The Holy Spirit – Part 2
By (the late) Fr. Dawood Kawkabany
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Let us continue our talk on the Holy Spirit. Let us go back in memory and contemplate Jesus delivering the Spirit to His Father on the Cross, as if He were saying to the Father: “All you have given me, I return to you as a profession of my sonship.”
At the same time, Jesus graced us with this same Spirit which He received from the Father and then returned to the Father. Saint John says that the Spirit descends on us when Jesus is glorified, and the glory of Jesus is the Cross.
I start today with this idea in order to introduce to you the passage on Pentecost. I, then, relate the concept of Church to the Spirit and to the Son (Our talk today is theological, on God’s level, and this may disquiet some people). But Jesus can quiet the storm. If we create no storms inside us, what will Jesus quiet? Let us allow Him to quiet our storms. If we read the passage on Pentecost, we notice something simultaneously simple and deep. The text says that the Disciples were in the Upper Room, and the doors were locked, out of fear of the Jews. The word “fear” is very important here. This happened on the fiftieth day, i.e., the day on which the Jews commemorate the giving of the Law to Moses. Christians, however, celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Church and in the Church. According to Christians and to the Acts of the Apostles, then, the descent of the Holy Spirit is the beginning of a new covenant or of something new. Even prophets such as Ezekiel or Jeremiah, for instance, compared the Law written on tablets of stone to another Law written on hearts of flesh. They speak of a Spirit who inscribes in our hearts the knowledge of God – a knowledge no one needs to teach or learn. You may now wonder about my work here with you, since we have all received the Spirit and no longer need a teacher; and you are right. If the teaching that you have received from the Church, and which I try to communicate to you, does not echo inside you, then it is one of two things: either you have not received the Holy Spirit, or I am lying to you. At the end of this talk, you will come to me and say that this is exactly how we truly live or wish to live: with the Spirit teaching you, and you not needing for me to teach you. He who has not the Spirit of the Lord - and you have spent years striving to learn that Jesus is the Lord - cannot admit this. One can profess that Jesus is Lord “with the Holy Spirit,” and not “with the teaching of the Church.” Pay attention to this very important matter, because this is what I want to communicate to you. At Pentecost, the Disciples were in the Upper Room, with the doors locked, out of fear of the Jews. “And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were.” This means that the Holy Spirit filled the entire place where they stayed, which means that the dimension in which they lived got filled with the Holy Spirit.
The second point regards the descent of the Holy Spirit like tongues of fire which parted and came to rest on each one of them. The Holy Spirit does not work “in bulk.” You are not a number, but a unique person. The Spirit who filled the entire house is the same Spirit who dwells in you, for you are important. The Holy Spirit did not only fill the entire house, but the whole universe. The Spirit flowed down on us like a stream of water, and the proof is that, despite the variety of tongues, there was mutual understanding. After Peter’s speech, three thousand people joined the way of Jesus Christ, and “they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple area and to breaking bread in their homes.” What’s more important is how these people received faith and came to profess that Jesus is Lord. All this happened through the Holy Spirit. He was sent to the disciples so that they can proclaim the Good News, and so that those who receive the Good News become in their turn evangelizers. This transformation is two-dimensional, because when they asked Peter what they needed to do, his answer was two-dimensional: first, repent; and, then, be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.
What does “repent” mean? It simply means “return to the original mentality which God has given you when He created you.” Return to the mentality of the one who “walked about in the garden with God at the breezy time of the day,” and leave the mentality of the one who wanted to guarantee his salvation by keeping the Law, i.e., autonomously and self-sufficiently. Return to the mentality of the being created in the image of God. Return to the being who always looks to God in order to examine whether the “image” in him has been distorted or not. This is what “repent” means.
