Pentecost Sunday

Father Phillip W. DeVous

Guest

The novelist Saul Bellow, in an interview in the early 1980s, anticipated the coming era we now inhabit, which many describe as the “post-truth” era. With great brio of description Bellow called the emerging era and its ethos the “moronic inferno.” The moronic inferno was described as a situation where “there was too much of everything … too much history and culture to keep track of … too much news … too much influence, too many guys who tell you to be as they are, and all of this hugeness, abundance, turbulence, Niagara Falls torment.”

When I contemplate the scene from the Acts of the Apostles, where all the various peoples with their various languages were gathered, Bellow’s image of the moronic inferno is always in my mind. The cacophony of sounds is easy to imagine, as is the confusion likely generated by such a gathering. For me, this scene is stand-in for the “Niagara Falls torment” of the cross currents of assertions, information, news, manufactured emotions and statements we are daily subjected to, which make it hard to know what is true and worthy of attention.

I often stop and ask myself the question: What in the world is going on? Who is to be believed? What is true?

I imagine the multitudes gathered on the day of Pentecost had a similar feeling.

On the day of Pentecost, amidst the confusion of the gathered peoples, “there appeared to them tongues of fire, which came to rest on each one of them (the Apostles). And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.”

All of those who heard the apostles proclaim somehow began to understand what the Apostles were saying about the mighty acts of God. Are we to presume the Holy Spirit had turned the preachers into human simultaneous translation machines? I think not. The Holy Spirit enabled the apostles to speak to the people the universal language of Truth. A language that spoke directly to the hearts of the people.

The Holy Spirit is the Advocate whose mission it is to effect within us a living faith founded on the most central reality of the cosmos itself: Jesus Christ is Lord. It is Jesus who is the Alpha and the Omega. It is Jesus who is the source, center and summit of our lives.

The Holy Spirit, to establish the Lordship of Jesus Christ within us, IS the language and reality of truth spoken to us. The Spirit sees to it that we really do know Jesus Christ. Then, the Spirit sees to it that the truth we know becomes the mission we live: “Grant, we pray, O Lord, that, as promised by your Son, the Holy Spirit may reveal to us more abundantly the hidden mystery of this sacrifice and graciously lead us into all truth.”

Being established in the truth of Christ’s Lordship gives us the discernment and the grace to live with integrity and truthfulness over and against the moronic inferno that confuses and consumes everything. Yet, the gift of the Holy Spirit, descending as tongues of fire, reminds us that we have been given the fire of truth that “burns out” the fires of confusion, falsehood and the disorienting torrent of “too much” that washes over us daily.

Increasingly, I find myself praying to the Holy Spirit to teach me the truth I need to know today to do God’s will. I ask the Holy Spirit to grace me with the truth I need to love as Christ commands, today. I pray throughout the day that the Holy Spirit would take me through the confusion and the madness that can invade even the simplest interactions. I pray the Holy Spirit would give me the wisdom I need to lead others into all truth.

The Holy Spirit, in communicating the language of spiritual truth to us, has sent us disciples on a mission of truth to the world around us. Through that same Spirit we douse the flames and clear the noxious fumes created by the moronic inferno. Let us have every confidence that Jesus Christ is still standing in our midst, that the fire of truth still burns, and that His words to us remain both true and vital: “Peace be with you.”

Father Phillip W. DeVous is the pastor of St. Charles Parish, Flemingsburg, and St. Rose Parish, May’s Lick.