9 June 2019
Pentecost Sunday
Seven sets of seven days makes a week of weeks and adds up to forty-nine days. Starting on the day after Passover, Jews count forty-nine days and then celebrate the Festival of Weeks, the day on which God gave the law to Moses. If you count the Passover day itself, this festival occurs on the fiftieth day, hence the Greek name Pentecost, which simply means fiftieth. It was on this day that the Holy Spirit fell upon the Christian disciples and that the Church was born. If you have friends who are Christians, you might wish them a “Happy Birthday” today.
For the practitioner of Ignatian spirituality, there is ample material for prayer and reflection in this. Notice, for example, Acts chapter 2 verse 1: “When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together.” The profound spiritual experience of Pentecost was a communal experience. Then they heard a noise like a strong driving wind, and there appeared tongues of fire which came to rest on each of the disciples. They were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in tongues. Notice that at the start of this profound spiritual experience, the disciples “were all in one place together.”
This is a salutary reminder for the practitioner of Ignatian spirituality. Annotation 20 of The Spiritual Exercises encourages the exercitant to withdraw “from all friends and acquaintances,” to obtain “solitude and seclusion,” and to live in “as great privacy as possible” (SpEx 20). If you have made an Ignatian retreat, then you know how strong the emphasis is on personal, individual prayer. This emphasis must be balanced by time spent praying “all in one place together,” like the disciples at Pentecost. In fact, a close reading of annotation 20 reveals that St. Ignatius wanted his exercitants to pray in common, too. He encourags them “to go to mass and vespers every day.”
We must not split ourselves off from the Church as a whole, from the united body of all believers.