I am not a great Catholic nor am I great citizen or ally. I often skip Mass or disagree with things. I don’t like evangelizing or bothering people with faith talk. I often stay home while others engage direct with injustice. I’m afraid of conflict and hard conversations.
But as these protests unfold into Pentecost Sunday I can’t help but wonder if we are witnessing something very different and much larger than we have in our lifetime. We are all “together in one place”, in tight communities as the apostles were—through quarantine or in solidarity in protest. We are all trapped in the horrors and pain unfolding in our nation, not just the pandemic but the defiant and seemingly indomitable specter of racism and authoritarian violence.
I am moved on a deeply, profoundly spiritual level in ways I have not for a several years. I see these videos of police violence and see the young people I’ve worked directly with in their place. Good kids whose lives are undervalued by the government and systems of society, who have been written off as thugs because of the color of their skin or the city they are from.
I don’t know what comes out of this movement, if anything at all. We’ve seen it all before. Ferguson wasn’t even ten years ago. I have often had the sense, in the last few years, that this country, this world has been in a state of agitation and pain in moving toward a new becoming. How long have our neighbors spent time fearing persecution in the upper room? I can’t see what comes after, I can only hope as the movement spreads across the country and the injustice is exposed over and over and over, we finally realize that injustice against some is an injustice against all.
On Pentecost, what is celebrated as the birth of the Church, when a cleansing flame of the Holy Spirit came to the disciples and sent them out in the world speaking in many tongues about the justice, love, and salvation of Jesus Christ, what does the spirit tell us in this time? As flames of protest and police violence rise up in cities around the country, are we listening to the pain of our brothers and sisters being communicated to us?
We watched in horror as George Floyd was murdered in cold blood, restrained, begging for breath.
The Holy Spirit came to the apostles like the sound of a violent wind. God is in us and around us in the air we breathe, the air refused George Floyd by an abuse of power—a profound injustice. God speaks to us in the world, if we look for it.
We see the tongues of fire of the spirit, God’s beloved sons and daughters crying out in pain. They are risking their lives, expressing their pain, and being persecuted for it.
In the celebration of Pentecost, the Church celebrates the coming together of the world as one community.
On Pentecost, 2,000 years later, we see that the promise continues to go unfulfilled.
There are forces that want this moment to divide us, to use the flames as a tool for destruction.
But as people of good will, what can we do to see the flames as a cleansing spirit? To forge ahead in solidarity and community?
I pray that my Church works toward justice. I hope that my nation works toward justice. And I will do my best to be better as a Catholic and citizen to help make this country a more just place. Because my faith compels it. My neighbors deserve it. There is no peace without justice. There is no peace in our nation without recognition that black lives matter.
May the Spirit enable us.
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