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An Overwhelming Love - Acts 2:5-11 We all long for an experience of love beyond what we know By Father Raniero Cantalamessa Part 2 of a 5 part series What the apostles experienced in that moment on the day of Pentecost when they were filled with the Holy Spirit was an overwhelming experience of the love of God. This is what it's all about. They had an overwhelming experience of God. It has always been a surprise for me to read in the account of the beginning of the charismatic renewal the testimony of a student who was present at that very moment when the renewal started in the church. This girl said: "We were in the chapel. This chapel at that particular moment seemed to us to be filled with the love of God, so much so that we were afraid of being loved too much, that we would not be able to stand such love of God. It was as if the love of God was filling the house, the room and our hearts at the same time." Brothers and sisters, when we speak about Pentecost we do not speak about an abstract idea. We are speaking of opening the window. We are all longing for an overwhelming experience of love. In all the experiences of our lives-our marriages, professions, friendships, through all kinds of undertakings-we are longing for love. We are longing for an experience of love that is beyond what we know, because no form of love which we can experience in this life is able to fill our hearts. Changed by the Holy Spirit Then came Pentecost. The account of that momentous day tells us that the possibility exists, that we can experience the warm, overwhelming love of God. This experience is open to those who accept the Holy Spirit, who ask for the Holy Spirit. And this leads us to the second scene of our drama: There were devout men living in Jerusalem from every nation under heaven and at this sound they all assembled and each one was bewildered to hear these men speaking his own language. They were amazed and astonished. Surely, they said, all these men speaking are Galileans. How does it happen that each of us hears them in his own language? Persians, Medes, Elamites, people from Mesopotamia and so on. We hear them preaching in our own languages about the marvels of God. My brothers and sisters, what does this add to what we already know? It describes the first change brought about by the coming of the Holy Spirit. A father of the church used to say: "What the Holy Spirit touches, the Holy Spirit changes." When the Holy Spirit touched the apostles, we see that he changed them dramatically. Let us give a little attention to grasping how and where the apostles were so strikingly changed. To understand this we must refer again to the Old Testament. St. Luke wanted to make a contrast between Babel and Pentecost. In Babel, people all spoke the same language but nobody could understand the other. Now, all these people are speaking different languages, but everyone understands each other. Why? The book of Genesis tells us that the men who built the tower of Babel said: "Let us build a city and a tower. Let us make a name for ourselves that we shouldnot be scattered over the face of the earth" (Genesis 11:4). These men of Babel were concerned about making a name for themselves. As a consequence, they were dispersed and destroyed. Now the apostles were starting to build a tower, that is, the church. The church is the building of God! But these men-Peter, James and John-were not concerned with making a name for themselves. No, as we read in scripture, they were overwhelmed by the marvels of God. They spoke of nothing else but the great deeds of the Lord. It was the great change; the "Copernican Revolution" had taken place. Open the Door to the Holy Spirit What, you might ask, was the Copernican revolution? Before Copernicus-in the sixteenth century-people used to think that the earth was the center of the universe and that the sun revolved around the earth. Then Copernicus (and many others after him) said that, no, things were a little different. The sun was standing (at least relatively) at the center of the universe and the earth was circling it because the earth needed the light and the warmth of the sun. In the spiritual universe, this Copernican revolution is still to be accomplished. Each of us lives in an unconscious perception that I myself am the center. I am the center of the universe and everybody and everything must be at my service. Even the Son. Even God. This means being se]fcentered and we are, more or less, in this pre-Copernican condition. We are self-centered. Each of us considers himself to be the axis around which everything revolves. The Copernican revolution which took place at Pentecost was that these men forgot completely about themselves and were completely fascinated by the Son. They became Godcentered. Christ-centered. This is what Pentecost can and must achieve in our lives as well. There is a beautiful passage in the Fourth Eucharistic Prayer of our Catholic Sacramentary which says: "And that we might live no longer for ourselves but for him-that is, for Jesus-he sent the Holy Spirit as his first gift to those who believe." Have you ever heard this prayer? This Eucharistic Prayer is seldom used, but it is very important. You see, to live no longer for ourselves but to live for the Lord, we need the Holy Spirit. This is why the Holy Father said that there can be no renewal in the church without the Holy Spirit. There can be a spiritual experience which may look like renewal-improvements in the liturgy, revisions of the way nuns dress, changes in the way we say the Mass (not in Latin)-but these are small aspects. There is no real deep renewal in our Christian lives unless we open ourselves, allow the Holy Spirit to come into our lives. We allow him because he wants to; he is ready to do this. He waits for us to open the door. And I hope that this very day many people will open the door to the Holy Spirit. This series continues in: The Nuclear Energy of the Church: Acts 2:12-21 Back to Fr. Cantalamessa's Scripture series page This series first appeared in The WORD AMONG US, A DAILY APPROACH TO PRAYER & SCRIPTURE, and is used with permission. For further information contact them at: www.wau.org
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