When we take the ability to speak for granted, we treat speech as if it’s a private and personal possession we can use as we see fit, forgetting that speech is one of the gifts God has entrusted to us and our stewardship—like life itself. Based upon this mistaken notion, we will speak not as God intended us to speak but as we determine we will speak. That’s why, as the narrative of the Tower of Babel reminds us, we talk over, above, and about others to demonstrate our superiority as if we’re God—whether as individuals, groups, or as nations. Yet, in the end, all thsoe edifices we construct through our malign speech, magnificent and towering to the heavens as those edifices may be, come tumbling back down to earth—just as the Twin Towers did in New York City on 9/11—reminding us that we’re not the Almighty we may believe ourselves to be.
Why? A fundamental lack of understanding—the fruit of God’s gift of speech which the Church calls “a gift of the Holy Spirit” given to the Apostles on the first Pentecost after the Risen Lord’s ascension into Heaven.
It’s important to keep in mind that words possess power…for good and for ill. Words are so powerful they can define how we experience the world around us as well as the experience of those other folks to whom we speak. While some have defined words as the “building blocks of life” and that’s absolutely true about words, don’t forget the other side of the coin: Words can also function as verbal weapons of war intended to destroy their target.
For “WOKE” Catholics, words are God’s gift to be used as God has intended. In particular, the words they use remind others that God is with them, as we heard on Christmas Eve, “They shall name him ‘Emmanuel,’ which means ‘God is with us’.” Living this reality each day, the words “WOKE” Catholics uses reiterate what the Risen Lord reminded his disciples prior to ascending into Heaven: “I will be with you…until the end of time.”
The Risen Lord is with us through the power of the Holy Spirit and has commissioned each of us to bring his word—the gospel (or “good news”)—“to the ends of the earth.” That is, through the gift of the Holy Spirit each of us has received in Baptism and renewed in Confirmation, the words we use throughout each day are to be both for us and the others to whom we speak the “building blocks” not just of a good and happy life but, more importantly, of eternal life as our words reveal something of their Source. As St. Paul reminded the Roman’s in today’s Epistle:
For those who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.
Researchers have found that words possess immense power. They can enrich daily life by increasing laughter, happiness, love, excellence, and joy. Those same researchers have also found that people who regularly use words aimed at achieving that objective motivate others to be more inspired, dedicated, patient, empathetic, secure, and calm. For example, words that highlight another’s abilities, intelligence, knowledge, persistence, cooperative spirit, vitality, self-improvement, strength, courage, and the like make others feel more beloved, understood, productive, virtuous, and purposeful in life.
Pope Francis is fond of telling people that the Church isn’t a program that’s implemented by sheer force of will but a mission—he calls it the “Church on the move”—of its members going outside themselves because the Holy Spirit pushes them beyond their self-enclosed peripheries to love others as God has first loved each and every one of them as His beloved sons and daughters. Through the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation, each of us possesses the power and dignity to become through the freedom of faith what each of us always been in God’s heart…to be the “Church on the move.”
How?
On this Solemnity of Pentecost, our scripture readings remind us that one way is to speak those live-giving words that emanate from within our hearts, speaking them as God has intended and as the Holy Spirit motivates. To use the Psalmist’s words, that’s one way the Lord “sends out His Spirit and renews the face of the earth.” Consider all the good each of us could achieve in our marriages, homes, neighbors, and workplaces simply by invoking words which enrich the lives of others as that would become evident in their laughter, happiness, love, excellence, and joy!
As we speak God’s life-giving word, our witness of faith proclaims the Gospel—our faith is “on the move”—and makes it concrete as God continues to manifest His love and, in this way, touches and transforms hearts, minds, bodies, societies, and cultures in every place and time…“to the ends of the earth.” If only for this reason, our choice of words—what and how we choose to speak to others—represents our personal, free, and conscious response to God’s call to live as His beloved sons and daughters. This is how “WOKE” Catholics proclaim their faith and give witness to it, not in pious-sounding abstractions and bromides that have nothing to do with people’s lived experience but through the concrete witness of their words in this chapter of the Church’s life and of this era of history in which they live.
Each Sunday when we profess the Creed, we speak of the Holy Spirit as the “Lord and giver of life.” Perhaps most of us do so in a rote, routine, and even perfunctory way. Yet, if we’re to think carefully about those words we oftentimes speak so glibly, what we’re professing is that the Holy Spirit gives us that “jolt of life” which spurs us out of our complacency so that each of us will actually do and accomplish what God has created us to do and accomplish through the life God has entrusted to us.
This “jolt” of the Holy Spirit moves our hearts to change the situations—even the most unimaginable and unfathomable of situations—in which people have mired themselves so they might experience that God is with them. In this way, Pope Francis reminds us, “WOKE” Catholics experience the Holy Spirit as both centripetal and centrifugal. Centripetal in the sense that the Holy Spirit is deep at work within everyone’s heart; centrifugal in the sense that the Holy Spirit pushes everyone outward and beyond their peripheries by opening their hearts to others—to witness to them through lifegiving words of love, kindness, generosity, gentleness, consolation, and encouragement.
In this way, Pope Francis reminds us this Pentecost Sunday that the Holy Spirit is the “protagonist of evangelization” and “architect of the Church” Who offers others—through our word—not the cacophony of Babel but the soothing warmth of peace and the refreshing cool of hope, opening their minds and hearts to grasp what’s actually possible when our Catholic faith is genuine and concrete not simply abstractions and bromides.
As is true in any generation, this is precisely what so many impoverished people need today—authentic witnesses to the Catholic faith who speak God’s live-giving word. Their poverty isn’t necessarily material but more substantively spiritual, evidenced in their loneliness and isolation...even if they’re surrounded by a crowd comprised of likeminded people. They need to hear words—a gospel—possessing the power to liberate them from the darkness of the consumerism, skepticism, materialism, and practical atheism that darkens their days and through which they exclude themselves the experience God’s life-giving Word. This is the “jolt” that’s needed if all those people are to experience God’s mercy, to be saved from the condition of darkness in which they live, and to know genuinely that God is with them.
That represents our challenge from scripture for this week which marks the summit and apex of this year’s Eastertime: To speak God’s life-giving word to the downcast, those who are wearied by life’s burdens, as well as those who are oppressed by their weaknesses and sins and desperately need a powerful “jolt” of the Holy Spirit.
If we’re to do that this week as “WOKE” Catholics, upon waking each day be sure to get a morning “jolt” not from some strong caffeine but by conducting this memento mori: Pray “Come, Holy Spirit, fill my heart and kindle in me the fire of Your love. Send forth Your Spirit and recreate me so You shall renew the face of the earth.”
Then, as each of us progresses through each day, recall how important it is to speak words of love, kindness, generosity, gentleness, consolation, and encouragement. In this way, each of us will be a “WOKE” Catholic not “sleepy” Catholic who wastes time living a “telescope faith” by looking for the God somewhat up in the sky as the disciples did on Ascension Thursday. Reiterating what Isaiah prophesied on Christmas Eve, “He shall be named ‘Emmanuel,’ which means ‘God is with us’,” this is how each of us will “speak in their own language of the mighty acts of God” and bring to fulfillment what the Risen Lord promised:
I will be with you…until the end of time.
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