On this culminating feast of the Easter season, I would like to reflect on the very rich readings from our extended Vigil, which we celebrated before dawn.
Many tongues First, we heard the story of the tower of Babel, in which the people abuse the gift of language in pursuit of a prideful endeavor, which results in confusion, the loss of the ability to communicate, and the scattering of the people. Ironically, this is the very thing they were trying to prevent by building their city. Today, we hear many tongues, many voices, calling out a multiplicity of instructions for the pursuit of greatness, of prosperity, of success, of a solution to all the world’s problems and the elimination of hunger, disease, death. A deafening cacophony. Today’s feast celebrates the uniting of a multiplicity of tongues in the proclamation of a single message. Humanity has no need to build high and climb up to the heavens, to achieve salvation on its own terms, because God has come down and made his home among us. He has set his feet on the clay from which we would make bricks, and says to us: Come, let us build the city of God, a humble dwelling constructed of living stones, where my people may live together in peace.
Fiery covenant Next, we hear about the establishment of the Sinai covenant. Here, the theme of language also plays a role, since Moses acts an intercessor, speaking to God for the people and to the people for God. The God who speaks in fire and thunder also uses words, human words spoken by the man, Moses. God says to him, tell the Israelites: “Therefore, if you hearken to my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my special possession, dearer to me than all other people, though all the earth is mine.” (Ex 19:5) And the people answer together: “Everything the LORD has said, we will do.’” (Ex 19:8) Today, we remember with awe that the God of the universe sends down his fire upon the earth, to enkindle in his people a new fire of love. This is the fire that finally makes it possible for us to keep our word, to live as God’s holy people.
Dry bones I have been fascinated with Ezekiel’s parable of the dry bones since early childhood. I remember our nightly gathering before bedtime, when my mother would read the Bible story of our choice – a choice usually based on the pictures. Burned onto my memory is that image of a vast desert canyon filled as far as they eye could see with human bones. Today we see refrigerated trucks filled with bodies on the streets of the world’s cities, caskets piled up in pits on an island burial plot in New York, and freshly-filled graves stretching as far as the eye can see in Amazonas State, Brazil. These are only the more visible examples, compared to the millions perishing unnoticed by us from hunger, natural disaster, or violence. Such a realization leaves us at a loss for words, open-mouthed and speechless. What is there to say? And yet, God tells Ezekiel to speak: “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them: Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Listen! I will make breath enter you so you may come to life. I will put sinews on you, make flesh grow over you, cover you with skin, and put breath into you so you may come to life. Then you shall know that I am the LORD.” (Ez 37:4-7) Today, a landscape of death is transformed by words of hope, of promise: “Then you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and have you rise from them, O my people! ...I have promised, and I will do it, says the LORD.” (Ez 37:13, 14) Our celebration of Easter is about looking at the One whom death could not hold captive and realizing anew that death can no more hold us captive either. Can we find it in ourselves, in the face both of massive tragedy and daily disappointments, to open our mouths and speak words of hope? Prophesy, son of man.
Spirit, poured “I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. even upon the servants and the handmaids, in those days, I will pour out my spirit.” (Jl 3:1-2) These words of the Prophet Joel are chosen by Peter to explain the phenomena of the day of Pentecost. He goes on to proclaim to the people the resurrection of “this Jesus, whom you crucified” (Ac 2:36). Peter is given words to speak that will both cut to the heart, and bring to salvation those called by God: “God raised this Jesus; of this we are all witnesses. Exalted at the right hand of God, he received the promise of the holy Spirit from the Father and poured it forth, as you [both] see and hear.” (Ac 2:32-33) We may feel very far from the new wine of the original Pentecost, further still from the idealized community life of the earliest Church, and so we do not dare to open our mouth and speak with Peter’s boldness. We know that after the holy drunkenness of day one of the Church’s life, days, weeks, months, years, centuries, and millennia followed in which the message was often distorted by unclean lips, the witness obscured by human mediocrity and scandalous behavior. Yet there will always be a remnant, which God will use to draw his people back to himself. The Spirit is not finished pouring out on all flesh, young and old, even on the humblest and least promising.
Unutterable groaning The Spirit who speaks in tongues, sets alight, breathes life and is poured forth upon all, now in Paul’s words groans like a woman in labor, like creation as it yearns for an end to sterile cycles of birth and death in a definitively transformed life, like all of us as we long to complete our journey into full possession by and of our Creator. Now, someone else has taken over Moses’ role of intercession between God and his children. It is the Spirit who speaks for us, and he does this in unutterable groans. When we find words hard to come by, when we stammer and stumble or fall into helpless silence, we can always groan, and this becomes a perfect prayer, especially at times such as these. Let us never stop groaning, burning, pouring forth and breathing out our desire for the One who comes to make us one.
From within The gospel for the Vigil introduces a new modality of the Spirit, that of rivers of water flowing from within. From within whom? The text is ambiguous. Some read it along with the piercing of Christ’s side on the cross to mean that the Spirit flows from Christ’s heart. As Origen puts it: “From the wound in Christ’s side has come forth the Church.” There is another grammatical possibility reflected in most translations, that the Spirit flows from the heart of the believer. These are not mutually exclusive, for what flowed from within God into our world has found a home within us and so makes us a source of living water. God chooses to speak to his people through his Church, through those in whom his Spirit dwells, through our lives. Today’s feast calls us once again to become his hands, his feet, his heart and his voice in the world, for the salvation of all. Weak vessels that we are, all we have to do is keep drinking and pouring forth, keep burning and setting alight, keep receiving and giving a word of hope, keep breathing in and breathing out, keep groaning. Prophesy, son of man!