My Pentecost Epiphany

MY PENTECOST EPIPHANY

In early May of 2004, I was at the hermitage of Holy Spirit Retreat Center on Lake Elysian spending 5 days in silent reflection. During those days before the insect life grew more prolific, I wandered the trails of the grounds, walked the labyrinth, and meditated on the shore of Lake Elysian, listening to the duck marking their territory, sometimes at high volume, and the birds speaking to one another in the trees.

One morning, meditating on the life and the color that was exploding all around me, I remembered a very early Church tradition about the Holy Spirit, very well represented in the painting presented here. In one of my theology classes with Fr Sam Torvend (a Domincan priest who was teaching at the St Paul Seminary at the time), he talked about the early Church’s perception of the Holy Spirit, reflected vividly in the early baptismal liturgies of the Church. The Holy Spirit was pictured as God, the Mother, from whose womb the baptized were born, and whose breasts nursed the newly born Christians during the time of Mystogia following their baptism.

Note how the artist depicts a very pregnant Holy Spirit in the painting. While the image of a dove is still present, the artist captures so wonderfully the image our ancient Christian Forefathers and Foremothers understood. It would take several centuries following the first Pentecost before an increasingly male dominated clergy and the switch of liturgical language from Aramaic, to Greek, to Latin, that the Holy Spirit’s image was transformed into what we have today. This image of the Holy Spirit, as God the Mother, resonated so strongly within me that it is the image of the Holy Spirit to which I pray today.

However, it was not that image that was the epiphany on those early days in May. Rather, in my reflection on the nature that was bursting forth around me, I was drawn to the word used in the early Church for the Holy Spirit. The word was the Hebrew Ruah. Ruah mean “breath” or “Spirit” in Hebrew. The Spirit of God was the breath of God animating life throughout Creation. God’s breath, Ruah, stirred the waters of creation and brought forth life. It was God’s breath that restored life to the lifeless dried human bones in Ezechial’s vision. For our Jewish brothers and sisters, It is forbidden to eat the flesh of any animal that has been strangled, for God’s breath moves in every living creature and strangling any living creature is cutting off God’s breath in that creature. It is God’s breath that animates all human life, that brings forth the sound of our voices, that provides the wind to sound our musical instruments, that allows our bodies to walk, to create, to think, to touch, to love.

As I sat on the shores of Lake Elysian on that warm, sunny May morning listening to the sounds of the birds around me, the wind gently moving the branches on the budding trees, I heard the voice of the Holy Spirit. 

We often compartmentalize the Spirit as something outside of us. That the spiritual, is something in which we don’t necessarily exist but rather something into which we enter or flirt with on our own impulse or terms. What I experienced on the shores of Lake Elysian that morning was that I was fully and totally immersed in the Holy Spirit of God. The Spirit of God was not something outside of me, but rather all around me and within me. I was literally swimming in the Spirit of God whether I wanted to acknowledge it or not. 

This is reflected in the “Shield of St. Patrick” when he writes, “Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.”

We are always within the realm of the Holy Spirit. All life is born within the Holy Spirit. All life dies within the Holy Spirit. All life IS the Holy Spirit, for the Holy Spirit gives to us the gift of life and inspires us to use the life we have been given to honor and serve the life of God’s presence in all of Creation.

While I will always image the Spirit as God the Mother, and refer to the Holy Spirit as “She” in my personal prayer, my experience of the Holy Spirit as Mother is not one that will resonate with others.  It matters not how we image the Holy Spirit. Rather, what is important is to live life fully aware that we live life within the Holy Spirit, and inspired by Spirit praise and glorify the presence of God within us and all around us.