The Blessed Pentecost
by Nathan MitchellJosef Pieper once
remarked that the human capacity for festivity arises from the ability to affirm all
creation as good — from the ability to embrace, in one resounding "yes,"
the length and breadth, the heights and depths of our experience in this world. We can
hear this yes in Mozart’s music — the play of light and shadow in the later
piano concerti; the poignant song of an oboe rising above a steady pulse in a divertimento
for winds. We can hear it in the delighted squeals of a child as its face is licked by the
moist tongue and hot breath of a new puppy. We can hear it in the contented, prayerful
whispers of an elderly woman — full of love, grace and years — as she prepares
to meet death with quiet courage and dignity.
Saying yes to all of life, letting all of it in — that is
festivity’s sustaining source. But there’s the rub. Few of us can say yes to
anything for very long. We live, after all, in an intensely mobile culture of fast food,
faster cars, disposable diapers and planned obsolescence. Our greatest goal (as Andy
Warhol once quipped) is to be famous for fifteen minutes. At parties, we do not carry on
conversations, we posture — repeating to one another snippets of dialogue from
movies, beer commercials, sitcoms, or interviews with sports celebrities. Small wonder
that many in our society feel so isolated and lonely, so unable to connect, so incapable
of forming relationships that last. Small wonder, too, that as a people we find ourselves
increasingly bored, angry and violent — enraged and terrified by the awful emptiness
that seems to stretch in every direction around us.
Given such cultural conditions, the Christian celebration of "the
blessed Pentecost" will strike many as mad indeed. Fifty days of "dwelling
in" the paschal mystery! Fifty days of surrendering in joyful faith and love as the
Spirit of God takes possession of our lives! Fifty days of mystagogy [study of the
sacramental mysteries], of walking with the neophytes [newly baptized] ever more deeply
into the baptismal mysteries of death and resurrection. Good heavens! What an order!
One reason why such a prolonged celebration strikes us as difficult
— if not downright absurd — is that we tend to link feasts and holidays with
mindless hoopla. "Party time," for many, is an invitation to obliterate
consciousness, to get wasted, to veg out, to forget. But a season of Christian festival is
precisely the opposite. It is a time of intensified consciousness, finely tuned awareness,
awakened memory. The great fifty days of Pentecost are not an unwelcome, unrealistic,
obligation to "party on," even if we don’t feel like it, but an invitation
to explore more deeply "the weather of the heart," to awaken our memory of
God’s presence and power in our lives, to look more closely at all the rich and
varied textures of creation. In short, Pentecost is a season for learning how to say yes
in a culture that wants to keep on saying no.
