Pentecost Lost
May 23, 2021
What do we lose if we lose the experience of Pentecost? What is at stake here? This is an interesting question. When we fail to enter fully into the Pentecost experience, what are we missing? On the day of Pentecost, even though the room was locked, Jesus burst forth and entered. If we lose Pentecost, we lose having Jesus burst forth into the most closed and locked up places of our lives. If we do not absorb the depth of what Jesus is doing, we will never know the power of His ability to overcome barriers we create. He has that power, but do we absorb it? The disciples received the very breath of Jesus and received the Holy Spirit. If we lose the Pentecost experience, we lose inhaling the goodness of God and the reception of the Holy Spirit. We lose the chance to fill our lungs and our minds with the life-flowing oxygen of God’s love. Without this experience, we lose life. We fill our lungs and minds with things that are not eternal. We lose a life source. If we lose the Pentecost experience, we lose the opportunity to know within ourselves that we have the power to forgive others with honesty and sincerity. Because at Pentecost the Holy Spirit enables the disciples to know of the power that forgiveness holds, we will miss out on the profoundness of that power to change the course of someone’s life.
We live in an ever-changing society whose power to socialize knows no boundaries. With mobile devices that can interrupt everything we do, no matter what time of the day or night, simple quiet time becomes more precious, yet even harder to find. From prayers to dinners it seems everything has the potential of being interrupted. Young people have the fear of being left out, so they constantly want to check their devices. With lines being blurred as to how soon we should respond to a text or call, the pressure to always be connected has taken away our ability to absorb an experience for what it is. We will lose a lot if we lose Pentecost. We are challenged to slow down our breathing and let the breath of the Holy Spirit fill our lungs. This new air brings with it an awareness of the power of forgiveness. Without sitting in the stillness of time, we might not take the time to recall the moments when forgiveness was generously lavished upon us and the pain when it wasn’t given or felt. We have a lot to lose if we lose Pentecost, and to really have it, we have to live uninterrupted in stillness, become vulnerable, and absorb an awareness of the movement of the Holy Spirit. To capture this is to allow ourselves to be captured by it. This is difficult. To break the connection from society and become unplugged in order to be truly connected to the eternal comes with great sacrifice. But to not do it is to lose Pentecost.
Pentecost cannot be lost and it is up to us to be found by it.
Father John Ouper