Tongues of Fire - Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon

0:00 Peace be with you, friends. We come to the great Feast of Pentecost, along with Christmas and Easter, the most important feast of the Christian year, the celebration par excellence of the Holy Spirit. It's also the birthday of the Church, so all of us who are filled with the Holy Spirit, members of the Christ's mystical body of the Church, we're meant to see ourselves in this feast and see ourselves in these readings. So they're exceptionally important. You know, first of all, that term Pentecost, from Pentecoste in Greek, having the sense of 50th day. So the 50th day after Passover in the Jewish calendar was indeed a very high feast, also called the Feast of Booths. What they celebrated that day, it's interesting, was the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. So think in those accounts in the book of Exodus of the giving of the commandments in the Torah, accompanied by flame and earthquake and wind, these dramatic signs.

1:02 Well, they're duplicated, if you want, on this later day of Pentecost. The giving of the Torah, the giving of the law, and now the giving of the Holy Spirit. So there's a link between ancient Jewish Pentecost and now the Christian idea of Pentecost. Anyway, it was also a day of pilgrimage when Jews came from all over the world. So by Jesus' time, there were Jews in the diaspora, right, in many nations, north, south, east, and west. And this is one of the great pilgrimage feasts where they're meant to come to Jerusalem to sacrifice and to worship. So there are big crowds in the city. That's the point. Well, on this day, we're told, the apostles have gathered in one place. Typically, it's imagined as the upper room of the Last Supper where they met the risen Jesus. They're gathered there, and then we hear this.

1:55 Suddenly, there comes the sound of a driving wind. So, a first great image of the Holy Spirit, and of course, that's the word means. Spiritus sanctus just means holy breath, right? The first symbol here is wind. Now, how come? Well, I'd recommend going back to John chapter 3 and that famous conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. Remember Nicodemus coming at night so he wouldn't be noticed, and he has this intense conversation with the Lord. And the Lord says there,

2:35 the wind, you hear the sound of it, but you don't know where it's coming from or where it's going. So, he said, is someone born of the Spirit. That's the interpretive key, it seems to me, to this wind as a symbol of the Spirit. The wind, you feel it, so the power of it. Look, I'm from Chicago, the Windy City. I live in Rochester, Minnesota, which is also known, I think I read someplace, is actually the windiest city in America. Yeah. When you're in the wind, you know, my ancestral home of Ireland, I walked around Ireland on these very windy days. You know the power of it for sure. As I record these words just a few weeks ago here in Rochester, a pretty major tornado touched down. Talk about the power of wind, lifting a roof right off a house, blowing a house to smithereens. Yeah, that's the power of the wind. But controlling it, knowing where it's coming from and where it's going, thinking you can manipulate it, forget it. And we can harness it to some degree, but imagine trying to control a tornado. That's why it's such a great image now of the Holy Spirit, because we feel the power of God.

4:04 But if you're dealing with God, everybody, don't think for a second that you can control things. On the contrary, when you are in relation to God, you're in relationship to something you cannot control. You don't know where it's coming from, where it's going. You feel its power in your life. But the whole game really is surrender. Remember St. Paul says there's a power already at work in you that can do infinitely more than you can ask or imagine. Now, mind you, the Spirit of the Lord is not like a destructive tornado. It's always about love because that's what the Spirit it is. The Spirit is the love between the Father and the Son. So surrendering to the Holy Spirit is not a matter of self-destruction, on the contrary. But your life is not about you. I've used that phrase a lot to sum up the Christian spiritual life. You're not in control.

5:10 The whole fun and drama of the spiritual life is that surrender to the power that's greater than you can ask or imagine. Wow, that's the Holy Spirit. So, first wind and then fire. Listen. Then there appeared to them tongues as a fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. So here are the apostles, right? Here's the core of the church, Jesus' followers. They received the Holy Spirit, this uncontrollable power. And what's the first thing that's made manifest to them? Tongues as a fire. what's the first gift if you want of the holy spirit speech indeed fiery speech now how come how come tongues and speech are so important well christianity everybody is not a philosophy It's not a vague set of moral prescriptions, not something that we can kind of conjure up on our own, some spiritual convictions that we've come to.

6:33 No, no, no. Christianity is based upon certain events. Yes, the long history of Israel, culminating in the arrival of the Mashiach, the anointed son of David, who is the climax to the story of Israel. Jesus preached and healed, died, and rose from the dead. Look, you can't conjure that up. You are a witness to it.