“And be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.” What does that mean? It means “let yourself be led by the Spirit of Jesus just like Jesus was led by the Spirit of the Father who is one Spirit, and immerse yourself with Him in death, so that you can be elevated with Him at the resurrection. “Be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus” means “follow Jesus on the path on which the Spirit led Him to the Cross and the resurrection.” This is what “be baptized” means. Do not remain on the surface and do not call death a punishment, but turn it into immersion. Death is not only biological death, but it is every act of renunciation, deprivation or detachment. Death becomes this immersion with the suffering man who dies until the end, but, this time, with the conviction that our faithfulness, by the power of the Holy Spirit, will lead us to an irreversible relationship with God. It is important to focus on this, namely on the immersion with Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. We always have to remember that, at all times, we are both evangelized and evangelizers. Just because we have become evangelizers, this does not mean that we no longer need to be evangelized. This is extremely important.
Jesus Christ always took the time to absorb the love of the Father, and to rejoice in being loved by Him. His retreat to the mountain is not to consult the Father, but to be strengthened, if you will, by the Father’s love. I always need to discover love so that I can reflect it to others. Let us go even further, and return to the question of speaking in tongues. It is unfortunate, nowadays, that, because of the trend of “speaking in tongues” that Fr. Emilien Tardif – God rest his Soul - has spoken of, and which our brothers and sisters in the Charismatic community practice, we no longer see but one facet of the practice St. Paul talked about. This supernatural phenomenon has distracted us from the fact that, at Pentecost, despite the speaking in tongues, they each understood according to their own language. And this is the difference between praising in tongues without understanding what is being said, on one hand, – and St. Paul here said that if no translator is available, then what is the benefit of tongues? – and, on the other hand, the Pentecost where each understood according to his or her language. Speaking in tongues is not a private gift, but a gift intended for all of us. It is expressed through acts of love which transcend man’s natural love, i.e., compassion, tenderness, and affection, including parental love. It transcends it into forgiveness, love of the enemy, and selflessness. When you see Mother Teresa embrace a leper and kiss him, it does not matter whether you speak Mandarin, Japanese, German, French, Arabic or any other language, you understand what is happening, because Mother Teresa speaks the language of the Spirit. At this point you say to yourself one of two things: either this woman is a saint, or she is a fool: a saint because she achieved what is superhuman, or a fool because her behavior cannot be grasped by human wisdom. I told you once the story of the young man who said: “Say what you want about me, but I came here to love you. Stop me from loving you, if you can!” This is also the language of the Spirit – the language that makes people say, like at Pentecost: “Something strange is happening here.” Some said the Disciples were drunk, which means fools. For when you transcend your human capabilities - which are valuable in themselves-, and go beyond them, the world will accuse you of simplicity, which means that it will consider you a fool who does not think straight or weigh matters properly. Let us not forget that it is in the First letter to the Corinthians, where St. Paul talks about human and divine wisdoms, that he also talks, in chapters 11, 12 and 13, about the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit, and where he presents the wonderful Hymn of Love. When you push your love to the limit, and live the love that Jesus Christ lived, then you would be speaking a language that everyone understands, but not a language that everyone accepts. They will call you either a drunk or a saint. There is no third option. For if they just call you a great man, this means that you are still not holy enough. They will either call you a saint or a fool. They should not call you a hero, because many heroes are not saints. Let us completely sever the connection between heroism and holiness: you yourself achieve heroism, but it is the Spirit who achieves holiness in you. You may be a hero, but you may not be able to become a saint. A saint is a saint, whether he or she is accepted or not. At a point in time, Jesus became one of us; and how special is this that God, whom we cannot even picture, became one of us! This is the work of the Spirit, to make you special and a mark of distinction; to make you a witness. People may say, “how incredible is what happened to this person.” But it is real. I may think to myself, “I wish I can become like him,” or “I want to become like him.” For instance, when Islam dresses women in veils to protect men from being seduced by them, and sees in Christianity - which prides itself on freedom - the opposite of Christianity, Islam also sees adultery and obscenity. Where is our mark of distinction then? There are many questions that the Holy Spirit puts before us today. If we dress women in veils, we do not solve the problem. What we should aim for is a world where a woman wears no veil, and a man can freely interact with her without objectifying her, or her objectifying him. Women may be veiled in one shape or another, and yet men may still control and enslave them, even if they themselves do not see this situation in those terms. But these men are not the only ones bearing responsibility for this. For when our freedom appears to Muslims as pre-creation chaos, we are unwittingly confirming their misconception of us. Here I say, as in the letter to the Galatians, if we were given the Spirit, we were given Him not so our freedom be used for the gratification of the desires of the flesh. I do not mean here only sexual desires, but also the desire for money and power, etc.
