Press Releases16 May 05

Reflections on Pentecost by the Bishops of Clogher at an Ecumenical Service on Rathmore Hill, Clogher

Reflection by Bishops of Clogher at the ecumenical open-air service on Rathmore Hill, Clogher on Whitsunday, May 15th 2005

Reflection by Bishop Joseph Duffy

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, and God?s spirit hovered over the water."
Genesis 1:1-2

To help us draw out a little and expand on the unlimited horizons of this short text from the very beginning of the holy book, I am going to quote the words of the well-known Pentecost hymn from the hymnal of Stanbrook Abbey.

"Spirit of God on the waste and the darkness
hov?ring in power as creation began
drawing forth beauty from clay and from chaos
breathing God?s life in the nostrils of man.

Come and sow life in the waste of our being
Pray in us, form us as sons in your Son,
Open our hearts to yourself, mighty Spirit,
Bear us to life in the Three who are One."

Personally, I always associate this image of the hovering Spirit with the story of the Annunciation in the first chapter of Luke?s Gospel. The angel Gabriel said to Mary: the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow.

The image is of a bird hanging protectively in the air over its young in the nest. It?s the Spirit giving Mary the miracle of a new human life and sustaining that life, the miracle that joins together for all time the Spirit and the incarnate Son of God, in the person of Jesus Christ. In the womb of Mary Jesus and his Spirit entered human history together and are truly with us until the end of time.

The hymn I quoted mentions the Spirit drawing beauty from clay and from chaos. Let me confine myself to this consideration of the Spirit as the source of beauty in the world. At the present time we are having an outbreak of social analysis in Ireland. I am thinking of all the articles, surveys, letters to editors, chat shows on the general theme: Where did we go wrong ? We are aware of contradictions all over the place. At one level, we never had it so good. Plenty of good well-paid jobs, eating out, big and elaborate houses, holidays in the sun, new motorways, spin-off comforts everywhere.

And yet we know that all is far from well. Schools cannot get enough special teachers to help disturbed pupils. Young couples find it harder to cope, judging by the growth of the counselling business. One would have thought that the new big house would incorporate a granny flat; instead the elderly are more often dispatched to the nursing home. Many people identify the problem as a spiritual one; yet we in the churches seem to allow ourselves to be sidelined as being irrelevant and having nothing useful to say.

The question keeps turning up: What have we to offer ? I am convinced that the answer is linked with what we are celebrating today, the role of the Spirit drawing forth beauty from clay and chaos. People often remark on how vulgar and crass we have become as a nation. Think of how coarse our language has become. The collapse of civility, the flaunting of wealth, the intrusive crudeness of much entertainment. All money and no manners.

The churches can contribute here. How? In the pursuit of courtesy and respect for others.
In the graciousness of our statements. In the cultivation and celebration of what is of beauty in Irish life. In the quality of our liturgy. In the calm and serenity of our style.

Reflection from Bishop Michael Jackson

New Testament Reading : 1 John 3:1 and 2 : Possibilities of the Spirit

"Consider how great is the love which the Father has bestowed on us in calling us his children! For that is what we are. The reason why the world does not recognize us is that it has not known him. Dear friends, we are now God?s children; what we shall be has not yet been disclosed; but we know that when Christ appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. "

This Hill of Rathmore is a place we too often whiz past ? Speed Limit permitting! - without even noticing it. It is tucked in behind St Macartan?s Cathedral Church as the main road through Clogher beckons us North, South, East or West. Whether the prevailing climate be wind, rain or sun, this place continues to greet us whether we have time for it or not. It is a powerful place. It is our place of meeting this afternoon and we are the better for gathering here and for being here together ? in the Spirit of the Christ.

The brief Reading which we have just heard draws us very quickly and very directly into three strands of the Spirit. In weaving their way around us they bind us together in a transformed understanding of community. In the short verse 2 we hear five times not the word: I but the word: we. The love of God, the love of the Father, gives us a way of knowing and of being known which is important to us and for the world. And it is ever new in each generation. We are told in verse 1 that the reason the world does not recognize us is that it has not known the Father. This, my friends, is where our responsibilities begin.

Today, the only way in which the world can know the Father is in the ways in which we present the love of the Father by our words and by our actions. The onus and the imperative are on us if the world is to know the saving presence of God. We need to live ?outside the box,? extending our horizons beyond the temptations to interpret the writings which stand in the name of John exclusively. Exclusivity never will be a definition of community. Otherwise the coming of the Son, whose Spirit the Spirit of Pentecost is, is in vain because God shares with us in faith God?s community of being.

The triple encouragement of the Spirit to us is:

• to recognize who we are
• to recognize that there is more to us than who we are now and what we know of ourselves
• to recognize that the full blossoming of who we shall be lies in the appearing of Christ

Expressed more simply we are faced with the three challenges of : realism, of hopefulness and of surprise. This threefold expression of ourselves at our best ought to inspire us as we journey together with one another in the new definition of the community in the Spirit of Pentecost.

Let us now look at all three of these.

Realism: too easy is it today for good people to think too little of themselves in the face of those who think too much of themselves.

Hopefulness: the future for too many is already a focus of failure when it ought to be a focus of expectation and expectancy combined.

Surprize: the prospect of seeing Christ as he is will reveal us to ourselves in yet another way. This goes beyond either our realism about ourselves or our hopefulness for the future. It carries both of these into the heart of the love of God. We shall become eternally the children of the heavenly Father because we shall be like Christ.

Pentecost invites us to live in the way of the Father in the Spirit of the Christ. The freedom from death, the life of resurrection brought to pass on Good Friday and Easter Day now spread their glory in the church for the world as fire and as wind and as a common language of love. The fire gives warmth and cleanses. The wind gives movement and freshness. The language of love gives the vital ingredient of talking and listening together, respect and regeneration.

The challenge for us in Ireland today is to be hopeful in being realistic, to be open to being surprised by the everyday, uncontrived expressions of goodness and of hospitality. We need to discern and to enjoy the unscripted blossomings of the best of the human in the nearness of the divine. Reconciliation, revisioning, reconnecting with those around us through the greater use of the word: we which is, after all, twice the size of the word: I - all of this is now something vital for a society where words are a more attractive option than actions. The use of: we gives room for, makes space for others. In the Spirit of Pentecost we need to use the word: we a lot more often and we need to use it together.

The white heat of Pentecost tempers while it burns, strengthens while it inspires. God dwells with his people in re-creation, in re-freshment, in re-surrection today and all days.

The Spirit moves us, moves among us, moves with us.