May 15, 2016 - Pentecost

When I was pastor in the Skagit Valley, the parish church in Mount Vernon was an attractive building, overlooking the valley across to the Olympic Mountains.  In the highest part of the ceiling in the sanctuary was a very large triangle with rays of lights emanating from it.  Inside this triangle was a single, enormous eye.  Although I liked the church, I was intimidated by that large eye high above the altar always looking down at me.

One day when I walked into the church, a rather pious lady was there saying her rosary.  She motioned me to come over to her.  “You’re our priest, aren’t you?” she asked.  I nodded.  Looking up at that eye she said, “Father, some people will tell you that that eye means God is always watching you to see when you are doing wrong, so God can punish you.”  Then she paused and looked at me.  “I don’t want you to think of it that way.  Every time you see that eye, I would have you remember that God loves you so much God can’t take God’s eyes off you.”

Another memory is when our pastor on Queen Anne Hill visited us in class one day.  With the pastor was Tommy, the church janitor.  The pastor said, “I want you children to look at this man’s hands.”  The janitor, obviously embarrassed, held out his palms for us to see.  “These hands do the Lord’s work,” Father Quain said.  We all looked at each other.  “This man’s hands,” the pastor continued, “have cleaned our church, kept your school running, and washed the statues of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.  This man’s hands are dedicated to the Lord in each and everything he does.  Take a good look at your hands and see that they do the same.” 

These two stories underscore a better understanding we have about Pentecost.  As a kid, I remember that the most we could hope for was to sneak into purgatory.  One would seldom, if ever, hear anything about using the gifts of the people for public witness and service in the midst of the world.  What often happens is, ordinary people conclude that ministry and service and gospel living all fall into a category apart from their everyday lives.

And so we have never developed a spirituality of everyday-ness, a sense that God loves us so much at every moment that God cannot take God’s eyes off us.  A sense, in short, of being church.  Parents have the best chance of salvation.  Why?  Because Jesus gives us the only requirements for salvation.  These requirements are known as the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.  The beautiful part is that they are built right into normal family life.

In raising children, parents cannot avoid heaven.  With the 2:00 am bottle: giving drink to the thirsty.  Changing diapers: clothing the naked.  Medicine to the bedroom: visiting the sick.  Preparing meals: feeding the hungry.  “Dad, can you help me with my homework?” instructing the ignorant.  The cat died: burying the dead.  Hearing the kids’ prayers: praying for the living and the dead.  “Are you still in the bathroom?” visiting the imprisoned.

This is being church; this is what church is all about; this is where we find church.  We are church, ordinary folks doing everyday things.  We think that holiness has to be found elsewhere, not in our home, neighborhood, school, or workplace.  But God has loving eyes on us at every moment.  God has given us blessed hands to be church where we are, right here and now, not somewhere or sometime else.

Actually, early Christian tradition gives us an almost exclusively lay church.  Some people were indeed called to follow Jesus, to be disciples; but most of those people were grounded and remained grounded in their world.  Think, for example, of Zacchaeus, or Simon’s mother-in-law, or Jairus and his daughter, the Jericho blind man, the woman with the hemorrhage, the women at the well, even Martha, Mary, and Lazarus.

The church is you and I, called to live moral lives and bear witness to the gospel.  And we are called to do this right here, in the trenches of everyday living, loving, hurting, struggling, and dying.  So it comes down to this: today is our feast.  Pentecost is a public declaration that God loves each of us so much God cannot take God’s eyes off us.  As a result, God has poured out the Spirit on all of us and has given us, so to speak, a janitor’s hands to share that love.  Pentecost is God’s official call of us as church in the everyday-ness of life.

Fr. Paul Magnano