One last point: what happened at Pentecost is more magnificent than the state of humanity before the Tower of Babel. We all know the story of Babel and the tower which was built so that humans can reach God, and how, in the end, God descended and confused their language. At Pentecost there was no building of a tower or anything like that, but, on the contrary, they were afraid, and the door was locked. But the Spirit descended and enabled them to understand one another, and yet He did not unify their language. This is more magnificent because it preserves the uniqueness of each person. If two of us speak French, it would not be difficult for us to understand one another. But if you speak French, and I Arabic, and we still can understand one another, then this would be magnificent! What God accomplished at Pentecost is more magnificent than the state of humanity before Babel. Hence, the Spirit does not eliminate you, but, on the contrary, He safeguards you and makes you worthy just the way you are. He makes you worthy because He is the one who cries through you “Abba, Father.” This takes us even further, because the Spirit does not only make worthy those in the Upper Room, but also those who are outside of it - and these people should not be ignored.
Christians of Lebanon, beware! The Spirit did not bring you out of the Upper Room just so you can build your own Upper Room in Lebanon and lock the doors, or build another Upper Room in another land, because you fear coexistence. This is not permitted. You do not have to fear the other, the different one who speaks another language, even the one who cannot accept that you pray “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” If you look closely, you find that the Holy Spirit is the one who has the final word. What are you afraid of? Do you think that anyone is stronger than the Holy Spirit, and that’s why you fear him? The worst that can happen is that you get crucified like Jesus, but even more than that, you are also resurrected like Him. You may say, “Talk is easy.” This may be true, but in the end, this is faith. You may migrate to the U.S.A or to Europe where you may be more comfortable and become wealthier, but, in the end, you will have fled, locked the door, and neglected, because of your fear, the Spirit who brought you out of the Upper Room.
Amen.
Arabic Original Article
The Family of Saint Sharbel – Educational talk with Fr. Dawood Kawkabany.
First Wednesday of April, 2003 – Church of St Sharbel, Adonis.
Let us continue our talk on the Holy Spirit. Let us go back in memory and contemplate Jesus delivering the Spirit to His Father on the Cross, as if He were saying to the Father: “All you have given me, I return to you as a profession of my sonship.”
At the same time, Jesus graced us with this same Spirit which He received from the Father and then returned to the Father. Saint John says that the Spirit descends on us when Jesus is glorified, and the glory of Jesus is the Cross.
I start today with this idea in order to introduce to you the passage on Pentecost. I, then, relate the concept of Church to the Spirit and to the Son (Our talk today is theological, on God’s level, and this may disquiet some people). But Jesus can quiet the storm. If we create no storms inside us, what will Jesus quiet? Let us allow Him to quiet our storms. If we read the passage on Pentecost, we notice something simultaneously simple and deep. The text says that the Disciples were in the Upper Room, and the doors were locked, out of fear of the Jews. The word “fear” is very important here. This happened on the fiftieth day, i.e., the day on which the Jews commemorate the giving of the Law to Moses. Christians, however, celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Church and in the Church. According to Christians and to the Acts of the Apostles, then, the descent of the Holy Spirit is the beginning of a new covenant or of something new. Even prophets such as Ezekiel or Jeremiah, for instance, compared the Law written on tablets of stone to another Law written on hearts of flesh. They speak of a Spirit who inscribes in our hearts the knowledge of God – a knowledge no one needs to teach or learn. You may now wonder about my work here with you, since we have all received the Spirit and no longer need a teacher; and you are right. If the teaching that you have received from the Church, and which I try to communicate to you, does not echo inside you, then it is one of two things: either you have not received the Holy Spirit, or I am lying to you. At the end of this talk, you will come to me and say that this is exactly how we truly live or wish to live: with the Spirit teaching you, and you not needing for me to teach you. He who has not the Spirit of the Lord - and you have spent years striving to learn that Jesus is the Lord - cannot admit this. One can profess that Jesus is Lord “with the Holy Spirit,” and not “with the teaching of the Church.” Pay attention to this very important matter, because this is what I want to communicate to you. At Pentecost, the Disciples were in the Upper Room, with the doors locked, out of fear of the Jews. “And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were.” This means that the Holy Spirit filled the entire place where they stayed, which means that the dimension in which they lived got filled with the Holy Spirit.
