In conversation

Today’s readings: Acts 2. 1-11; 1 Cor. 12, 3-7.12-13; John 20, 19-23.

One of the major problems facing our pluralist culture today is the issue of a common discourse which we lack on all levels and aspects of our life. It is an issue that concerns social cohesion as much as the Church. It concerns the Church because the way the Church’s position in society today has been changing demands more of a Church that is in conversation rather than a preachy Church.

In the Scripture reading from the Book of Qoheleth we read that there is a time to speak and a time to keep silent. The Church cannot speak all the time. It needs discern­­ment to choose and wisdom to know when to speak out and when to remain silent.

Theologian Nicholas Lash, in his book Holiness, Speech and Silence, warns that in our culture we have developed a dangerous kind of deafness to the wisdom of all the world’s great religious traditions which have for centuries insisted that speaking appro­priately of God is, while not impossible, the most difficult, the most demanding, the most dangerous thing that human speech can do. Where God and the lands of the Spirit are concerned, silence is better than cheap talk.

Pentecost is not just about the birth of the Church, about the Church of the Spirit, about a Church that opens up to where the Spirit is leading her. Pentecost is also about communication, about connecting in a manner that makes sense and has meaning. It is about understanding and conversation, two things that seem beyond us today.

In a culture where everything is opinionated and in the age of talk-shows, conversation has be­come so difficult. Our ability to listen goes hand in hand with our ability to speak.

On one hand we feel at liberty to say anything, a liberty which un­fortunately is taken as a licence, meaning I can say whatever I want.

On the other hand, in the name of a claim that is increasingly gaining ground that faith is something pri­vate, we often opt to keep silent on things that touch on the essential or the spiritual, a silence so pervasive in our society but which is nothing but the abdication of responsibility.

Taking our country as a case in point, in a culture that is so imbued with religion, there is such a disturbing silence on the part of the Church on matters that concern the well-being of people and of society at large. We seem to have long surrendered to the claim of the intellectual movers and shakers in our society that only children and the simple-minded still believe in God.

Pentecost should help us stand up to our responsibilities in the world’s conversation that at times seeks to sideline the faith pers­pective. This is the radical trans­formation that marked the Apostles on Pentecost day.

This is the basic characteristic of the creator Spirit enabling us to enter into a conversation that is prophetic and forgiving at the same time. Without the Spirit, our conversation, as often happens, risks becoming a destructive monologue, even ending up in religious fundamentalism.

This is what is implied in St Paul’s words in the second reading: “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ unless he is under the influence of the Holy Spirit”. It’s high time that we stop just repeating doctrine. It is the Spirit that empowers us from within to speak out in a way that connects and makes sense.

We often risk being a talking Church in mute mode. Because talking without being listened to is like not talking at all.

Pentecost makes us choose: we either opt to remain behind closed doors, in constant conversation with our own selves, or we can opt, as Pope Benedict says in his letter ‘The Door of Faith’, to rediscover the joy of believing and have a recharge of enthusiasm in transmitting what we believe.