Pentecost (A): 1 Corinthians 12: 3b-7; 12-13
“No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’, except by the Holy Spirit.” – 1 Corinthians 12:3
Many Catholics in this country came from ethnic groups that have been here for generations. Some began to arrive in the great waves of immigration that began in the 1830’s – the Irish, the Germans, the French Canadians, the Italians. Others were descendants of Spanish and Portuguese settlers that had arrived in the Americas long before the English and French began to settle here.
All of these, however, had one thing in common – they were not “White Anglo-Saxon Protestant”. They had the wrong accents, the wrong customs, and the wrong religion. They usually arrived poor, if not destitute, and were seen by many Americans as bringers of disease and crime, and as a threat to American democracy. (Funny how some things do not change – and sad to see how the descendants of people so treated now treat new immigrants in the same way.) In a word, these Catholic immigrants had no status in American society.
The desire for status is a powerful temptation in people’s lives. We want to be honored and esteemed by others. Our Catholic ancestors were no different. As their lot began to improve, they could point to signs that they were indeed ‘making it’ in the United States; signs that declared that Catholics were as good as anyone else in this country. By the early part of the last century, many Catholics were pleased that their pastors and bishops lived in fine houses and rode around in fine automobiles. Bishops were pleased to see the number of Catholics in their dioceses increasing, along with more baptisms, more weddings, more students in Catholic schools, and more vocations to the priesthood and religious life. Catholics began to succeed in various areas of American life. Bishop Sheen’s success on radio and then on television was another source of pride for American Catholics. Finally, when John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960, it seemed that Catholics had fully arrived in our nation at last.
Then something unexpected happened. The pendulum seemed to change direction in the 1960’s. Vocations to the priesthood and religious life – which had seen a slight drop in the previous decade – began to decline sharply. Thousands of priests and religious left their commitments. More people openly questioned Church teachings in a number of areas. Mass attendance began to decline. Accusations of clergy sexual abuse, which began to appear in the media in the 1980’s, would slowly increase until the dam seemed to burst in 2002. We could list other factors, but the result is clear: being a Catholic lost much of the status it seemed to gain in previous decades. Being a Catholic priest also lost a great deal of status, both within and outside the Church.
One result of all this is that the Church in this country has become divided. In some ways, the divisions in our Church reflect the divisions in American society as a whole. However, one of the biggest sources of division among American Catholics is precisely over the question of what happened to the Church in this country and what are the best ways to address what happened.
The core of this division is in how people interpret the Second Vatican Council and the changes that followed it. For some, this was at best a well-intentioned failure, and at worst a deception of the devil and an effort to destroy the Church. The idea is that things went terribly wrong, and that the solution is to go back to the way the Church was before Vatican II – bring back the Tridentine Mass, have priests in cassocks and birettas, and reaffirm traditional Church teachings in every area. Note that there is nothing wrong or bad about any of these things in themselves. They were symbols pointing to the holy for generations of people. Nevertheless, one can detect the scent of status-seeking here. “Look at us”, they might say; “We are the real Catholics; we are the real priests!”
For others, Vatican II did not go far enough. Too many supposedly ‘outdated’ things were retained by the Church – such as priestly celibacy or much of our teaching on sexuality and marriage. The Church did not go far enough, they believed, in reaching out to contemporary society and in being understood by it. The Church should do more to promote social justice. Note, again, that there are valid points here. We as a Church need to foster a prophetic edge and bear witness to justice and reconciliation. But here, too, one can pick up a whiff of status-seeking. Priests who make it a point not to wear clerics – ever. People who seek non-traditional forms of prayer. The desire to be seen as trendy, ‘cutting edge’ or ‘the wave of the future’. It is safe to say that wherever there are divisions, status-seeking is lurking somewhere in the mix. It all depends on what crowd we are playing to, and what image of ourselves we want to promote.
