A Homily for Pentecost Sunday
Readings: Acts 2:1-11 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13 John 20:19-23
The Holy Spirit has no face, but he does have a gaze.
We can warm to, and benefit from, images of Christ. But remember, these are all creations of the imagination, whether they come from Michelangelo or our own minds. We have no photos of Jesus, and the images that we produce rarely resemble a Jewish male of first-century Palestine. We simply give ourselves warrant to create a human visage we warm to.
God the Father, of course, is pure spirit—or pure mind, to employ a more contemporary term. We call him Father because Jesus did, all the while insisting that he has no biologically male attributes. Nonetheless, we mentally import a Zeus-like figure, wizened with white beard, even though we have few references of saints, male or female, warming to this image.
But the Holy Spirit has no face. Like God the Father, he is pure spirit, absolute intellect. The flames of fire or the dove wings, which we call to mind on his behalf, do not emotionally ignite our imaginations. So, we warm to our images of Christ even as we try to rein in those of God the Father, knowing how insufficient they are. And while the Holy Spirit has no face, he is nonetheless the gaze of God. We encounter this third person of the Trinity when he looks straight at us.
What do I mean by that? Have you ever walked into a room full of folks, scanned the crowd and realized that someone was staring at you? His or her gaze clearly indicated a desire to engage with you. Stranger or sidekick, by looking straight at you, someone wanted you to know that they were there, standing in front of you.
That is how the Holy Spirit reveals himself to us! We do not see a face, not even in our imagination, but we do encounter a gaze, one that requires our response. And it is clearly not fabricated by fancy.
The Holy Spirit reveals himself to each of us through signs that would appear to anyone else to be nothing more than coincidence. Yet if we are the ones being addressed, they are unmistakable, undeniable signals that someone is gazing upon us, that we are in the presence of another person.
Of course, what immediately comes to mind is praying for some intention and finding it granted. Here is my most recent example of that: I have fretted and prayed about my relationship with a family in the parish. Several years ago, I offended them, and despite my apology, they let me know it. But now, after a lot of prayer, I find the same family going out of their way to show me acts of kindness.
An atheist, standing outside the circle of profound need and grateful relief, hardly captures the significance of an answered prayer when he dismisses it as mere coincidence. Everyone has a sense of what should happen in life. When that is threatened, we pray—or fervently desire, as some would prefer to say—and, when right order is restored, we respond with thanks, even if that gratitude lacks focus. So, let’s be honest. An atheist who simply credits “the universe” is a believer who has not yet come out of the closet.
My challenge now is to explicate this reality of sensing God’s gaze beyond the most obvious example, that of praying for some intention and finding it granted. All I can do is record a few of my own most recent experiences, trusting, as St. Augustine once put it, that another lover will understand.
Here are a couple of daily occurrences. As I pray the psalms, a particular line, one of so many, reads as though God composed it that day with me in mind. It speaks directly to me, enters my heart.
Or sunshine, pouring through the branches of trees or around flowers, suddenly suggests to me that the world itself, in all its beauty, is pure gift. It did not need to be.
Here is one that, while not daily, becomes ever more frequent. I am frustrated at the insensitivity of someone, praying that I can keep silent about it. Suddenly, I see the same situation through their eyes, and I am ashamed about how small my own sight was—and is!
I was wasting time on Facebook—can you relate to that? I gave a reel the normal few seconds of attention. I heard a priest say: “Yes, you leave confession with your sins forgiven, but that does not undo the consequences of sin in your life. Your faculties are still diminished by the sin, and they must be strengthened, restored through penance.” Wow, that one pierced my intellect with, as some say, the splendor of the truth.
In prayer, I remember that my spiritual director told me that I must ask for a greater awareness that God loves me, that I do not earn God’s love. I preach that; I just do not believe it. I open my eyes and look down into my lap. Lilly, one of my two chihuahuas, is looking at me in unalloyed affection. The Holy Spirit insists that the gaze is his own.
Yes, anyone can dismiss these incidents as coincidences. So can I. And believe me, I do so in that part of me that never ceases to doubt. Yet somehow, I know that I would be deceiving myself if I did treat them as mere coincidences.
In all of these situations, I know that I am being gazed upon, that someone is in front of me, calling upon me to respond. And of course, not to respond would itself be a response. The one gazing would see me turn away.
This is how the Holy Spirit, the faceless God, reveals himself, testifies to the Father and the Son, every single day of our lives. He does it with his gaze. He makes us aware that he is here, looking directly at us.
I have told you this while I am with you. The Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you (Jn 14:25-26).
To summarize: Thank God that we can picture the face of Jesus in our hearts. Ask God always to remind you that every divine image we produce falls so short of the reality, especially those of God the Father. And quit trying to picture the Holy Spirit. Just look about and see him gazing at you.