The second point regards the descent of the Holy Spirit like tongues of fire which parted and came to rest on each one of them. The Holy Spirit does not work “in bulk.” You are not a number, but a unique person. The Spirit who filled the entire house is the same Spirit who dwells in you, for you are important. The Holy Spirit did not only fill the entire house, but the whole universe. The Spirit flowed down on us like a stream of water, and the proof is that, despite the variety of tongues, there was mutual understanding. After Peter’s speech, three thousand people joined the way of Jesus Christ, and “they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple area and to breaking bread in their homes.” What’s more important is how these people received faith and came to profess that Jesus is Lord. All this happened through the Holy Spirit. He was sent to the disciples so that they can proclaim the Good News, and so that those who receive the Good News become in their turn evangelizers. This transformation is two-dimensional, because when they asked Peter what they needed to do, his answer was two-dimensional: first, repent; and, then, be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.
What does “repent” mean? It simply means “return to the original mentality which God has given you when He created you.” Return to the mentality of the one who “walked about in the garden with God at the breezy time of the day,” and leave the mentality of the one who wanted to guarantee his salvation by keeping the Law, i.e., autonomously and self-sufficiently. Return to the mentality of the being created in the image of God. Return to the being who always looks to God in order to examine whether the “image” in him has been distorted or not. This is what “repent” means.
“And be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.” What does that mean? It means “let yourself be led by the Spirit of Jesus just like Jesus was led by the Spirit of the Father who is one Spirit, and immerse yourself with Him in death, so that you can be elevated with Him at the resurrection. “Be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus” means “follow Jesus on the path on which the Spirit led Him to the Cross and the resurrection.” This is what “be baptized” means. Do not remain on the surface and do not call death a punishment, but turn it into immersion. Death is not only biological death, but it is every act of renunciation, deprivation or detachment. Death becomes this immersion with the suffering man who dies until the end, but, this time, with the conviction that our faithfulness, by the power of the Holy Spirit, will lead us to an irreversible relationship with God. It is important to focus on this, namely on the immersion with Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. We always have to remember that, at all times, we are both evangelized and evangelizers. Just because we have become evangelizers, this does not mean that we no longer need to be evangelized. This is extremely important.
Jesus Christ always took the time to absorb the love of the Father, and to rejoice in being loved by Him. His retreat to the mountain is not to consult the Father, but to be strengthened, if you will, by the Father’s love. I always need to discover love so that I can reflect it to others. Let us go even further, and return to the question of speaking in tongues. It is unfortunate, nowadays, that, because of the trend of “speaking in tongues” that Fr. Emilien Tardif – God rest his Soul - has spoken of, and which our brothers and sisters in the Charismatic community practice, we no longer see but one facet of the practice St. Paul talked about. This supernatural phenomenon has distracted us from the fact that, at Pentecost, despite the speaking in tongues, they each understood according to their own language. And this is the difference between praising in tongues without understanding what is being said, on one hand, – and St. Paul here said that if no translator is available, then what is the benefit of tongues? – and, on the other hand, the Pentecost where each understood according to his or her language. Speaking in tongues is not a private gift, but a gift intended for all of us. It is expressed through acts of love which transcend man’s natural love, i.e., compassion, tenderness, and affection, including parental love. It transcends it into forgiveness, love of the enemy, and selflessness. When you see Mother Teresa embrace a leper and kiss him, it does not matter whether you speak Mandarin, Japanese, German, French, Arabic or any other language, you understand what is happening, because Mother Teresa speaks the language of the Spirit. At this point you say to yourself one of two things: either this woman is a saint, or she is a fool: a saint because she achieved what is superhuman, or a fool because her behavior cannot be grasped by human wisdom. I told you once the story of the young man who said: “Say what you want about me, but I came here to love you. Stop me from loving you, if you can!” This is also the language of the Spirit – the language that makes people say, like at Pentecost: “Something strange is happening here.” Some said the Disciples were drunk, which means fools. For when you transcend