“Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”….and when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit…”
If I am honest, some of the most interesting encounters that I have had, have taken place in Airports. I found myself in Nairobi airport on one occasion waiting for a flight that had been delayed. A woman came and sat next to me and said, “I see you are a priest, I was once a novice in a religious community in the UK, but I didn’t stay.” She then went on to tell me an amazing story. The night before her temporary vows she had second thoughts. Not an uncommon thing, either for religious, or those getting married. Rather than putting it down to last minute nerves, she decided to leave that night without informing anyone.
You can imagine the drama the next morning, everyone looking forward to the celebration, the sisters, the woman’s parents and family, the bishop was on his way. But, there was no one to make profession, she had fled the scene. Not even leaving a note. A real drama. The woman not only left the Convent but left the Church, never setting foot inside another Church for decades. She was estranged from her parents and family, who had no idea where she was for years. Eventually, she got a job then married, still not communicating with her family out of shame, and then became pregnant with her first child. Sadly, the child was still born, and the woman took this wrongly, as a sure sign that she was cursed by God for having left Religious life.
Despite going on to have four very healthy children, she developed a serious depression that led to agoraphobia, and she never left the house for nearly eight years. It was simply too frightening to go outside. She was locked inside, like the disciples in the Upper Room, locked inside out of fear. Then one day the darkness inside and the fear became so intense, that she decided that she would kill herself. She waited until her husband had gone to work and the children went to school and then went into the kitchen. Sitting at the table she arranged all the many tablets that she had and was about to take them all to put an end to the inner pain.
“But then”, she said “two extraordinary things happened, that to this day, I cannot explain. The first was that I found myself walking on the street outside. I had never been out of the house in nearly a decade. I just kept walking and walking, time just past, I had no idea where I was going. It was then, the second extraordinary thing happened. As I passed a Church, the door was opened, and I decided to go in. I had never been in a Church since the day I ran away from the Convent, but here I was walking through the door. It was a Catholic Church and Mass had just started. I sat right at the back and as I sat there all the disappointment, fear and shame came crashing down inside, there was nothing to hope for and everything was oppressive.”
As I sat looking towards the altar, I could hear a scream, a cry building up inside that simply shouted, “Do something, don’t just hang on the cross, do something.” As she said this she smiled and said “It might not be the most polite and polished prayer, but it came straight from the heart, and it had its effect.” She went on: “Somehow, as I was crying out, my eyes became aware of the priest at the altar and He was extending His hands, then I had no idea what He was doing. Now, I know that He had reached that part in the Eucharistic prayer where He asks the Holy Spirit to come upon the gifts of bread and wine to change them into the body and blood of Jesus. But at that time, I had no idea. I just became transfixed for some reason upon His hands and did not even hear the words He was saying.”
“And then” the woman continued, “then it happened, as if from nowhere but deep inside, I simply began to feel at peace. Something I had never felt in a very long time, and I heard a word inside me “receive.” The woman returned home, put away the tablets and the slow transformation and healing began. It took time, but it led to reconciliation with her family, the sisters she had left and more important the faith she had abandoned. She had encountered the power of the Holy Spirit – the shalom of God- that not only transforms bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus, but who transforms us.
We sang and prayed this in the sequence: Heal our wounds, our strength renew…Bend our stubborn heart and will; melt the frozen, warm the chill; guide the steps that go astray. Before He ascended to the Father Jesus commanded, not suggested, but commanded His disciples to go back to the Upper Room and wait. They were not to move until: “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. You will be my witnesses”. Earlier, He had taught them that the task of the Spirit would be to lead them, therefore, lead us into the complete truth. Only once we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we are equipped to be His witnesses.
When I think of the Holy Spirit, when I reflect upon this celebration of ‘Shavuot’/Pentecost therefore, I do not think of the things I have read in books or heard in homilies, important and helpful as these have been, but rather, I think of people like that woman who I met in Johannesburg Airport, the living examples of people whose lives have been transformed and touched by the promised power of the Holy Spirit and who are real ambassadors of hope. People who radiate His life-giving, life-presence. We can have brilliant discourses, homilies that are eloquent and beautifully theologically nuanced. While being empty of the presence of the Spirit. Books that for a moment inspire our thoughts, but fail to change our lives.
I sense the presence of the Holy Spirit now. We have asked Him to come, and He is here. And so, as we have asked for a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon each one of us and upon the whole of creation: We ask to be awakened to the light that this Spirit of truth can bring, receive the comfort, solace and peace amid all our difficulties. Like the woman I have just spoken of, we our ready to have our wounds healed, our strength renewed, our guilt taken away and our dryness quenched. But this can only happen if we are willing to let go of our bitterness, stubbornness, allow our frozen heart to be melted.
Can we risk this. Can we risk this? Are we ready to receive? Do we want to be alive? Why not risk today being the version of ourselves that God has truly created you to be? Open ourselves to the fire of His love? Feel His breath of shalom within. Maybe like the woman in the airport, we need the courageous prayer: Don’t just hang there, do something.