None of this is new, of course. The Gospels tell us, in amazing honesty, how the twelve apostles chosen by Jesus himself also struggled with the temptation to status-seeking. At times, they wanted to be seen as having a superior status as a group, compared to others. Once, when they encountered someone not of their group who was casting out demons in Jesus’ name, they wanted Jesus to stop that person for he was not “of our company”. Who does he think he is? We are the real disciples of Jesus!
At other times, the Twelve jostled for status with one another. Whether it was James and John seeking spots on Jesus’ right and left in his Kingdom, or all twelve arguing about which one was the greatest, it was the same weakness.
Then, we find the Corinthians. St. Paul had brought the Gospel to Corinth and established a Christian community there. Yet, it wasn’t long before this Christian community became divided. Some were divided over which Christian leader they thought was the best: “I am for Paul! Well, I am for Apollos! No, I am for Peter!” Another division was over the question of spiritual gifts. Those who had the “gift of tongues” regarded this as the best or highest gift, and that all other spiritual gifts were inferior to it. Of course, that was a way for those who had the “gift of tongues” to say that they were the best, the truest Christians of all, and that everyone else was second-rate. In this, as in a number of other ways, this early Corinthian Church was very much like the parishes and other Catholic communities we know today. Divisions had become a serious problem.
Paul’s approach to this is fascinating and instructive. He begins to deal with this problem in 1 Corinthians 12, which is also the source for the second reading for Pentecost Sunday. His first statement might not seem to fit, but for Paul, it is the point. He reminds the Corinthians that “no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’, except in the Holy Spirit”. Paul wants to teach the Corinthians that when they are status-seeking, they are rejecting Jesus as Lord. They are making themselves Lord. They are merely grabbing on to some aspect of Christian faith that makes them look good, and using it to enhance their own status. Isn’t that what we do all too often, whether we grab on to Latin or to social justice? Are we grabbing on to these things because they come from the Lord, or because they make us look good? No, to acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus is to surrender our desire for status on our terms or on society’s terms. It is to give every part of our lives, 24/7, over to Jesus as Lord. It is to accept that our real status is an undeserved gift – a gift that is not unique to me nor to you. It’s one we all equally share – each of us is a child of the Father, a brother or sister of Jesus, and filled with the Holy Spirit. There is no room for boasting. It is all gift.
It is only when we remind ourselves that Jesus is Lord that we become fully open to the presence of the Holy Spirit. We learn that there are many different spiritual gifts, but that all come from the same Holy Spirit, who gives them out graciously to people like you and me – people who do not deserve them but who nevertheless receive them. We learn that these gifts are not to make us feel superior to others or ‘puffed-up’. No, these gifts are given for the common good. Each of us has a responsibility to discover and acknowledge the gifts we have received, and then to seek ways to use those gifts for the good of all. On the one hand, no gift makes any of us better than others. On the other, to deny one’s gifts is to refuse to serve and thus to refuse to acknowledge Jesus as Lord. Every gift comes with a responsibility before the Lord to use it for the good of all. Gifts of the Spirit must be given to others in turn, or they have not been truly received.
As we celebrate the feast of Pentecost and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, it is a good opportunity for each one of us to do a little soul-searching. First of all, do I truly acknowledge Jesus as Lord of my whole life? 24/7? No exceptions? Have I accepted the fact that I am not Lord – and that nothing else is? Only Jesus? Secondly, what gifts of the Spirit have I received? Have I welcomed each gift with gratitude and a sense of awe, seeing that the Spirit is willing to entrust such precious things to me? How have I put these gifts to the service of others in the Church and in the world in general? Am I willing to say yes to these gifts, even if to do so brings me dishonor in the eyes of some? Can I bet my life, so to speak, on the truth of all that the Spirit teaches us through the Church? Is my status in the eyes of others more important than my status before God? Can I see that those whom the world considers worthless may, in fact, be some of the Spirit’s most precious gifts to me and to everyone?