This morning’s Gospel reading is John 14:15–16, 23b–26:
Jesus said to his disciples:
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always.
“Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. Those who do not love me do not keep my words; yet the word you hear is not mine but that of the Father who sent me.
“I have told you this while I am with you. The Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.”
Today we commemorate Pentecost Sunday, when Jesus Christ sent the Holy Spirit to His apostles and allowed them to preach in all languages. This scene comes to us in our first reading from Acts of the Apostles, where the Spirit came upon them “like a strong driving wind,” and “enabled them to proclaim” in the native tongues of all who came to hear them preach.
For a language hobbyist like myself, Pentecost has a number of nuances. Some may be familiar with my interest in Irish (Gaeilge), but at different times I was conversant in Italian and at least understandable in French, too. I have a facility with language that I’ve never really explored, except with Irish, and even then I tend to be more a dilettante than a true student.
The study of languages occasionally makes me consider the strange nature of one planet with so many different tongues. Even within major language groups, there appears to be an almost infinite diversity of languages and dialects. Why did human civilization develop in such a way that we have such a hard time understanding one another?
The Bible has its own explanation for that question. In Genesis 11, we are told that human hubris created this situation:
Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
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So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel —because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
The story of the fall of Babel is that of humans attempting to usurp the Lord by invading Heaven. It is not the first story of humans attempting to usurp the Lord, nor hardly the last. It is the story of fallen humanity’s entire relationship with the Lord, starting with Adam and Eve and ending, well … with each of us today in our own rebellion and sin.
We are not meant to grasp at dominion, but the Lord wants us to live with Him in it. The entire arc of salvation from the fall of Eden to Christ’s resurrection is a love song from the Lord calling His children back home to Him, but of their own free will to live in Trinitarian harmony. We are not meant to invade Heaven, but to answer His invitation to spend eternal life there. Every step of the way, the Lord condescends to be with us in our struggle.
This produces a kind of symmetry by which God reveals Himself. Adam and Eve fell to temptations of power and mastery; Jesus refuses the same temptations in the desert, and Mary offers her full and unreserved Fiat to God’s call. Adam and Eve choose death over eternal life; Jesus passes through death to restore our access to eternal life.
Another point of such symmetry is Jerusalem. God calls His people to the Promised Land to become a nation of priests and prophets, where all the nations of Earth will learn His Word and salvation. God rests His presence in the Temple to facilitate that mission, but the Israelites fall to sin, temptation, and idol worship. They eventually collapse and are trampled by other nations instead. Jesus’ condescension into humanity and His Great Commission reverses that and instead transforms His church into a new Jerusalem that will go out to all nations and make disciples in each.
But how can a dozen unscholarly men hope to accomplish this task? This time, the Lord condescends to be with each of the apostles in the form of the Holy Spirit so that the “temple” goes wherever they do. He provides the ability to speak in different tongues to facilitate that process of conversion, just as His presence in the Temple of Jerusalem was meant to facilitate the original mission of the Israelites.
And in this, we see a beautiful symmetry. The Lord smashed the single language of the people in Genesis 11 for their arrogance. Now, however, the Lord comes to us in each of our languages to show us the true way back to Him — not through our own works and arrogance, but by forming our wills to His so that we can be truly prepared to live forever in His presence. In this way, the Lord sanctifies all of our languages, but more importantly, the Lord comes to us where we live to place that call in our hearts.
We no longer need to build towers to reach God; we only need to unlock our hearts to Him so that we can dwell together, now and in eternity. We do not have to learn a foreign language to reach Him, but can talk with the Lord and understand His word completely.
Even language hobbyists like myself can take comfort in knowing that the Lord loves us so much that He will come to us on our terms to make his love known.
The front-page image is a detail from “The Tower of Babel” by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, 1563. On display at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Via Wikimedia Commons.
“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature, looking at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections from the main page can be found here.
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