds us of two realities that the gift of Jesus gave to our world. Without denying the command to love God, he brings to life vivid and disturbing accounts of poverty, brutality, and harshness of life in the time of Jesus and beyond, the power of “to love my neighbour”. He demonstrates that in both the Jewish and Gentile culture, all ruled by the conquering Romans, with empire built upon subjection into slavery of the peoples, the profound challenge that the newly redeemed Christians proclaimed to their communities by their attempts to love everyone, including slaves and by the welcome to all who joined in faith at “the Meal”.
Unlike the prevailing custom, the men in the first circle and the women in the surrounding circle, let alone the men eating first then the boys and, eventually, the women and girls last with the left overs, the new Christians sat together shoulder to shoulder. They suffered, were tortured and died for their proclamation, but eventually triumphed…and our world began to change under the influence of the Spirit.
Many people, even in high places, are beginning to wonder how our civil society, let alone our Church communities, are going to emerge, let alone survive the pandemic challenges; where is truth? why me? my perceived Qantas rights, community needs to vaccinate or not, and other emerging challenges.
It occurs to me that we, by rediscovering the proclamation of the Trinity and the reform of our gathering; by reflecting more appropriately the action of Jesus in his self-giving, to accept the invitation to eat and drink (for we are all or should be in the action together), then our generation, too, may bring our world from its current turbulent state to align itself with the ideal of the Kingdom of God.
Under the Spirit we have evolved to speak of the “twofold table of the Lord’s Word and of the Supper” (Vatican II). As disciples, we must receive both. The Spirit will be with us as we seek to bring our understanding of both “altars” to our world.
Mons Frank