7:09 It's news, unexpected, strange. You can't get it on your own. Rather, these events have to be witnessed to, and the people that witness them have got to speak them. That's why I think tongues are so important on the day of Pentecost. And why, everybody, up and down the ages, Christianity has placed such a great stress upon speech. the speech of witnesses. You know, please, Christianity is euangelion. It's good news. See, a philosophy might be true, but it's not news. A set of moral convictions might be edifying, and they might help you guide your moral life, but they're not news. News has to do with something that happened, something that happened. And so witnesses are required who speak. Now, more to it.

8:15 They don't speak in a mealy-mouthed, diffident, indifferent, I could care less sort of way. You know, you might be reporting something that's news, but it's so bland and ordinary, like, yeah, you hear about, you know, so-and-so. So what? You announce it and you probably forget it. No, no. Christianity has to do with events that were so unexpected and are so unforgettable that they grabbed these people by the lapels and compelled them to speak, listen now, in a fiery way. Tongues, yes, but tongues as a fire, not mealy-mouthed speech. We've had too much of that, by the way, in the Christian churches. fiery speech you know i'm a student of philosophy and theology love all these people just think though over the centuries peter and paul chrysostom and ambrose augustine and maximus peter damian and bernard of clairvoy francis of assisi antonia padua francis xavier and ignatius of Loyola, John Henry Newman and Ronald Knox, Fulton Sheen, John Paul II, up and down the 20 centuries of Christianity, speakers of the word and more to it, fiery speakers, witnessing to the same thing these first apostles witnessed to.

9:47 How come they're able to do it? Because they've surrendered to the power of the Holy Spirit. Ah, that's what the church is all about. I think of, you know, my mentor, Cardinal George. The beginning of the church, there wasn't a Vatican. There weren't parishes. There weren't Catholic hospitals. There weren't Catholic schools. No. But he said, by God, there were evangelists. You bet. And that still is what fundamentally makes the church the church. Those upon whom the Spirit has come, tongues as a fire, still true. Okay, so filled with the Spirit now, filled with a desire to speak, what do they do? They rush out into the streets of Jerusalem. All the Jews around the world are gathered, and they begin to proclaim the lordship of Jesus.

10:43 And it's this scene now which has beguiled Christians forever. Though they're from all over the world, they hear them speaking in their own language. Now, is it speaking in tongues as we know it? Maybe. Was it a specialized miracle of the moment? I don't know. But somehow, all these people from different parts of the world understood through them the message of Jesus. Here's what I want you to see. This beautiful scene is meant to be a microcosm of the church. The church are the followers of Jesus who have accepted the Holy Spirit, that they can't control, but they've surrendered to the Holy Spirit, They're now filled with a desire to speak in fiery language about Jesus, and they're destined to speak to the whole world. Christianity is not meant to be whispered in little corridors, nor is it meant to be a kind of niche philosophy.

11:46 No, no. Jesus said, go and preach to all nations. It starts right here. And this scene is like a microcosm, like a little seed. And then this detail, everybody, I love, because they go to the extreme of naming where all these people are from, and we'll see why. Think of Jerusalem here in the middle. We are Parthians, Medes, and Elamites. Well, where were those lands? They were far to the east, present-day Iran, so far to the east of Jerusalem. Then their inhabitants of Mesopotamia, where was that? Well, that was a little bit further west, getting close to Jerusalem. We're from Judea and Cappadocia. Judea is the area right around Jerusalem. Cappadocia, well, that's up in present-day Turkey. It's north. We're from Pontus and Asia. Well, now I'm going to go even a little further north to the shores of the Black Sea. We're from Phrygia and Pamphylia. Where were they? Well, now go south from there.

12:45 We're still in Turkey, but now we're on the Mediterranean coast. They're from Egypt and districts of Libya near Cyrene. Now we're far west across the Mediterranean, far west in North Africa. Finally, there are travelers even from Rome. So now even further north and west. Now look, look what's happened. Imagine Jerusalem here. Luke, who wrote this account, has drawn this kind of crescent all around Jerusalem from east to west. What's the point he's making? This is the church. This is the church meant to go out to all the lands and all the nations. Now, it happened over 20 centuries. Think of all the preachers and missionaries and evangelists who have indeed spoken in practically all the languages of the world. That's called the influence of the Holy Spirit.

13:41 and that's realizing in fact what was anticipated on this day of Pentecost. So just a quick word about the gospel. Jesus, the night of the resurrection, sees the disciples, says to them, shalom. And then strangely and beautifully, it says he breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit. That's it, everybody. the risen Jesus, to this day, continuing to breathe into his church, the Holy Spirit, the power that they can't control. But if we surrender to it and we accept this obligation of fiery speech, we continue the work that began on the day of Pentecost. And God bless you.