your human capabilities - which are valuable in themselves-, and go beyond them, the world will accuse you of simplicity, which means that it will consider you a fool who does not think straight or weigh matters properly. Let us not forget that it is in the First letter to the Corinthians, where St. Paul talks about human and divine wisdoms, that he also talks, in chapters 11, 12 and 13, about the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit, and where he presents the wonderful Hymn of Love. When you push your love to the limit, and live the love that Jesus Christ lived, then you would be speaking a language that everyone understands, but not a language that everyone accepts. They will call you either a drunk or a saint. There is no third option. For if they just call you a great man, this means that you are still not holy enough. They will either call you a saint or a fool. They should not call you a hero, because many heroes are not saints. Let us completely sever the connection between heroism and holiness: you yourself achieve heroism, but it is the Spirit who achieves holiness in you. You may be a hero, but you may not be able to become a saint. A saint is a saint, whether he or she is accepted or not. At a point in time, Jesus became one of us; and how special is this that God, whom we cannot even picture, became one of us! This is the work of the Spirit, to make you special and a mark of distinction; to make you a witness. People may say, “how incredible is what happened to this person.” But it is real. I may think to myself, “I wish I can become like him,” or “I want to become like him.” For instance, when Islam dresses women in veils to protect men from being seduced by them, and sees in Christianity - which prides itself on freedom - the opposite of Christianity, Islam also sees adultery and obscenity. Where is our mark of distinction then? There are many questions that the Holy Spirit puts before us today. If we dress women in veils, we do not solve the problem. What we should aim for is a world where a woman wears no veil, and a man can freely interact with her without objectifying her, or her objectifying him. Women may be veiled in one shape or another, and yet men may still control and enslave them, even if they themselves do not see this situation in those terms. But these men are not the only ones bearing responsibility for this. For when our freedom appears to Muslims as pre-creation chaos, we are unwittingly confirming their misconception of us. Here I say, as in the letter to the Galatians, if we were given the Spirit, we were given Him not so our freedom be used for the gratification of the desires of the flesh. I do not mean here only sexual desires, but also the desire for money and power, etc.
One last point: what happened at Pentecost is more magnificent than the state of humanity before the Tower of Babel. We all know the story of Babel and the tower which was built so that humans can reach God, and how, in the end, God descended and confused their language. At Pentecost there was no building of a tower or anything like that, but, on the contrary, they were afraid, and the door was locked. But the Spirit descended and enabled them to understand one another, and yet He did not unify their language. This is more magnificent because it preserves the uniqueness of each person. If two of us speak French, it would not be difficult for us to understand one another. But if you speak French, and I Arabic, and we still can understand one another, then this would be magnificent! What God accomplished at Pentecost is more magnificent than the state of humanity before Babel. Hence, the Spirit does not eliminate you, but, on the contrary, He safeguards you and makes you worthy just the way you are. He makes you worthy because He is the one who cries through you “Abba, Father.” This takes us even further, because the Spirit does not only make worthy those in the Upper Room, but also those who are outside of it - and these people should not be ignored.
Christians of Lebanon, beware! The Spirit did not bring you out of the Upper Room just so you can build your own Upper Room in Lebanon and lock the doors, or build another Upper Room in another land, because you fear coexistence. This is not permitted. You do not have to fear the other, the different one who speaks another language, even the one who cannot accept that you pray “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” If you look closely, you find that the Holy Spirit is the one who has the final word. What are you afraid of? Do you think that anyone is stronger than the Holy Spirit, and that’s why you fear him? The worst that can happen is that you get crucified like Jesus, but even more than that, you are also resurrected like Him. You may say, “Talk is easy.” This may be true, but in the end, this is faith. You may migrate to the U.S.A or to Europe where you may be more comfortable and become wealthier, but, in the end, you will have fled, locked the door, and neglected, because of your fear, the Spirit who brought you out of the Upper Room.
Amen.
Arabic Original Article
The Family of Saint Sharbel – Educational talk with Fr. Dawood Kawkabany.
First Wednesday of April, 2003 – Church of St Sharbel, Adonis.
